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We started bright and early Friday morning to get to Weimar. It was a long train trip, so most of us slept or listened to our ipods, and when we got there, the first thing we did was go to Buchenwald, the concentration camp that was set up about 8 km outside of town. This was one of the things I was really excited to do, because visiting a concentration camp is on my bucket list; I think it's a very important piece of world history and I think that seeing it was very important to me, to remind me of things and just make me realize how bad things can get.
I knew going in that it was going to be a very emotionally intense trip. The first thing we did was look through the bookstore for awhile as we waited for the movie about the camp to start- it had English subtitles. There were a lot of survivor testimonies and they talked about when the camp was started, what it was used for. It was really rough watching it. I'm pretty sure most of us were crying by the time we got out of the theater, and we
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Outside the camp gateshadn't even gone anywhere yet. As the group filed out and headed towards the main gates, I've never heard us be so quiet before. Ever. No one was talking at all, and we're a pretty big group. That was the kind of atmosphere there.
I wasn't sure how I felt about taking pictures there, but I decided that I wanted to remember being there and what I saw, so I ended up taking some. Again, something I felt was important to preserve. We walked through the gates to where the barracks used to be, marked with dark stones in the locations. They had numbered blocks to tell you which was which. Then we went through the crematorium and the latrine and that was hard. Really, really hard. Those structures were still intact, and it was just... yeah. I was kind of crying again as we did this, so I was happy for my sunglasses.
The big storage building for inmate's clothing and stuff has been turned into a museum, so we got about an hour to walk around and look at things and also walk around the rest of the camp if we wanted to. We mostly completely
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Where the barracks used to be split up for this, which, again, has never really happened. I went through the museum for about half an hour, and then decided to walk around outside the camp. I went through the stones where the barracks were and made my way down to "Little Camp", sort of outside, where the worst conditions were (we saw stuff about it in the video). There was a memorial there now for the people that died there, and then behind that, there was a small memorial on the remains of Block 66, the children's block, where they tried to save children who had ended up there. It was just really powerful.
After we were done with the camp, we walked about 15 minutes to the Jewish memorial and took some pictures of that, which was also very intense. The walls beneath the tower and statue, down the hill, are three round structures that are basically just mass graves, so that was just. You know. It was a hard morning emotionally, but I'm really glad that we saw it, because I think it'll stick with me for a very long time.
Finishing that, we headed back to Weimar and walked around the
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View of the gate from inside city a bit. It was only a fast tour, since we had to take a train later to get to our hotel outside in a village past the city. Weimar is pretty neat. And when we were done with that, we got to the train station for our country inn, and had to take taxis from the station there because it was in the middle of nowhere so much. It was SO BEAUTIFUL. Just this little country inn situated at the base of a huge hill/mountain with castle ruins on the top. No big deal. 😉 We divvied up the rooms and ordered dinner and then had some beers while we waited. Dr. G sat and drank with us and we all just had a good time.
Once we'd finished dinner (and about 3-5 beers each, ouch), we went in and grabbed 2 bottles of wine from the bartender and started our trek up the rather steep mountain incline to get to the ruins so we could watch the sunset. Stephanie, Ben and I kind of sprinted up them. We were feeling pretty good, lol. This may not have been the best idea ever, but man, it was one
spectacular view up there. We climbed around on the castle ruins and took pictures and drank wine from the bottle as we watched the sunset. This was pretty obviously a great moment in my life. 😊))) So many experiences here are just going to stick with me forever as really great moments.
When it got dark, we headed back down, and Kara and I tried not to kill ourselves by falling down the incline. Dr. G and Joe were having a drinking competition (seriously), so they needed to get back to that, and the rest of us sat around in the inn's beer garden to drink more beer and talk and play a round of Kings with the cards that Anna had created on the train. Because of a series of events that actually had absolutely nothing to do with me, the night ended kind of crappily and I didn't even end up sleeping in my assigned room, but it's not a huge deal. It was a very good day before all that. 😊
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