Dresden!!!!

Dresden is definitely the most beautiful city I have been to in Germany. I absolutely love it! With all the talk I've heard of East Germany not being very pretty because of all the destruction, I expected to see nothing but crappy buildings. Boy, was I wrong! Even though there are some ugly soviet stacked housing buildings, the city has rebuilt tons of buildings that were destroyed during the war and put memorials all over the town. Everywhere you go there is something cool to see! And... there is a HUGE mall!

Today, we went on a four hour tour of Dresden. Good thing I had my Cola Light!

 Just absolutely beautiful!

 

There were statues EVERYWHERE! 

 The Elbe River

 Memorial from WWII

 How could you not love this city?

 One of the memorials from WWII

I can't reiterate enough how much I loved Dresden! I wish I had more pictures of everything, but alas, I suck at taking pictures. Maybe I will be better in Berlin? Maybe...
This was our welcoming wagon (quite literally) once we entered Berlin today. I have a feeling this is going to be an interesting next couple of days...

We just got to our hotel in Berlin, and we are going to celebrate my 21st tonight! It's a wii bit early, but who cares? Birthdays should last for a week right? Wish me luck!

Tschüss!

Buchenwald Concentration Camp

**** NOTE: If you don't want to get don't depressed skip this post!!!!

Today we dwelled into probably the darkest part of German history: concentration camps, more specifically we went to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Although its history isn't as horindeous as Auschwitz or Belzec, Buchenwald was one of the first and largest camps on Germany's own soil. It is believed that almost 250,000 people from all over the world were prisoners there. Although the camp was mainly used as a labor camp, estimates place the number of murders over 60,000.

 This literally means "to each his own," but comes across as "everyone gets what he deserves." In other words, the prisoners deserve to be in the concentration camp.

 the prison rooms when you first walk into the camp, prisoners were to be killed shortly after being in these rooms

 The ovens

 The hanging room

The elevator to move the bodies

One cool aspect of this camp, is that it was the first camp liberated by the US 89th Infantry Division (USA! USA!).

So, overall pretty depressing.. no, upsetting day. It is a place that makes you reflect on the power of evil. This was probably the strongest moment in my life where I felt just absolutely blessed for everything and all the opportunity I have.

But on a brighter note, we just arrived at our hostel in Dresden, so we are going to go explore!

Tschüss!