Today Jorg picked us up and took us to an English guided tour of Dresden, much of what we toured we had already seen. However it was interesting to hear some more of the history associated with the city, fascinating. We got the chance to visit part of a Mass at the Catholic Church, interestingly the Catholic Church was built here mostly as a way of showing the people of Poland that the king (I forget his name) had converted to from being a Protestant simply for the purpose of becoming their king. We spent part of three different days in Downtown Dresden and I was amazed each time. We were told that there are over 40 museums in Dresden. 
Jorg next took us on a scenic drive through Saxon, we stopped briefly at
the Freiberg LDS temple and got a couple pictures.
As we arrived Priesthood was just getting out and men were leaving the nearby
church so I talked for minute with one of them. Joeg was quite interested looking at the
license plates on the cars; he said they were from several eastern countries. We continued on to visit a couple of
different Castles. The one that stood
out the most to me was the Burg Kriebstein, First built in 1048 it is a
majestic looking castle that could have came right out of a fairy tale. It sits high on a rock hill overlooking a
small river; I would say about 200 ft from the living quarters of the Castle to
the river below. People continued to
live there until about 1945 during WWll.
Just a few year ago during a renovation of the castle many valuable possessions were discovered hidden in a wall, so the Soviets would not find
them.
In the evening we visited the Hilger family, Jorg and Jana, their
children and Jana's parents. They served
us a wonderful meal and we visited for several hours. Paul was a hit with the kids; he found a rope
and made a Lariat to teach the kids to rope.
They were very excited to have a real American cowboy come to visit. We all shared pictures from home and toured
their home which they have been working on for the past year and a half. It is a beautiful home originally built in
1889. Jana was raised in Eastern Germany;
her parents were very young at the end of the war, so they lived for many years
under soviet control. We ask them to
tell us what it was like, expecting to hear what a bad life it was, but this
was not the case. They told us that the Soviet
soldiers lived their own life in their base and had very little to do with the
people, they were not allowed to travel to the west, but could travel quite
easily to the east. They knew nothing
different so it was not so bad, they certainly did not tell the story that I
was expecting to hear. They lived in the"System" and got along just fine. The German people have a very different
perspective than we do in America. But
they did comment that it has been long enough now that most of the young people
have no memory of life before, and only hear in school how bad it was but that
was not their experience. I believe it made
a big difference what part of society you lived in in the East, for some it was
really bad, for others they got along just fine. Jorg was raised in the west so he said his
perspective is much different than theirs.
I go the impression that he did not like to talk politics with his in-laws.
Jorg also showed us his gun collection, it is very difficult to get a gun in Germany, they are highly regulated. You must first get a hunting license, which requires an 8 month class and passage of 3 different tests, if you fail you start over. You are then limited as to what type and how many guns you can have. They are also very expensive. Even so Jorg has an impressive collection of guns. One in particular he found in the roof of his house while he was remodeling. It is an old pistol, loaded when he found it, he said if he gets caught with it he will lose all his guns even though the pistol no longer works.
I very much enjoy visiting with the people, especially families; they
are not so much unlike Americans.
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