Second day in Munich

Grüße von Anna! Today we visited Dachau and the Deutsches Museum. Our tour guide at Dachau had actually interned in kirkwood (in saint louis). Dachau was a new experience for us to see a camp from the perspective of the prisoners. There were two barracks left which had been originally intended for fifty and in the last years had housed four hundred. We also saw the crematorium and gas house, although it was never used (for unknown reasons). Dachau was the first concentration camp and became the model for the many camps to follow. It was also considered a moderate camp. There was also very moving artwork that had been made buy one of the surviving prisoners in 1968. It was a large sculpture that from far off appeared to be barbed wire, but was barbed wire strewn with skeletal figures. With the image was written the two powerful and hopeful words for the future, (in five languages) "Never Again".

Grüße von Carly! After Dachau, we went to a Turkish restaurant for a quick bite to eat. A lot of us had Döner Kebab. They were like gyros and utterly scrumptious. With full bellies, we took the S-Bahn to the Deutsches Museum. It was so big and so full of engineering information. We saw a cross section of a Lufthansa commercial plane, a schooner made in the seventeenth century, and walked into an extremely large cell. Then we walked into the gift shop and bought many souvenirs!

Und nun die Sophia: Yeah--the Deutsches Museum was amazing and I learned the German word for the big bang (der Urknall), but the best part was when Carly and I got into an elevator with two young German boys (like 10 years old). When they got out, then they told us "Auf Wiedersehen" with an exaggerated American accent, and Carly and I died laughing. It was hilarious, but you probably had to be there... Anyway, then we took the S-Bahn to the "Alter Peter", a really old church (well, every church here is really old...) but it had an ENORMOUS tower, and we climbed the 291 (??more??) steps to the top, and then looked out over the entire city. It was gorgeous! We walked around the city with Frau Russell's local friends, Yaminah and Sebastian, who were awesome and they showed us more intricately decorated churches and the university were Sophie Scholl (a student who passed out anti-Nazi pamphlets, and was murdered because of it) studied. Yaminah and Sebastian told us everything about everything that we saw. Then we ate in the Cafe München, and came home to the dear old hostel (which is quite nice) and went to bed.
Also-a shout out to Will Bramlett's mother-- he has yet to zip his coat, and yesterday, he wore sandals. (and there is snow on the ground)