• Independent arrivals throughout the day.
  
  
• Airport transfers arranged on request.
  
  
• On request rooms can be reserved for guaranteed early arrival.  
  
  
• Check in to our hotel, the Hotel Regent, Berlin.
  
  
• Evening introductory lecture with Dr. Feingold to set the scene for what we are going to see and do during our stay in Berlin and beyond.
  
  
• Welcome cocktail reception, followed by dinner.
  
  
• Overnight: Hotel Regent, Berlin.
  
  Hotel Regent Berlin
  Deemed as one of the best places to stay in the world by Condé Nast Traveler. Located at the Gendarmenmarkt square in the heart of the city, near Berlin's famous Friedrichstraße and the magnificent Unter den Linden boulevard, our hotel offers charming, elegant rooms with personal service.

• Buffet breakfast or Continental in your room.

• Depart hotel for the Natural History Museum.

Natural History Museum
One of the most important natural history collections in the world. The scientific collections include mineralogical, geological, paleontological and zoological specimens.

• Lunch at the Gropius Restaurant.

• Walk to the Martin-Gropius-Bau.

Martin Gropius-Bau
A late 19th-century building in the Italian Renaissance style. 
Special presentation and visit of the Weltwissen 300 exhibition (The World as Science: 300 years of Science in Berlin) with exhibition manager/curator Dr. Jochen Hennig and other Humboldt University faculty.

• Time at leisure to stay in the exhibition.
  
  
• Dinner at elegant Restaurant Borchardt just around the corner from our hotel.
  
  Restaurant Borchardt
  Located on picturesque Gendarmenmarkt is this true classic of the Berlin gastronomic scene. The interior is noble and elegant with high ceilings, colorful mosaics and imposing pillars.  The restaurant is usually packed with celebrities, not just for the excellent food but for the see-and-be-seen atmosphere.
  
  
• Overnight: Hotel Regent, Berlin.

• Buffet breakfast or Continental in your room.

• Architecture Tour of central Berlin and all its stunning creations. 
  
  Archtecture Tour.
  Berlin has a phenomenal concentration of buildings by the world’s most celebrated 20th and 21st-century architects including Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano, I. M Pei.  We will visit Pariser Platz  for Frank Gehry’s DZ-Bank, Günther Behnisch’s steel-and-glass Academy of the Arts, and Moore, Ruble & Yudell’s US Embassy, which opened July 4, 2008. Across from the U.S. Embassy stands Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial of 2005, a labyrinthine grid of 2700 concrete steles sunk into an artificially undulating stone field.
  
  Potsdamer Platz is Berlin’s new commercial district. We will also visit the government quarter built from scratch after the Fall of The Wall, and the Embassy Quarter, where the world’s nations have built their representative’s headquarters in a mind-bending variety of designs. The morning ends at the Reichstag to see the prizewinning glass dome construction designed by Norman Forster.
  

• Lunch at Restaurant Käfer on top of the old Reichstag, which star-architect Norman Foster converted into a modern parliament building.

• Visit of the recently revamped Museum Island.

Museum Island.
The latest installment of which is the Neues Museum, which will open its doors to the public in autumn of 2009 after its conversion by British architect David Chipperfield from a 19th-century ruin to a state-of-the-art museum of Ancient Egypt.

• Visit to Bode Museum.

Bode Museum
Newly opened in 2006 we explore the sculpture, Old Masters and numismatics collections. 

• Time to explore the rest of the complex and visit any other collections at leisure.
  
  
• Dinner and evening at leisure.
  
  
• Overnight: Hotel Regent, Berlin.

• Buffet breakfast or Continental in your room.
  
  
• Transfer to Potsdam.
  

  Potsdam
  Potsdam is to Berlin what Versailles is to Paris. For centuries, it was the summer residence of the Kings of Prussia. This was King Frederic the Great’s summer residence and one of the finest Rococo palaces in Europe. Today, it is an elegant residential town with a beautiful Baroque center and three landscaped parks filled with palaces, churches, temples, pagodas, teahouses, grottos and a wonderful array of architectural follies. In 1990, Potsdam, formerly in communist East Germany, was assigned UNESCO world heritage status. Some 80% of the town’s historic buildings have since been restored.

  Tour of the interiors of Sans Souci Palace with Curator Dr. Vogther. 
  

• Drive through the charming 17th-century Dutch and 19th-century Russian neighborhoods to lunch.
  
  
• Lunch in Potsdam at Speckers Gaststätte Zur Ratswaage on the market Square.

• Transfer to the Einstein Tower, a fantastically Expressionist observatory built in 1928 by Erich Mendelsohn for the eminent physicist.
  
  
• Continue to Haus der Wannsee, the villa on the Wansee where "the final solution" that led to the murder of millions of non-Aryans was formalized at a 90-minute meeting chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in January 1942.

Haus der Wannsee
Welcome by the director, visit of the exhibition and end with a round-table discussion with the director and staff members.

• Transfer back to hotel.

• Dinner at restaurant Bocca di Bacco just around the corner from the hotel.

• Overnight:  Hotel Regent, Berlin.

• Buffet breakfast or Continental in your room.
  
  
• Transfer to Wörlitz House and Park.
  
• Morning with Chief Curator Uwe Quilitzsch to visit the period interiors of Wörlitzer Schloss built by classicist Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff.

• Lunch at Landhaus Wörlitzer Hof restaurant.

• Visit one of continental Europe’s greatest and earliest landscape gardens laid out between 1769 and 1773 in the style of English gardens such as Stourhead and Claremont.

  Gardens
  The visit is by gondola. Our visit includes Villa Hamilton named after the English Antiquarian Sir William Hamilton and built on the largest island in the park's lake. This part of the garden is modeled on the Bay of Naples and includes a mini model of Vesuvius, which erupted with a pyrotechnical show created in the 18th century by Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff to entertain his guests.

• Transfer to Dresden.
  
  
• Afternoon check-in at hotel Kempinski Taschenbergpalais, our deluxe 5-star hotel right in the center of Dresden. 
  
  
• Evening and dinner at leisure.
  
  
• Optional performance at Semper Opera House.
  
  
• Overnight:  Taschenbergpalais, Dresden.
  
  The Taschenbergpalais is in the heart of the Old Town, facing some of the city's most famous landmarks, including the Zwinger, the Residenzschloss, and the Opera House.
  
  Largely destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, the Taschenbergpalais was rebuilt in the original style in the early Nineties following reunification with the West. The rooms are large and comfortable with all the modern amenities.

• Buffet breakfast or Continental in your room.

• Private closing-day visit of the Old Masters collection at the Zwinger with Curator Andreas Henning. 

• Lunch at leisure.
  

• Transfer to Meissen to visit the porcelain factory including the demonstration workshops and museum.
  
  
• Depart hotel for the transparent Volkswagen factory.
  
  
• Visit of this high-tech facility followed by a gourmet dinner in the design Lesage restaurant in the factory.

• Overnight:  Taschenbergpalais, Dresden.

• Buffet breakfast or Continental in your room.
  
  
• Before-hours private visit of the spectacular collection of treasures at the Green Vault. Welcome and tour by Director Prof. Dirk Syndram.
  
  
• Walking Tour of the center of Dresden with historian and local resident Eva Curth. This walk will include the Castle, Zwinger, Semper Opera House, Brühl Terrace, Fürstenzug, Stallhof, Hofkirche and Frauenkirche.
  
  
• Lunch at leisure.
  
  
• Optonal visit to see the stained glass studio with workshop Director Leonie Seliger.

• Visit of the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon with curator Dr. Michael Korey.

• Private after-hours visit of the Porcelain Collection at the Zwinger with Curator Ulrich Pietsch followed by cocktails and seated farewell dinner in the museum.

• Overnight:  Taschenbergpalais, Dresden.
  

• Buffet breakfast or Continental in your room.

• Departures to airport.

or

• Those joining us on the post-trip to Prague depart by bus at 9:00 a.m.