TRAVELING DAYS!

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So today was a traveling day, we are off to Buchenwald concentration camp. We had to leave by about quarter past 8, which wasn't too bad, but it was a long ride so I figured I'd just nap on the bus....that never happened. The buses in this country are so nice, and since it was so big, and our group so small, we all had our own seat. That was fine with me, I just listened to my music and made funny faces at my friends as they were trying to watch a movie.

We ate at a rest stop, it was all in German because it was a small town so the no English thing really wasn't good. I did recognize the word schntizel so I went there....as did most of the people in our group. I had schnitzel and fries, it was actually pretty good. From here we drove straight to the concentration camp.

Our tour guides name was Roland, he had pretty good English, his accent was kinda thick, but you could understand. Plus he was really nice so he would repeat stuff for us. As much as I dislike the listening devices, I really like having tourguides because they have all types of stories that you wouldn't know otherwise. He told us of this one night where rollcall took 19 hours because the guards thought someone stole a stick. In actuality, it was misplaced by a guard, but that didn't help the 70 people who died because of the freezing conditions. And trust me when I tell you, I can easily see how people would have died due to the cold weather conditions. It was so cold outside in the dead of winter, and we were all in our winter jackets and hats! We all huddled around because we were so cold, and to think, the prisoners only had their thin pajamas to wear in the cold, if they had clothing at all. It was definitely an eye opening experience.

There was this really cool memorial there that was a plaque in the ground that stayed at 98.6 degrees. It was really cool because it meant that it was always visible in the snow and it represented the live bodies of all those who perished which I really though was an interesting idea for a memorial....one of my favorites.

Once we got to the hotel, we checked in and got our rooms. It was a really weird hotel and I'm so glad we only stayed for a night! we each had to get a separate wifi password on paper and the lady gave me and my friend free flip flops. It was just really strange. We also all had to stay together in a common area because that was the only place to get wifi.

We all ate dinner together at the hotel and we had schnitzel and fries! Exactly what I had for lunch. It was still good, just a lot of schnitzel for one day. it had this mushroom sauce on it which was really good too. Before we even got the schnitzel though, we had this delicious soup! that actually had this weird root vegetable on top, which I was not trying! After my bad experience at the restaurant in London with that white thing, it was so not happening. The dessert was this weird fruit in jello, but it wasn't actually jello. It was gross I didn't eat it.



Day 15



Today was another reasonably early day. When we went down for breakfast, I knew that it was not going to be good. It was all deli meat, and I'm sorry, but that is not breakfast food. Our destination today was Nuremberg which we got to in about 3 hours. Our bus driver Tanas is pretty hysterical though so the time goes by pretty fast. Everyone naps but Brittany, Hayley and I all listen to Tanas and Peter goof around which is just fantastic. Tanas also taught us how to swear in German...accidentally of course, but thats a story for later.



Tanas dropped us off at this castle that was actually really cool looking so we all stopped and took pictures. Afterward we went through the castle on our way through town where Peter dropped us off to eat lunch. We had a lot of problems trying to find somewhere to eat, but we settled on some movie theatre restaurant and ate with the boys because thats all they could find too. Brittany, Hayley and I all shared appetizers, I got chicken nuggets and fries and they got mozzarella sticks and chicken wings. We all had french fries with our order and what was supposed to be salad, but was actually cole slaw. We all tried it, but it was nasty.



We all met back up as a group and Caitlin had this German gingerbread that she let us all try. It was alright. Then Peter let us all have some of his chocolate. That was pretty good as well once you got used to the weird jelly texture. Brandy did not like it at all and gave it to me. We then headed off to try to find Tanas but Peter got a little lost and we ended up having to back track, but that's okay. It was cold, but Peter's been pretty awesome, so I guess we'll have to forgive him. It was a short bus ride from here to our real stop for the night which was Nuremberg 600, the courtroom where the Nuremberg trials took place.



This time we had another phone-like device, which was a little annoying, but everything was in German so its a good thing we had it, otherwise I wouldn't have understood anything. The courtroom is still in use to this day, but it wasn't being used currently so we were able to go in and look around. It was actually kinda cool, plus the explanation, although long was really informative. I never really finished the museum, I kinda just sat down and looked at pictures, I wish I could have read the captions to some of the pictures, but my German is not that good! Also, t'was here that my camera broke 😞



Next we went to the rallying grounds were Hitler gave his speeches. This was AWESOME. The place was so huge and when you stood on the podium-ish area it was just so powerful. The place was just full of vines and snow, I couldn't imagine giving a speech to the place when it was full. I really wanted to take a picture standing there holding out peace (scissors beats paper! ;] if you don't get it, we can't be friends) but so many people wanted a picture it just didn't would out very well. You can tell I'm a big Psychology nerd when I was even thinking about deindividuation before Wellman even started giving his lesson about it! Oh well, I'm okay with being a nerd.



Side note: My shoes got so wet from the snow that the dye leaked and stained the snow! Hahaha



We then went to a documentation center which is on the outside of what appeared to be the Colosseum, which obviously it wasn't, but I think Hitler ordered people to build it, I don't remember the full story. At this point I was getting a little tired because of all the traveling on the bus during the day but I just went with it. This place was huge and actually kinda cool. It told the story of Hitler and how he tortured people (I'm thinking about doing torture/pain for my paper so I like to pay attention to these exhibits. I got tired pretty fast, but there were a lot of videos to watch so I just sat down and watched them. I also got lost at one point......AND there was a bat in one of the rooms flying around, it flew right at my head and I had to duck, you can even ask Brandy. She witnessed it. So I didn't stay in that room too long. I went to the end and watched this video about the Nuremberg trials which was cool because we were just at Courtroom 600. It was nice to connect all these things we are learning.



At the very end, there was this platform that you could walk up that protruded into the fake Colosseum, so you were standing over it looking into it, it was pretty awesome, I know my mom would not be okay with it though. Then just before the exit, where most people would probably be done with the museum and leave, there was this small patch of railroad covered in silver luggage tags that had the name and town (if known) of victims. This was really cool to me, I love these different memorials that put names on things to truly honor the people. However, there was only about 6,000 name tags, when there really should have been over 600,000 but they wouldn't have all fit.



After the documentation center, we headed off to the hotel, another weird one, but SO much better than the last one. Before we got there though, we drove over this same stretch of highway a good 3 times. We kept joking that this place looked pretty familiar. This is also when I learned how to say sh*t in German. It all happened because Peter told Tanas to turn when he wasn't supposed to or something. It was just so hilarious to hear them bickering! Great way to end the day.



Technically the day wasn't over because it was only 630 and we were going to have dinner. This was buffet style and I had some delicious fish and tortellini. Some people said they didn't like it, but I thought it was pretty good. I'm not really that picky of an eater, unless of course its Chicken Pie, then I'm NOT eating it. Anyway, Brissa was all for trying new things and she had at least 5 different kinds of sausage on her plate so Brandy had the great idea to do a speed round to tell us what was good. It was pretty hilarious since most of them were gross and she was like “do not get that one!” After that, she did the same thing for all the desserts. There was this really good apple turnover thing or apple crisp, apple something. Anyway, that was served with this white cream sauce it was really good.



Brandy and I left dinner a little early so we could go use the internet because there were only 2 computers in the lounge and that was free, or you could pay for wifi which I was not doing. The internet was working well until it legit just stopped working. I had to go tell the guy and so he came over to fix it and had to turn it off and on again. But by that time, Brittany and Hayley came over and I asked Brittany if I could use hers (Brandy went upstairs) and then that one stopped working. So I was banned from using the internet. I had to have Brittany facebook my mom to tell her my camera broke.



Then I went upstairs to just chill (instead of writing journals) and Brandy couldn't turn the tv on. So I pressed the button on the tv, removed the batteries from the remote, unplugged and replugged the tv in, nothing worked. So she ended up having to call the front desk. I had told her the story about the internet so when the guy picked up the phone at the front desk, she told me. I decided now was a good time to take a shower seeing as he would probably blame me. I went in there so fast that I forgot my shampoo! I don't like the hotel 3 in1 shampoo so I had to go back in the room, but he had already arrived. I thought it would take him a while so I decided to just go out and get it. He recognized me obviously and made fun of me so I ended up forgetting what I wanted out of my suitcase, but I didn't want to look even more stupid so I just grabbed some socks. He was able to turn the tv on by just pressing a button so me not looking stupid didn't really work. Oh well, I just showered (with hospital shampoo) and watched German tv til bed. All the tvs have the option to change the language to English on the closed captioning, but it never worked. Lamesauce. Gone in 60 seconds was on, I wanted to watch that, but Brandy wanted to watch American Pie, so we did. They were both in German, so its not like I understood what was going on since I've never seen it, which was the whole reason why she wanted us to watch it. What stinks is that its just dubbed over in German, so if you listened really closely you could hear the english, but that was too much work. At the hotel in Nuremberg a bunch of us got together in the common area for internet and ended up watching German dubbed disaster date and My Super Sweet 16. Personally, I was really hoping K-von would come onto disaster date, but he didn't (he's a comedian that HCAB brought to school)



Another concentration camp tomorrow!



Day 16



Another meat display for breakfast, but they had nutella and croissants hidden, so guess what I had! Haha We were headed off to Dachau today, which is the first concentration camp. Once we got there we had to wait for our tour guide. I was hoping she was like Roland, he was a beast, I can picture him in Liam Neesons roles in movies. But she was NOT. She would not stop talking. Worse than when I told Allie stories, an answer would literally need to be only 5 words, but she somehow dragged it out into 5 minutes without giving us any extra information.



This concentration camp was interesting because it was the first one build so all the others were based off of it. It thankfully was not AS cold and the other one, but pretty windy and uncomfortable, but once I got cold I just imagined what the prisoners went through and decided not to complain. The whole place appeared to have been cleared and destroyed after it was evacuated, but some of the buildings had been rebuilt. This one also had the crematorium like the other one, which is just surreal to look at, but this one also had gas chambers. It was never actually used like in the death camps, but it was used for sick prisoners, not mass killings. Thankfully Peter was able to convince the tour guide to only do a 2ish hour tour instead of the 3 and a half she had planned, which thank goodness because by the time we were done we were all starving because it was it was 2 oclock! We had to get to Munich first but then we went in this like underground shopping mall/tube station. This was the first time Peter was weird about lunch and he only have us like 30 minutes. We just ended up getting some pizza.



After lunch, Peter brought us around town to see some old buildings and churches. They are really big and quite cool if you are into architecture. We also saw the town hall which is absolutely gimongous! After that little tour, Peter brought us back to the restaurant and we stayed an hour or so before leaving. The normal group of us all went out together, when we got out of the hotel I immediately turned and walked into the scarf store, Brittany joked that I got distracted quickly. I ended up getting 3 more scarves! I have a serious problem, but they were technically only 5 Euro a piece, so like 7 bucks. They had so many cool scarves, I'm lucky I only bought three. Its Peter's fault for having us stay in a hotel so close to a scarf store!



We also ran an errand for Brittany and then went with Hayley to buy new shoes, her other ones let too much water in and her feet kept getting cold! 😞 But we found really cute boots for her, so she just wore them out of the store and they kept her feet nice and warm! YAY! We then ventured for dinner, but we didn't really want to go far, I had remembered seeing this place that looked good so we went over there. I had the most delicious wrap ever. It was a Greek wrap chicken lettuce, tomatoes, and this Greek dressing, it doesn't sound like much, but it was good. Hayley got it in sandwich form and then we split a side of fries.



That's it for the night! Some journaling and some German TV. I even started watching BBC because its the only English channel, but they repeated the same story a million times, so much so that I could have done the broadcast myself.

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