Germany!

It is Wednesday here!! I haven't been  able to blog because of the bad internet connections in our Hostels. Speaking of Hostels, all three of them that we have stayed in so far have been better than our hotel in Paris. Waaay less sketchy and I've had more fun hanging out with all the girls at once! We got to Germany by a long train ride on Sunday. It was a very long day of traveling but we finally got to our Hotel in a very cute town called Mainz. A pretty small town so it was less walking to get to good food. And I actually go to sit back and relax that day for hours. We left super early that morning so we got to Mainz hours before anyone else.

Germany looks a lot like Munster (for you Noconians). There are pastures leading into towns that look just like our except more green and the tractors are smaller. More of a variety of trees, of course. The towns also look like muster so they have definitely done a great job with that. The distinct dark brown lines that are on the buildings are what  make German buildings look German.

I didn't actually take any pictures of Mainz, but all the towns are similar so far. (so you'll get a good look soon)

Monday we traveled (by train) to Weimar and found our hostel first.
A great little place squeezed back in between several buildings. Very cute. We had a room of eight girls and one of seven. The boys had there own room of three. If you don't know how a hostel works, it's not like the movie. They were designed for travelers so they don't have to spend as much money on the road. They have a reputation of being dangerous and dirty, but I haven't experienced those two at all. You share a room either with your group, stranger, or even a single room. The walls were decorated strangely but I loved it.

Very cool. Wish we could have stayed there longer. The town was cool too. It was also small and cute. The first thing we did was stop by the Bauhaus Museum. The Bauhaus is a school of design and the school was originally started there in Weimar. I learned about this school of design in my Publication design class this past semester so it was cool to see something in "real life" that I learn about in class. Very famous in our department.

 Julie and I at the Museum. We were in Pub Design together last semester so we needed a picture together so we could tag our Professor on FB.

The museum was cool, but German movies with English subtitles aren't my favorite.

The rest of the night was ours so we ate and looked around and slept. We have all been so tired lately from taking train after train. It seems like it's been so long since we left Paris, but its only been a couple of days. Tuesday we went to the concentration camp just outside of Weimar. Buchenwald concentration camp was a very big place. It is one of the larger camps during the Nazi reign. Although it was more of a holding camp and less of a death camp compared to camps like Auswich, in Poland. A holding camp more or less means they worked, starved, or beat to prisoners to death rather that complete torture. We had a great tour guide that had never had an English speaking group before, but he did a splendid job speaking English to us. Lots of researcher go there to conduct studies over the camp and they live there for months in the old SS barracks. In return for there food and board they are tour guides for the groups that come through.

Only about 10% of the original buildings have made it through all of the aftermath of the war. The SS (Nazi Soldiers) barracks were still there mostly. It was very weird to see the barracks because they looked so new. I mean I'm sure they have been repainted and such but it was odd to see how well together they were. Mostly because I feel like this war happened so long ago but the buildings quickly put that into reality. It didn't.

I won't put too many pictures of the pictures they have posted on their walls or on buildings such as the crematorium, but they will be on FB when I get home if you want to take a look.
This is a map of the entire camp. This red buildings are the existing buildings and the grey have been destroyed. 

 Fence surrounding the prisoners part of the camp.

 Entrance to the prisoners camp.

 Memorial spot. People from all over the world come to lay flowers or any kind of remembrance on lots of places around the camp.

 KLB is the German term for the Buchenwald camp. He asked us to place our hands on the memorial to feel the warmth of it. He decribed how it was warmed by the sun every day to remind us of the warmth of the bodies that were lost in this place.

We traveled to Leipzig after that...where we are now. Today we had class with an actual German Lawyer. She was very informative. We also went to the Museum of Printed Arts....very cool also, but I'm about to run out of battery. I'll give away more information when I get internet again!