Wow, I have totally put off posting pictures from my Europe trip!
I became SO busy in the summer, and fall……..and winter!
It has been 8 months since I’ve been back from the trip……..
finally found some time to get caught up on things. 😉
In Germany, the main places we visited were Wernau, Stuttgart, Munich, and Dachau.
An interesting thing I learned in Munich was that they have their bike lanes on the sidewalk!
I suppose that is a good idea to keep bikes off the roads, especially considering how narrow
the streets are there. But then the pedestrians and bicyclists need to really watch out for each other!
(Which I did kinda learn the hard way……jumped out of the way at the last minute, oops!)
We walked around towns for hours, ate yummy food, drank German beer, got sunburned
accidentally, drove on the crazy autobahn, stayed with a German man we found on airbnb.com,
went hiking, saw the Neuschwanstein castle, my sister chased me with a snail, went on a
mountain luge course, and toured a concentration camp.
Here are some of my favorites from Germany………….
During our time in Germany, we visited the concentration camp in Dachau.
We arrived just in time to take the tour with an English speaking tour guide, which only happens once
per day. I am so glad we got to do the tour rather than just wander around because our tour guide was very
passionate about sharing the message about what happened and was also very knowledgeable and knew
many facts about what occurred at Dachau. It was an un-be-liev-able experience. Even though I was there,
walking around in the exact same spot where completely horrific events took place for so many years,
it was still so hard to imagine. I will share some of the most poignant stories our tour guide shared with us…..
Each barrack was built with 250 beds, but was always filled with 1 to 2 thousand people, so there were
approximately 4 to 8 people per bed. They would have to take turns on who got to sleep on top of the pile,
because it was unacceptable for anyone to touch the floor at night. Every morning they would have to carry
the dead people out, who had suffocated during the night, and put them where they were supposed to go in
their roll call lines.
The pockets on the striped uniforms were more of a tease – they were never allowed to put their hands in them,
even on days where they would do roll call in the middle of winter, they would be standing in the snow with
bare feet and exposed hands. If anyone was caught with their hands in their pockets, they would have to
start roll call all over again. Sometimes they would be standing out there all day because they would have
to keep starting over. People would die standing there.
SS men never went into the barracks because conditions were so bad. They would make people be in
charge and lead the others in their barrack by threatening them.
Many prisoners spent several days in standing cells……stone chimney-like chambers measuring
approximately 30×30 inches. All they could do was stand there for days, maybe receive a piece of
bread every couple of days.
SS men would give prisoners a knife and a rope and tell them they must kill themselves.
So they would have to go through the night deciding if they wanted to try and end their life,
or beg someone to do it for them, or go onto the next day to live through more terror and
torture. The knife they were given was too dull, and the rope was not long enough to tie.
Dachau had over 200,000 prisoners and approximately 35,000 people were killed there.
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