Deutschland

It was rainy on Thursday the 23rd, so Kelly thought we could take a drive to see some places. She took me to the concentration camp that was in Hamburg, on the outskirts of the city. Neuengamme was more of a work camp at the time, no gas chambers, although there was obviously still a significant amount of death due to disease and poor living conditions. After the war, evidence of most concentration camps were destroyed, so most of the buildings at Neuengamme no longer stand. The way they depict how everything looked, is by laying out rocks in different colors to depict landmarks. Informational boards stand next to each "building." The pictures aren't really entertaining because it's literally pictures of rocks, but here's the best I can show y'all.


An air-raid building was still standing, I'm assuming because of the strength that it would have needed to be built. It's kind of cool, you can still see the simulated windows.



Here are some of the memorial buildings/statues at the camp:






Then we went Ohlsdorf cemetary (Kelly, you'll have to correct me when I'm wrong... German words are hard to spell, let alone remember how to say). which is the largest cemetery in the world! Seriously, I have never seen a prettier cemetery and I regret to say, I did not take pictures. I encourage you to google image it because it's that cool. I'm not sure if pictures, again, will do it justice. We went back to her house where I crashed, again. :P

On Friday, the 24th, I got up and went into the city again by myself. I wore shorts and a long sleeve shirt because A. My only pair of jeans that I had packed, were dirty. But B. It was sunny out, but still a tad chilly. I brought a jacket, but I no longer walked around for 20 minutes and decided to go back and grab my jeans. I came back into the city again (about a 30 minute train ride), so I had already wasted a bit of time. I found the art museum I had been looking for (wasn't that hard to find) and I went inside. There was no front desk, so I assumed there was no admission cost and I started wandering around. A policeman came after me saying things in German and I was just like, "ehhh, English!?" and luckily he knew English and explained that I needed to purchase a ticket. The museum was good, however, all of the captions/information was strictly in German, so I wasn't able to read, naturally. The time was already getting late so I had to head back because Kelly asked if I could watch the munchkins while she and Matt went to dinner. It's the least I could do! :] Plus, they're cuties.

On Saturday, the 25th, Kelly totallyyyy went out of her way to take me around Hamburg all day. Matt had the day off, so the kids stayed home with him. We were considering going to Lubeck or Luneberg, but issues with the train left us in Hamburg again. She took me down to an area (again, unsure of the very German names of places) where we got on a ferry that took us all around the alster. We got off in a neighborhood where we began to walk around the city again:

((anchors for my seestersss)) +--)


The apartments above these shops ^^ were used to house seaman's widows.


Just a cute little area we were walking through...


Above is a view of St. Nikolai's church from a distance. Next, we walked to both St. Micael's church and again to St. Nikolai's. Here is St. Nikolai's, which I mentioned before, survived the bombings of Hamburg during WWII.




This time, we were able to go to the top of St. Nikolai's and see a lot of the city from an aerial perspective. Here is the Rathaus from the view from the top of the church:


Here is the "spice district." As images I have posted before show, Hamburg is built on just as much water as Venice and Amsterdam. Note the warehouses built on the bay:



After the churches, we went to Planten un Blomen, the botanical gardens in downtown Hamburg. SO PRETTY! Check the gigantic cement lillypads. :D






We then had a nice lunch at a restaurant where I enjoyed a traditional German meal, schweineschnitzel! After a late lunch, we walked around again and up through the Reeperbahn. We headed back to her house where I packed the rest of my belongings and headed back into the city again to catch the train to Vienna. Reagan, a high school classmate of mine, has been studying in Vienna all semester and we happened to facebook each other and she invited me down. Why not, when my lodging is taken care of, right!? After a 12 hour train ride, I arrived in Vienna, where Reagan met me at the train station.

Vienna Post Soon! Off to ROMAAA tomorrow!!

Xoxo
Paige