Kyle & Chuck Go To Europe

Just like yesterday, we woke up at 8:30. Today we had a significantly smaller breakfast consisting of Nutella on some buttermilk biscuits and the last of our Crusti Croc chips. I must mention that Crusti Crocs are the off-brand CrunChips with which we became familiar in France!

A little about last night first! One of our roommates was escorted by security back to our room. I can only hazard a guess that he was drinking by himself at the bar downstairs and got kicked out. When he came in he mumbled a lot, something about him being Korean and our other roommates Taiwanese, and other random garble-gook. I was surprised he could even speak English while that wasted. Whenever he laid down on the bed he would moan a lot, which got to be really annoying. Every two minutes he would then get up, fumble around with something (and managing to knock a lot of stuff around). He’d lost his room key, so whenever he left the room we had to let him back in. He eventually passed out after a lot more moaning and stumbling around.

Then in the middle of the night, he woke us up with his violent vomiting. Luckily there was a sink in the room or else it could have been quite awful. He did this 3 or 4 times. Really gross. He was either a total light weight, or stupid, or (my guess) both. This morning he woke up, apparently still quite drunk. He fumbled around some more, moaned a lot more (so annoying), and even offered to buy my apple juice off me. I should have taken the money, and could have probably gotten 5 Euro out of him for it but I really wanted the juice and didn’t quite feel like messing with a drunk guy. So yeah, that was the worst experience we’ve had with roommates. I guess it could have been a lot worse. Still, the moaning and vomiting were pretty gross. Now, on to the rest of the day!

We again met downstairs with a tour guide, this time to do the Dachau concentration camp tour. As I heard someone say, we were very fortunate to have the choice to go. It was 15 euro, which included the tour and all transportation to and from. It is about 30 minutes train and 10 minutes bus to get to the memorial site.

We had the same guide, Adam, today as we did yesterday, actually. We started off in a visitor center where we checked out the restrooms before the 3 hour long tour began. Once we made sure everyone was accounted for, Adam gave us a rundown of some simple rules and how it would all go.

We began with an overview of the start of the Dachau camp. This was the first concentration camp to open its gates. It began even before Hitler became Fuhrer. We also saw where the first prisoners arrived and the famous “Arbeit macht frei” (”Work will set you free”) gate. We also saw where the camp commandant (who was literally insane, how appropriate) lived. Then we walked to the roll call area. It was a huge, empty, gravel-filled area. On the right were the buildings where they processed new arrivals. Processing included stripping them of all possessions, shaving their heads, and removing all human rights. On the left we saw the remains of the barracks. There were a total of 30 barracks areas but only two buildings are left standing. One we didn’t really mention, but the other was a reconstruction (or so I think).

Along with the barracks we saw torture devices, areas where prisoners were locked up for months at a time (some in complete darkness for 4 solid months), and the work areas. Surprisingly, there were actually hundreds of work, concentration, and death camps all across the Reich. I’ve really only heard of the large ones like Auschwitz, but there were many many smaller ones. And actually the graphic only showed one where 200 registered prisoners were kept. After some time people like Jews and Gypsies were kept in the camps but not recorded officially. Anything could, and likely did, happen to them.

The entire experience was very surreal and somber. Especially when we saw the memorials built by the different faith communities who had members in the camp. After that we saw the crematoriums and gas chambers. It was a nice, sunny day today and very hard to imagine that not so many years ago, on a day very like today, the air would have been filled with the soot of human corpses who had first been processed, worked ragged, gassed in the chambers, and then burnt. The guide did a very good job of presenting facts. Understandably, some personal lean showed, but this is still a very moving, harrowing topic. I find it amazing that our guide does this tour every 2 days.

I am very glad we did the tour with a human guide. There were people there listening to audio guides, but we had our questions answered and got much more in depth than I think any audio device could. I took pictures throughout the tour, and when I have some time, I will upload them so you can see some of what we toured. But you really have to see it yourself to experience it. And then, I only experienced a fraction of what it was really like. This tour really makes me want to research more into concentration camps and WWII in general. History only repeats itself unless we educate ourselves and for something like the Holocaust to repeat itself would be absolutely insane.

Well, after the tour ended we walked toward the bus which would take us to the train station but the bus driver was a douche and wouldn’t let our group on because we were “too large” even though there was plenty of room on the bus. We ended up hoofing it back to the train terminal. We missed the original train we were supposed to take, so we had to take another, slower one. We did make it back though.

We again went to the Lidl to get some food for tomorrow. After that we went to the Augustiner-Braustuberl beer hall for dinner. Chuck got a Maß Bier (full liter of beer) with the meal. The mug was enormous! We both got the Brew master’s special which was a fantastic eclectic meal of great Bavarian dishes! For desert we got some Apfelstrudel (if you can’t guess this, I’m not telling!) which was equally fantastic! I really just wanted to eat another one.

Now we’re checking internet. Turns out the place we stay in Berlin doesn’t have free wifi, or so it looks from the internet descriptions. So we might not have wifi for the next several days. We’re getting ready to head to the train station because we have an overnight train to Berlin. We are doing the super-cheap option of reclining chairs. I don’t even think that Chuck and I get to sit together, which sucks. We’ll see though!

How that I’ve given you an update on what we were up to, I want a report on how you faithful readers are doing! What’s up?! I’ll post again as soon as I have some internet!