17 Juli-- Day 23

So, we found ourselves in Weimar for the morning. We took an amazing, wonderful (Wunderbar!) tour of the old city with a Weimar native. She told some amazing stories about her life during the Nazi regime, after the war, the iron curtain, and what it was like afterwards. Maybe someday if I have time I'll tell you guys.

Anyway, Weimar is mainly known as what used to be a cultural and intellectual center of Germany. Two authors, Goethe and Schiller (who I can honestly say I've never heard of until this trip/in passing in German class) lived there, and wrote some great stuff. You can visit their houses. Also, Bach and Liszt and Anderson, and lots of other intellectual dudes lived there.

The town is absolutely obsessed with gingko. The plant. Goethe apparently wrote some love poem involving gingko leaves, about two halves of a whole and whatnot, and possibly won some lady over(?). Therefore there's gingko tea, gingko plants, gingko designs on pottery, gingko stores... etc.

There was a library that we couldn't go into, but it was supposed to be absolutely beautiful. Why couldn't we make a reservation to get into the library? Because they book an entire year in advance. It better be grand, if you're gonna plan your year around something like that. It's not even the original- that burned in 2000 something. (I'm a little bit bitter)

It pretty much looks like this.

and this

I said cultural center, right?
Hans Christian Anderson lived right next door, but I'm assuming you don't want to see a plaque of that too.

Not sure if you can see it, but this huge beautiful building is half post office, half fitness center

Across from the Bauhaus university here. Oh those artsy types... what have they been up to now.

Cute little river- lots of families relaxing.
I believe this used to be a church(?), but after it was destroyed, they decided not to rebuild it and instead built a park around it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After our tour, we decided to have lunch, and then go to Buchenwald, a nearby ex-concentration camp. Had a lovely lunch of Bratwurst (essentially a glorified hotdog, but we were in the south, so we gotta eat that) and then off to Buchenwald on a bus.

Buchenwald was one of a bunch of concentration camps. We didn't get to see everything, as we only had an hour and a half before we had to come back to catch our train. However, here's some photos. These were mostly where the detainees lived, not where they worked.

This says "To each his own" or " to each what he deserves"

This is the gate to where the detainees were kept.

The train tracks that the detainees were forced to build. Then they were used to transport materials, and obviously, more people.

When the Americans came and liberated the camp (wow that sounds patriotic), the clock over the stopped. Since then, it's displayed the exact time that the camp was freed.

This was one of many memorials, on the site of their old ...living quarters (I hesitate to call it anything better than that).
I believe that this one was for the gypsies who were captured and brought here.

Not much more to say. It was quite fitting that we had a light rain. Didn't even count as rain, just drops falling from the sky.

Headed back to Berlin. This time we got to take an express train, rather than smaller regional trains. (would have taken us like 7 hours otherwise) We had reserved seats and everything (thanks for paying, Dartmouth! Uh I mean parents!) A very uneventful ride.

This was at the train station-- read the English. Panther no panth!