Extras

 Just a few extra pictures. Our hotel in the Alps had a balcony with an awesome view.

 I dont know why this is sideways. But a few days ago I got an apfelstreudel with icecream. It was so good, but I thought it was wierd that they included kiwi and pineapple. Btw...I would looove a good hamburger and fries. Eric, when I get back Lucy's is high on the to-do list!

I bought a beer stein for Emery in the alps, he seems to like it. Just now a crazy German was assisting on buying me a drink and showing me Berlin....haha crazy!

Weekend with the Wagners

 This weekend I spent with the Wagners. They live in Glan-Munchweiler, near the airforce base Ramstein. We used to go to church together in Abilene, where they became dear friends of our family. Marilyn stayed at our house many times while Jeremy was deployed, and Jenny and I stayed with her several times as well. She only had Elijah then who is now 4! Now there is also Luke (3) and Jonah (9 months....I think). This is sweet Jonah on the left! He is wearing the tractor outfit that mom bought him...so cute! I arrived Thursday around 7:30. I got some big hugs from Elijah and Luke...we played together outside for a while. They are so funny!

 The next day we went to a city fest in a nearby town. It was so fun and relaxed. There are delicious food vendors everywhere and music and other booths. Basically like a fair I guess.

 Elijah is so sweet and talks so grownup.

 Me and the Wagner boys!

 Funny and cute.

 They live so close to France that we had to drive through so I could say I've been. So....I've been to France now!

 The Wagner house.

 Luke gave me a flower! :)

 Jeremy is growing and takes great pride in his garden, especially this giant pumpkin. It was one of the first things the boys wanted to show me, haha. Their goal is 500 lbs.

 I am so jealous of their garden. It has tomatoes, pumpkin, corn, potatoes, gourds, ginger, and more that I cant remember. In the back yard they have raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, grapes, johannnesberries, and many herbs. Jeremy said it's hard to fail at gardening there because of all the rain. I miss having a summer garden....it's just too dry for us right now. :(

 Jeremy is even growing hops! He wants to make his own brew at some point.

 It is growing up their drain pipe.

Friday night their neighbor came over who is my age. We all talked for a long time that  night and found out we had a lot in common. Her family is very conservative. We made plans to go to a yard sale the next morning because it was American and she really wanted to go. It didnt have much so she just took me to places around town which was so fun. First a grocery store. She showed me what chocolates were good, and so I bought a lot on her recommendation. I tried some and it is probably the best chocolate I've ever had. mmmmmmm.

She told me her uncles owns the company that makes this juice.

 She showed me the Catholic church in town.

 And the Protestant church that she goes to.

 In the back yard of her church was some really old stuff that had been dug up years ago. This is a coffin.

 And these are stones from pagan monuments. The one on the right is Hercules. Glan-Munchweiler is a really old town from like 700 AD. She said Glan means river, and munch meant that monks lived their and weiler meant that there was a lake near. I showed her my last name and asked how she would say it, and she said it like we do. She said that Duden is a book of German words, and that sing is sing haha. I dont know what that put together is supposed to mean for us but she said her grandma does name history and origins of families. I will have to ask if she could get her grandma to do ours!

 We also went to this monument for villagers who had died in WW bombings.

 Part of the monument.

 Look how pretty these graves are! She says people put a lot of work into families graves.

 Luisa is a member of the county volunteer fire department. Apparently a lot of young people do it just because they want to help. She has weekly trainings and is always on call if she is in the area. People spend every  Saturday there and get nothing back from it, it's amazing. She showed me around. They actually have pretty high-tech equipment and are very trained.

 So funny. These were hanging all over the inside of the girls bathroom. None are even that "sexy" haha!

 Inside their garage.

 She let me wear her gear, lol.

 In a huge German firetruck!

Control central. So after she showed me around I went back to the Wagners. Luisa and I really got along well though and are going to stay in touch. I have a German friend! She as a flat on the Rhine, which is awesome. She kept telling me all these cool things we could do if I could stay longer. I'm going to have to come back for sure! When I told her we were farmers and from such a small town she asked if we had electricity and running water, and if we stored our milk in metal containers...haha! So when I left she said I make her want to visit Texas to the "edge of civilization." lol. She had already been to San Antonio....she has done a lot of traveling. So anyway after that I spent the rest of the day visiting with Marilyn and Jeremy which was nice. I had to be on the train by 1:45 unfortunately. This might have been the best weekends so far. It was just like visiting family....idk it's close. Mom and Dad, you WILL go to Germany. Soon.

A week full of history

So this blog post isn't going to have any pictures; there just hasn't been things I felt I should take pictures of. First I will talk about my day Monday...

Monday the main event was visiting the Stasi Museum in town. For those of you who don't know what the Stasi was, it was the secret police of the GDR (the German soviet national party). Because most of the population wasn't exactly in favor of the government, they felt it was necessary to monitor people's...opinions I guess you could say. I thought it was funny the measures they went to to know what people were doing, and thinking. It was illegal to speak ill of the government. There were the Stasi, who were paid by the government to monitor people, but also unofficial informants. These people had other jobs, but would report things they heard to the Stasi. Because of this, there was a real sense of distrust among the population, because you never knew who was watching or who was listening. They read people's mail, bugged people's houses, listened in on telephone conversations, and had informants everywhere. It is unbelievable, the lack of free speech that there was. In the schools children were shown posters of propaganda in order to start forming their ideology early on. One poster we saw said: Imperialism, the enemy of the nation. There were images on this of westerners as skeletons grabbing for money. The military would work with the school's directors to find good candidates for the military. Then the Stasi would negotiate with the military to find the best candidates to work for them. The Stasi workers were also required to report all romances, and they were not allowed to marry a girl from a Christian home. We were shown a room with disguises that the Stasi would use to meet with their informants, so that the informants would not be caught with a Stasi...thereby giving away their identity as informer. There were suitcases with different disguise packages. One was for Arab, one for construction worker. It was really pretty funny. I just couldn't believe their paranoia. When they knew that the GDR was coming to an end, they started shredding files. We saw huge blocks of shredded paper, but only 1/4 of the total files were destroyed. Today Germans can go in and see if they were under surveillance, and read their files. How strange that would be! And to know that your neighbor had been reporting things about you. So anyway that was Monday....

Tuesday was a long and very interesting day. We visited Weimar, but mostly Buchenwald. Buchenwald is concentration camp. It was a work camp, not a death camp like Auschwitz. Even so there were some definite disturbing sites. That camp had about 50,000 prisoners....just unbelievable. Although this was not a death camp with gas chambers...their aim was definitely to work these people to death. Something that struck me was the amount of psychological abuse to the prisoners. For example, in the area that they were for the majority of the day they could see the gate which read "you get what you deserve". This is ironic because they didn't do anything to deserve what they were getting at all. There was also a zoo right on the other side of the gate that was very visible to them. This was for the Buchenwald directors to take their families. The reason for this was so that the prisoners could see and feel resentment and jealousy because they know they can not do this sort of thing with their families. They could also see anywhere they looked, the huge fence. If they got very close to the fence they were shot down without warning. Plus if they did escape they were so overworked they wouldn't have the energy to get very far. There were also bloodhounds that would hunt them down and tear them to pieces. Also they were divided into groups....Jew, homosexual, political criminal, etc. The workers had permission to beat the jews and homosexuals whenever they liked. The German criminals had better treatment. What is interesting is that the Buchenwald officials actually believed that the prisoners deserved what they were getting, and that they were really less than human, so that was their justification. Also, when the war was over the German population acted like they were not aware of what was going on at Buchenwald, but our tour guide said there is evidence that they did know more than they said. For example, the ovens for the crematory were provided by two German brothers who contracted with the the camps. They didn't need to make these ovens for their income, as ovens were only 2% of what they did. Also, the camps had a lot of things provided to them from the inside as well as exported...so people knew where these things were coming from and going to. So basically everyone had the ideology, or just turned their head the other way out of fear. At the end the craziest thing we saw was a basement where prisoners were led...believing they were getting a medical examination. One by one they went to the office where their mouth was checked (to see if they had any gold teeth that needed removal), then to another room where they stood against the wall and were measured. Behind them there was a hole in the wall where a man would shoot them in the neck. They did this so that the people were unsuspecting, and would not struggle. Just unbelievable how structured this machine of killing was. The living conditions were just terrible. And there was one barrack that was really bad. A priest was here and every day he would scream about how terrible the officers and the whole structure was. All the prisoners in the camp could hear him. Before long the officers would come in and beat him, but he would scream every day anyway. When he died his wife came to look at the body, and the officers said he was a great man and it was sad that he had to die of cardiac arrest. I don't understand the need for patronizing. They just knew what they were doing was wrong. There is so much I could say about this experience. Last night we had a conversation about it which lasted for about an hour. Just the injustice that man is capable of is unreal. My professor said it is a look at the true nature of man....now what a bone-chilling and humbling statement.


On a brighter note....today was a fun day. I went to the beach...which was really just a lake but it had a sandy beach. I actually saw a lot of topless ladies...so that was interesting! And really just awkward. The water was really cool though, plus you could see all the way to the bottom when standing chest-deep. Then tonight all the girls went to eat with a German woman who is a friend of ACU. Somehow we started talking about farming. She was really interested in that because her grandparents were farmers. Also we started talking about politics....now that was interesting for sure. She said Germans like Obama because he is more social (socialist). They didn't like Bush because he was all for himself (supporting businesses). She said though that their chancellor liked Bush but doesn't get along well with Obama. Strange that their chancellor doesn't like Obama but the German population really does. She had very liberal ideas, but it was interesting to listen to. She was interested in our opinions too and was very respectful. Tomorrow I leave for Marilyn and Jeremy's at 1:00. I'm so excited!! We might go to a medieval festival in France Friday...we'll see!

Neuschwanstein on Saturday!

 This morning we woke up and traveled about an hour to Neuschwanstein Castle, built in 1869, home of Ludwig the II, Bavarian king. The king only lived there a few months before he died, and actually the castle is not finished to this day. We toured the inside, but unfortunately no pictures were allowed. It was amazing....just like a fairy tale. It reminded me of Beauty and the Beast. We saw the servants quarters, the throne room, the opera room, the kings bed chambers, dining room, and some other rooms. I kept thinking how awesome it would be to live there, and look out the window and know that you rule all of what you see. Inside the castle is was so detailed and ornate. I can't even describe how awesome it was. At one point the thought crossed my mind that as beautiful and unbelievable as that castle was, heaven will be even better!! Men created that castle...imagine what God has for us! Anyway, because the castle was built in the late 1800s it was pretty modern. It had running water in the sinks, and a flushing toilet, as well a working telephone. The throne room was so beautiful, with a huge painting depicting Jesus as King of Kings right above the throne. I also thought it was cool that the bed chambers had pictures of the Tristan and Isolde story. My sisters will appreciate that. So anyway, really really cool castle. I got a postcard...haha. It was quite a hike up though!

It rained all morning, so we were all pretty soaked. Again, I didn't mind because it is all so awesome!

There was a castle on the opposite hill called Hohenschwangau I think. We opted not to go inside of it, but it was a cool view for sure. 

 The view as we hike up to the castle.

 And the view once we got up there!

 At the foot of the castle. There was a little gift shop right there. This is where I got Emery's beer stein.

1. 

 While we were waiting in the rain for our tour to start. How many people can fit under one umbrella?

 After we toured the castle, we walked through to the other side where we could hike over to this bridge that passed over a waterfall. This picture was halfway up the hike to that.

 The waterfall! It was such a high way up.

 The view of the castle from the bridge.

 It reminds me of the castles on the Disney movies...mostly the one on Snow White.

 After we passed the bridge, a few of us kept going and hiked on some less-traveled trails that went even higher! It was me and four guys. I'm so glad I followed them, because although scary, it was probably one of my favorite things I have done so far. Such a rush!

 And what an amazing view from up there! These pictures, while still awesome, won't even do justice what I saw.

 I needed to sit down for a sec. When I was standing I felt like I could fall over the side at any second, haha. Plus I could just take it all in.

 OH MY GOSH!! This is the coolest thing in the world. Like a foot behind where I'm standing it just went straight down.

 I was pretty proud I climbed up there....I have never done anything like that before.

 You can see how it just drops off. Plus it was wet and kinda slippery. I had already taken a bit of a fall the day before..

 So...obviously this is how I was feeling.

 But look at that view! haha.

 Wow. Like a postcard....but I was there....looking at this!!

 It is so awesome that I look photo-shopped into this.

 My shoes are so gross now...and just soaked. I'll have to buy some news ones for sure before school starts back.

 This was on the bus ride back. Still so pretty and the clouds cleared away a bit...Sun came out some.

 We passed by this sweet lake at the foot of the mountains. I think this is the one that I took a picture of from up high.

So that's all for the weekend. I can say this was the coolest thing ever!! I'm definitely more into nature and God's creation than monuments and ancient ruins, that's for sure. For future reference for vacations, I want to do stuff more like this. Everyone here agrees. A bit of a story: so we hiked way up there just of us. Well after we got down we were saying how awesome it was. A guy and a girl decided they were gonna go do that and said they'd be back in an hour. So we waited for them and shopped around town for a while. Well we waited about 2 hours and they still weren't back. Although we were a bit worried we thought they'd find it back so we took our bus back to our hotel. After we were back an hour we started to get worried. We said if they don't make it back by tonight we would tell Winegeart and possibly have to send out a search team! We thought for sure that one of them was hurt. Well as we were all sitting in the lobby about the possible bad things that could've happened, they pulled up on their bikes. Apparently they got lost and went 2 miles out of the way. At one point they apparently were screaming for help! Crazy crazy. Although that description may not sound like much of a big deal, it certainly was for us for about 3 or 4 hours today. So its definitely been an adventure. As a group we have eaten a snail, crashed a bike, gotten lost in the Alps, and much more. I'm about half-way through the trip now. This week will be busy I think...and the last one in Leipzig before we go to Berlin and then Oxford. Next weekend I'll be visiting Marilyn and Jeremy. Very excited about that! Tomorrow (Sunday) I travel back to Leipzig. I think our train is from 11-8:30....wow. Bedtime now....already excited for a German breakfast!!