Saturday morning, we departed Berlin. Our first stop was the Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam, one home of the German Emperor Frederick the Great. 
Grapes and a variety of fruit trees were grown in seven terraces with a southern exposure. 
The seven terraces led down to the formal gardens. The French writer, Voltaire, was among Frederick's friends. Voltaire called Frederick "the Philosopher King." Frederick is buried with his eleven greyhound dogs.
We stopped briefly in Wittenberg to see the church doors where Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517.
The church is on the left. The folks in Wittenburg were having a street fair that day.
On the drive south to Chemnitz, we started to see fields of windmills. In 2006, wind turbines in Germany produced 28,233 megawatts. The U.S. now generates 11,600 megawatts or enough to power 3 million households. On the manufacturing side, GE Energy (by a lot), Siemens Wind Power and Danish company Vestas are the top three producers of wind turbines.
Sunday morning, we enjoyed a guided tour of the Meissen Porcelain Factory. Johann Friedrich Bottger, a German chemist, was the first European to produce porcelain. Bottger worked with the overseer of the mines and a mathematician to perfect the formula. In January 1710, the Meissen (Dresden) porcelain factory was set up under the patronage of Augustus the Strong. 
Some of the porcelain is painted, then glazed; other porcelain is glazed and then painted. All pieces are hand made. 
The 'crossed swords' on Meissen Porcelain are one of the oldest trademarks in the world. The only organ in the world with porcelain organ pipes.
In Dresden, we visited the 'green room' with dazzling art objects and precious jewelry collected by the ruling family of Saxony and Poland in the period 1500 - 1600. 
'Frauenkirche' (Church of Our Lady) comes from the church that previously stood on this site and was consecrated to Mary, Our Blessed Lady. The Frauenkirche's unusual dome, the famous 'bell of stone', is an architectural masterpiece: weighing no less than 12,000 tons and yet seemingly weightless. It is considered to be the most significant stone dome north of the Alps. Completely gutted by fire, the dome collapsed on the morning of 2/15/1945 two days after the bombing of Dresden. Reconstruction began in 1994, with plans to use as much of the original structure and material as possible. Note the left side of the Frauenkirche as well as some of the darker bricks in the front...
Over 20 thousand tiles made in Meissen to commemorate the leaders of Saxony over the years.
# posted by Martha @ 1:13 PM
