[Rick Lee]

Kevin, if you speak good German, I'll hook you up with my friends in Obhausen. But they don't speak a word of English. And honestly, their dialect is hard to get even if you're a good German speaker. It's a very cool village, but there's nothing to see or do there. There is a nice castle in Querfurt about 7km away. Decent 30 Years War stuff in the castle museum too. Eisleben is totally redone now and pretty nice. If you head south from there, be sure to check out Freyburg and Naumburg. In Dresden you must, must go to the Green Vault or Gruenes Gewoelbe museum. Look for the cherry pit with over 100 faces carved in it under the magnifying glass. Can't remember if it was in the Zwinger or where exactly, but there's an amazing medieval weapons exhibit there too. That's when men were really men.

Colditz is VERY hard to find. That part of the world is like home to me and I had to stop a few times to ask how to get there. Lots of construction and detours when I was there. Also, that landmark/museum at Moedlareuth is very hard to find. The signage for it sucked. National landmark and museum signs on the highways in Germany are sort of like the ones we have in that they're brown. Problem is that they don't usually have exit numbers on them, so you need to take the very next exit after you come across the sign. And oftentimes, there are no subsequent signs. I found Moedlareuth by typing "museum" in my GPS and it went to the closest one. Still very hard to find.

I'm so jealous of your trip. I'm going again in two mos., but will only have about 10 days, will catch a Rush concert in Frankfurt and then need to do some wrenching in Duesseldorf with a buddy who just bought is first 911. Don't know if I'll be able to head east.

Hey, Bautzen is where their main prison was for political prisoners. There's one in Halle too called Rote Ochse. I was there when they were starting to convert it and the workers let me run around there on my own. I got to go see some of the cells before they were renovated. Man, the old smell of the DDR is one you can't forget. When you come across it later, it really brings you back. I got a whiff of it again at the Spy Museum in DC when they had a real Trabbi there with the windows down. Stuck my head in and what a rush of memories that brought back.