Besuchen: To Visit

I left off at the very beginning of May, so that's where I'll start! The beginning of my visitors -- visitings!

The day after getting back from Rome, I became too-legit-to-quit Berlin and received my visa (there's no sending me home now! not till August anyway).

I also had my first visitors -- Killian and Joey from Notre Dame stopped in Berlin for a couple days and stayed with me. We went to see the house where the Final Solution was planned (Killian just finished writing a history paper about it). It's right by my house, which is super strange. It was also interesting because the house and the area surrounding are beautiful, so it's weird to think of what actually happened in the house, and how many deaths were caused because of it. I sent them on a tour when I went to class, and then we walked along the East Side Gallery (part of the Berlin Wall that was put back up and has murals painted on it in commemoration) before showing them some Berlin nightlife -- well, Tuesday Night-life.

The next morning I headed out very early to Dresden for a trip with my exchange program. Dresden was heavily, heavily bombed, and the town has rebuilt many of it's buildings exactly as they were before. While there, we took a city tour, saw a handful of art museums, and went to a modern rendition of Romeo and Juliet (I just found out the kids I babysit are in love with Gnomeo and Juliet, so I might have to watch it and see how they compare). It was fun being able to hang out with some of the other people in my program, because we don't see each other nearly as much now that our language course is over.

I headed back home and a few days later, my friend Madeline came and stayed with me! It was her last few days in Berlin and Germany, and it was so much fun to see her before she left. There was no need to go see all of the Berlin sights, so we just enjoyed the shopping, the surroundings, and the food! I'm so sad that we can't hang out these next few months : (

Maureen, me, Madeline:

After a few more days in Berlin, Chris, Maureen, Maria, Leah and I headed to Weimar. We used a discounted train ticket, so it was only 8 euros each way. Weimar is the birthplace of Schiller and Goethe, and it just so happened that the night we were there, they had a special event going on and for 5 euros you received admission to most of the museums in Weimar, so we were able to see quite a few things.

Our Hostel:

The most important things in Weimar:

Our second day there we went to Buchenwald, a concentration camp. At first I wasn't excited about going -- I've been to a concentration camp before, and though they're very important to see, they're not exactly fun to see. It was extremely interesting, though, because the camp was turned into a Soviet camp to house former Nazis directly after the war. Apparently no one learned from anyone else's mistakes. Not only that, the perpetrators became the victims, and so museum curators and historians have a hard time deciding the appropriate way to handle the situation.

Liebe,

Emma