Okay,
So here is a really long journal! Sorry for lack of updates...internet was expensive in Switzerland and closed yesterday due to holiday in Luxembourg!!!
After my last entry we woke up the next day and headed to Dachau concentration camp.
I cant even begin to explain the horrible things that I saw here. When you enter the building it takes you down the path that all of the prisoners used to walk. We had an audio guide and it led us first to the cremetorium. This was not an easy place to be at. The building was built like an assembly line...a room for prisoners to take off their clothes a waitring room, a cleansing room, the gas chamber and the cremetorium followed by a room that stored bodies when there were too many to cremate. Then we followd the path with memorials and burials of unknopwn victims...along the shooting range and to the Jewish memorial, which made me tear up. The bunkers were designed to hold 6000 people but by the time the Americans liberated the camp in 1945 there were over 30,000 people crammed nto the poor living conditions. Of the 200,000 people that were kept at Dachau during the war 30,000 died. The aie of the place is very eerie and we left after seeing the prison. There is only so much you can hear about a horrible place such as a concentration camp before you cant take it anymore. The way they forced the ^prisoners to stay, did medical experiments on them, how the residents of the town had no idea what was going on there, and howq those that were hanged were hanged in front of the cremation ovens.
This was a terrible and good experience all in one. The inhumanity is so disturbing but what you learn about the human condition is valuable.
When we finished at the camp we hopped on the train to Zurich; Switzerland, where it took us 2 hours to finally find a hostel. Then we headed back downtown for dinner and missed the last bus back and had to take a cab...The next day we got up and headed to the Lindt choclate factory which ended up being closed for renovations but that was okay because we still went to the store and spent a lot of money on choclate for people back home!
After the choclate factory we got on a train to Luzern where we bought tikcets for a cable car all the way up Mt Pilateus!!! This was so neat! Morgan is a little scaref of heights but managed to maek it to the top where we walked through caves and read alllll about the legend of a dragon in the mountain! When we got back down we got on a train to go to Speiz where we had reservations in a bed and breakfast when all the trains in Switzerland lost electrical power!!! We sat for an hour waiting for it to be fixed but then the train operator saidf there would be a bus. So we waited and it turns out teh bus was a regular city bus liek the ttc! We sat on it for nearly two hours with so many people crammed on there. Then it let us off in az re,ote town and we switched to a regular coach bus that took us to Interlaken where we had a cab pre paid for us by the train company that took us to opur bed and breakfast for midnight! It was worth it cause the bed and breakfast was beautiful and recommended by a friend sio we got a cheap rate. The next day we hopped on a train to Luxembourg only to find that yesterday was Luxembourgs National Holoday and almost everything was closed...but we still walked around teh squares and saw the palace so that was nice. Today we head to Amsterdam!!!
Jenn
|
