After we left Schweinfurt on Sunday afternoon, our first stop was at Dachau. Dachau concentration camp was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany. It is hard to put in to words the feeling that you have once you step foot there. I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC twice (and was in DC visiting other sites the year the shooting occurred at the museum). But being at the actual site of where so much history and destruction occurred is so very different.
To get a little more history on this place, better than what I can tell you, check out the website.
The entire site is now a memorial. There have been only a few changes to what it looked like originally.
This building now houses the museum area, where there is so much reading you can do. Honestly, you could spend hours in there if you read everything. But, we did not do that. Due to almost closing time, we walked through the museum part at the end.
One of the guard towers on the property.
Around the border of the property, this is what you will see.
A big trench.....
before you get to a barbed wire/electrical fence.
These two buildings were showing the 'living quarters', not the much living really occurred.
Down this lane, there use to be 30 addition buildings like the ones in front. For some reason, they have all been removed. {I'm sure it is written somewhere why they are no longer there, but I haven't read it yet.}
This rose was in the 'shower room'. The 'shower room' is actually where the people were gassed. Walking through here was unexplainable.
This piece of art is to mimic the prisioners {how skinny they got}, as well as barbed wire.
As we were leaving the memorial, Gina told me to take a picture of this gate.
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
which means,
Before we left Dachau, we stopped by the bookstore, and both Dad and Gina got a book about the camp. This way, we can read more about it on our own.
After leaving, we made our way to Austria, where we spent the night. We had a fun time finding our hotel, but eventually go there!
Then we went back in to Germany to a different town for supper.
Some pictures of the town. I have no idea what the name of it is. {Any idea Gina?}
The hotels in Europe are not like what you will find in the states. As you can see, there are no flat sheets, blankets, or beadspreads to cover up with. I actually like that a LOT! There are sheets that cover the mattresses, and a down comforter in a removable cover.
This worked out very nicely! Gina and I shared rooms every night. She's usually cold, I'm usually hot. So having our own comforter was lovely. {I actually had my own quilt along with me, so often layed the comforter on the bed for extra padding, and used my quilt to cover up.}
Talk about 'old school' for the room keys. There's no losing these things. The 'weight' on the end of this key sure can make a pocket heavy.
That concludes day 4. There was lots of driving, lots of winding roads, lots of listening to Delilah {Gina's Europe-friendly GPS}.
1 comment:
The town we ate in was Fussion, Deutschland. But I couldn't tell you the town we stayed in in Austria. I don't remember.... plus it wasn't really a town, it was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the mountains!!
Good writing sister! I'll be waiting to read about the next several days!!
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