If you heard anything but German, it was Slavic, not Turkish. The East is still very different - people would stare at us when we spoke English. And Dresden itself is ugly and depressing. Before the war it must have rivaled Prague, but now it looks like the shattered remains of a once beautiful city. Between small pockets of the original Baroque lie great gaping wounds, open spaces periodically dotted with monstrously dull pre-fab DDR construction.
Berlin is messy and disorganized and chaotic and sometimes grumpy, but it's comfortable.
Two hectic days to finish the Christmas shopping that we failed utterly to complete on Saturday, a few pre-trip errands, and then off to Chicago at the crack of dawn Wednesday morning. Doing four loads of laundry, with linens, was a stupid idea. I have greatly exceeded the capacity of our drying racks.