Würzburg and Bamburg

Yesterday I got back from my weekend in Würzburg with Rose.  Rose is a year younger than me at WLC and is another German major.  She has her study abroad this semester too and is going through a program in her town.  It was great to catch up with her and trade stories and pictures of our times in Germany so far.  She gave me a Stadtführung (city tour), naturally in German, and we saw lots of churches as Würzburg has many. We even got to see Walther from the Vogelweide's grave! He was tiny!

Saturday we traveled with her friend Anna to Bamburg which is just a little bit north of Würzburg by a regional train.  We bummed around town as we found out some of the things Anna planned to see were closed, but we did see a beautiful garden that was part of a Residenz there and got to pick up on some southern German dialect.  These were the biggest differences we found:

Jungs = Junge (boys)

Mädels = Mädchen (girls)

and what sounded like Dooda = Tute (plastic shopping bag)

Yesterday we we spent some more time in Würzburg and climbed two mountains.  The first was to see a catholic chapel at the top of one, there was also a restaurant a little ways from there, a little more up and then a little more back down the other side of the mountain where we got something to eat.  We went back down the mountain and climbed the neighboring mountain to see a Festung which is like a fortress.  It even had a bath for horses! It had a garden too, and a really beautiful view of Würzburg.  Here's some pics of the whole weekend:

Rose and I!

We climbed up the mountain through the vineyards!

That was about all for my weekend. I had an ICE back in the afternoon but it got delayed by another train on the tracks and we got about an hour behind which was really annoying.  I still comforted myself with an ice cream cone on my walk home from the Bahnhof. Things weren't so bad then. :)

My oral exam was this morning and I got perfect scores on fluency of speech, vocabulary, interaction with other speaker/s, and had pretty good scores on grammar which is always my trouble spot. Written testing tomorrow and last day of class! It's so exciting to think about seeing everyone again and talk to them in person.  Skype hasn't been very cooperative most of the time so I've limited my calls quite a bit since I had so many issues.

Wednesday I will have some relax time in Frankfurt with Christian again, and then getting up early Thursday to catch my flight.  So excited! I'll probably update about two more times, once in Frankfurt and once when I get home to let you know about my complete trip. Thanks for following!

Dachau Konzentrationslager (Concentration Camp)

We saw Dachau yesterday.  The Dachau concentration camp was the first regular concentration camp under the Nazi Party. It was supposed to be started as a camp for political prisoners.  It became the prototype for many other camps in the Reich.  It was also the first to perform experiments on prisoners.  It was even shut down from fall until spring one year and prisoners were sent to other camps for this time while the camp grounds were used for Nazi training.


I wasn't sure what to expect before I got to Dachau. The still overcast sky somewhat set the mood.  Before you go in you pick up an audio guide if you want one, so you don't see any of Dachau at that point yet so you can't still really believe you're there.  We got our audio guides and walked up the path and all of a sudden on your right behind the trees is the main entrance to the camp.  There was a lot of listening to do here on the audio guide which I appreciated because I wanted time to really think about what I was seeing before I went in.

As we walked through the main gate, the sun came out a little bit, which almost made it even more saddening to think about.  The air was cool, the sun was out... even places as sad and dark as this received beautiful sunshine and light breezes sometimes, just like the rest of us. I guess in my head it's always been overcast looking, I never considered the sun shining somewhere like this.  The main front part was the roll call yard.

After that we walked over to the prisoner barracks.  Political and religious prisoners were kept here. This is a cell.

This was a interrogation and torture room. (below)

Showers and more punishment

The beds, about midway through the war

Imagine that room with beds, times about 12 of those rooms per building... times this many foundations of the buildings... times two because there's another side of the path with just as many empty remaining foundations. This is from the back of the camp facing back towards the central square.

This is the crematory.

This was a gas chamber where they could gas 150 people at a time every 15-20 min

 This is where they fumigated the clothing that could have been infected with disease at the end of the building.  You could have walked through it to get to the next part, but no one did, including myself, we all walked back to the outside and around to the next door.

The audio guide was really good and had a lot of information.  I felt like the whole exhibit was very well laid out and was very respectful to the whole event.  I don't want you to think I didn't have much to say about a these pictures, but there wasn't much I am really happy to share with you in this entry.

One might expect the camp to really be depressing.  I wouldn't say that entirely, it's more just respectful and solemn - almost cemetery like but slightly less restful since there were a good number of people moving about the entire site.  Most people walked around fairly quietly, listening to their audio guides or just looking and reading exhibits.  I half expected to feel creeped out being in some of these buildings or walking on the grounds, like you sometimes do when you walk into a house with a bad history.  I didn't have that feeling at all.  Maybe it would have been different if I was there alone, but I felt like if the place would talk, it would just say, "It's over."

I'm sorry to leave you with a bit of a depressing entry.  I'm not sure if I'll get anywhere else during the week until this weekend, so I might have to leave it at this for a while.  This is the last full week of school and I need to get in some more work on my paper for German that's coming along good so far, I just want to make the most of my sources while I have them.  I'll be leaving for Würzburg Friday after class to visit Rose for the weekend.  Rose is a year younger than me at WLC and is doing her study abroad in Germany this summer too.  She has a friend who's letting me use her bed and bus fare for the weekend so I have no expenses except food!  It'll be nice to have a semi-relaxing weekend where I can just enjoy myself with no rush of anything in particular that I have to see or spending much. I'll let you know!

München

This weekend Elizabeth and I were in Munich!  And yes, there was air conditioning on the trains! Amazing!  We took the train there at 7:00am and arrived around 11:00 by ICE.  Munich is in very southern Germany. I was hoping I would see some Alps as they are supposed to be nearby, but it was so overcast we didn't see a thing.

It was completely good weather until we got there, in which case it down poured probably the worst I've ever stood in.  Luckily, we had checked the weather ahead of time and brought our umbrellas.  We were disappointed to see that there was a large congregation in the middle square and someone up on a stage yelling about homosexual rights. (I'm not sure why, because homosexuality is allowed in Germany). It seemed to be somewhat of a "gay pride" day.  There was also a large parade that was blocking us from getting to one of our stops and we had to wait because we didn't feel comfortable running through the middle of their parade.

In the center square they did break their music and talking long enough for people to watch the famous glockenspiel on the Rathaus at noon.  There's little figures that dance around and even two knights that joust! (Video will be uploaded to facebook shortly). 

We saw St. Michael's church, but only momentarily, I snuck just one picture because they were having a service when we came in.  St. Michael's is the largest Renaissance church north of the Alps.  It's style greatly influenced the buildings built in early German baroque architecture.  It was made in 1583.

We also saw the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) where we heard a MARVELOUS women's choir practicing (video currently loading to facebook).  The church was built in 1468 but was severely damaged during WWII along with much of Munich as the town was very much a "seat" of the SS (Schutzstaffel or Protection Squadron).  The whole roof had fallen in and one of the two towers had been destroyed and it wasn't fully restored until 1994. Make sure you click them all so you can see them bigger!

We had a traditional lunch of Wiessbraten (whitish brats) on the little rolls.

After lunch, we got out to the Residenz.  It's not quite a palace... but it's much more than just a fancy house too.  This was Elizabeth's pick for a stop, and I was really happy we chose to go here. Not only was it right in the middle of everything we saw, but it was really really gorgeous.  Munich also has a palace, but we didn't get to see it.  I'm really happy with this one though.  I took many many pictures.  Here are just a few:

^Elizabeth was really amazed... and always in front of the camera. :) ^

They even had relic room full of shriveled body parts in fancy boxes... creepy!!!

Not to mention lots of gold fancy things in general.

I could show you pictures forever! Anyhow, we ran into the Munich Orchestra having an outdoor concert that we listened in on while we grabbed a coffee at a nearby shop.  We ran over to the Alte Pinakothek, which is an art museum.  I really loved it.  I could have spent hours and hours there, and I usually don't really spend more than minute in front of a picture at most.  They had the famous Albrecht Durer self-portrait. (Durer is a famous German painter).  I highly suggest the art museums in Munich, they all looked very promising and I really enjoyed the Alte.

Supper was some schnitzel, a bretzl (pretzel), and a bread dumpling in gravy but the gravy was really more like a broth.  It was delicious! Es schmekt ausgezeichnet!

Overall, it was a good day to stay inside.  Our walk back was very unpleasant because of still heavy rain, and after supper the winds picked up really bad.  Sunday we spent at Dachau's Concentration Camp.  I'm going to break it up and make that the next entry, as of course, there is much to say.