There is a lot to talk about, and I doubt I will cover it all, but I'd still like to give you all (and posterity) a basic run-down of what I did in my last few months in Germany.
Besides mentioning briefly that I went to London over a weekend (almost a whole day up, one day to explore the city, and another day to drive back) I'd like to start off with Easter Break.
Easter Break was very cool for me, because my parents visited me. We had talked about it with my host family, and we all agreed that it would be fun if my real parents could visit. ASSE does not condone familial visits, but I made sure that my host parents were comfortable with the situation in every way, and so we deemed it acceptable.
They spent the first week with me in the Aachen area; spending a few nights in an Aachen hotel and the rest in one closer to Roetgen. Together with my host family we visited Vogelsang (a Nazi leadership training facility which was built in the Eifel forest near where I lived,) hiked through the Eifel, and visited the Netherlands city of Maastricht.
The second week was spent touring through Southern Germany and back. We visited Rothenburg, one of the few remaining medieval walled cities, as well as Lindau (on the Bodensee,) and Strasbourg, a city in France that has switched between Germany and France many time throughout history.
The trip was fantastic. It was great to be able to spend time with my parents, and I loved being able to see all the sights I would have missed otherwise.
Mom and I in Rothenburg
After that was my trip to Prague, with ASSE. It was a payed trip, unlike Weimar, and was completely optional. I went, along with some of my best exchange student friends, and enjoyed every second. Prague is a truly beautiful city with a lot to be said for it. We continually found great food, beautiful sights, and lots of fascinating places to explore. Although my group of friends mostly focused on finding great restaurants and exploring the city on foot, Prague also had a lot in the way of museums and attractions. We nearly visited a chocolate museum, but the pricing was such that we backed out.
We had most of the days of the trip free, but there was one half-day set aside for a visit to a concentration camp. The closest camp to Prague is Therisienstadt. Therisienstadt is fascinating not just as a concentration camp, but as an integral cog in the propaganda machine that was Nazi Germany. The camp was shown to be a happy place for Jewish families to live. We watched a video that depicted this perfectly. The screen showed propaganda footage of people playing soccer, children playing with dolls, and mothers knitting. Everyone was happy and enjoying themselves, and it almost seemed like a summer camp. Every now and then someone would read a letter that went along the lines of "Hello. I am very happy in Therisienstadt. I miss nothing back home. It is wonderful here. I love Therisienstadt." Meanwhile, the narrator of the video read off statistics. He would read the date of a certain trainload of new inmates, the number of people in the train, and the number of survivors. More often than not, he would say "no survivors." It was sad, but also fascinating. I have never gotten used to the fact that the Nazis did so much without people being aware of their efforts, and Therisienstadt is one of the most interesting examples of their techniques that I have seen so far.
The only complaint I have about the trip was our hotel, which was apparently chosen for its pricing. It was far away from the city in a creepy-looking suburban area that was littered with graffiti and, well, litter. Besides that, the beds were less comfortable than the average couch and the food was a terrifying hodge-podge of what I assume was traditional Czech fare, as I've never seen anything like it before. We only ate breakfast at the hotel, but it was a creepy breakfast indeed. There was a whole tray of mystery meat in different styles, oddly yellow mashed potatoes with gravy, green jam, dark bread, oatmeal sort of stuff, strange yogurt and chocolate spread (not nutella, just spreadable chocolate.) I kept looking for simple breakfast food, but found none. For example, there was no normal breakfast meat or cheese, just the array of mystery meat chunks and slices. I ended up compromising on bread with pinkish meat spread and chocolate spread for after.
I know that I've just spent time complaining about the hotel, but I can honestly say that Prague was one of my favorite vacations of all time, and that was in just a couple of days. We saw a lot, ate good food (just not for breakfast) and enjoyed every second of it.
Prague
TO BE CONTINUED....
Links:
Therisienstadt
The Therisienstadt Video
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