¿QUIEN SOY?

Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
Soy de Buffalo. Asisto la Universidad Católica de América en Washington, DC. Estudio la arquitectura. Estudio en Barcelona este semestre.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

ROTTENDORF to ROTHENBURG to DACHAU to MUNICH

I woke up this morning on the air mattress and I had quite the surprise. Tom had turned into a dog and was sticking his nose in my face. Actually, Tom had climbed onto the small couch in the middle of the night (I hope I wasn't kicking him). So Mike's big dog decided to take Tom's place on the mattress. He just plopped down next to me and rubbed his nose in my face and laid on top of me. I guess it was better than waking up to an annoying alarm clock going "BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!" or better than the way Mike woke up Meg by banging a spoon on a pot. That was a little loud, but it got her up. We got ready and said goodbye to Mike.

Our first stop of the day was in Rothenburg. It is a small city, but it was worth the stop because it still has the old city walls completely surrounding the city. We parked just outside one of the city gates and then walked up to the top of the city wall and walked along the platform on top of the wall. We then stopped at a bakery on our way to the city center and had some donuts. Walking through the city really felt like walking back in time. There was an old covered bridge for one of the entrances to the city. When we left the city, we walked out of the main gate and then walked along the city wall back to our car. It was a good stop.

We then continued on our journey and stopped for lunch at a diner just off the Autobahn. It was called Bonny's and was basically the same as Denny's. We were hoping for German food but instead we had the choice of a cheeseburger or a sloppy joe. Tom got the cheeseburger and I got a sloppy joe (it was not sloppy and was made up of solid chunks of meat instead of ground beef like a real sloppy joe). It still satisfied us.

After lunch we drove to Dachau, the first concentration camp. It was cold and rainy while we were walking through there which only added to the experience. It was not easy to walk through those buildings and read about the site. The photographs and first hand accounts they had on display were very powerful. We walked through the entrance building (where most of the offices were), the maintenance building (where the prisoners began the registration process for the camp), the roll call ground (where all the prisoners had to assemble every morning and stand for hours to make sure everyone was there), and through the barracks (where all the bunks were located and which became very overpopulated by the end of WWII). One thing which captivated my sense of being there was looking at the trees in the old photographs and walking along the same line of trees along the dirt road to the roll call ground. We were a little rushed while we were there because they closed at 5pm. We were chilled after the walk through the camp so we sat in the car for a little bit afterwards. We then pulled out, glad that we were able to stop and experience history first hand.

Our next stop was Munich. We first had to find Rachel Greene's apartment (She went to Sacred Heart with Meg and was letting us stay with her while we were in Munich). We found her street and luckily found a parking spot a minute away from her door. Meg tried calling her to let her know we were standing outside her apartment but for some reason she couldn't get a hold of her. So Tom and I went to the front door of the apartment and decided to just try ringing one of the apartment doorbells and hope we got Rachel. I pushed the first buzzer and no one responded. Then that apartment unlocked the front door for us and let us into the apartment. Once we were inside the apartment, we had to figure out what floor she was on. We saw the apartment's mailboxes and saw her name on one of them. We were then able to figure out where she lived and she welcomed us into her humble abode. We set down our stuff, got a tour of her apartment, and then headed out for a quick tour of the city. It was about 7 and was a little dark and rainy, but not too bad. We went to Marienplatz, which is a main plaza in the city. We saw the Neues Rathaus mit Glockenspiel (the new town hall with the famous carillon which is a 260 foot tower that has a clock on it with the people who come out and dance on the hour when the clock chimes). We also saw the Atles Rathaus (the old city hall) and St. Peter's Church. We wandered around for a little while and then stopped at a nice restaurant for some schnitzel. I ordered cold meat loaf (I like meat loaf...hot meat loaf). I don't think I will do that again though. It was alright, but ketchup can only do so much.

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