On our way to Amsterdam we stopped for a few hours in the town of Ulm. We’d heard about its amazing Gothic cathedral that was open to people to climb to the top. The cathedral is the 2nd largest in Germany and there are 768 steps to get to the top. We were there for about four hours, and found it to be a lovely little town.
After seeing the castles in Fussen, we decided to move on to someplace a little bit off the beaten track. We’d heard a lot about how much fun Prague was, so we pointed the van northeast and started out. It took about 8 hours of driving to get there, and we were actually disappointed that they wouldn’t stamp our passports at the border. Prague was an interesting city…lots of beautiful architecture, and friendly people. We spent a couple of days wandering around the streets, and partying in the bars. We found one bar in particular that we fell in love with…lots of backpackers on tour, situated in a dark concrete basement with cool statues on the walls.  It was here that we tried absinthe for the first time. It did the job of any alcohol, but I couldn’t detect any other properties. I’m assuming that it wasn’t the real thing, or if it was that we were too tipsy to notice.
Before we headed to Prague, we decided to go south to Fussen to see the trio of Ludwig II’s castles. Fussen was a plesant little town, that very much catered to tourists. Being typical tourists, we felt right at home! We toured all three of the castles in the area, and spent the night in a lovely little hostel before heading off to the Czech Republic the next day.
Oktoberfest was fantastic! The beer, the wine, the singing, and of course the women were all in your face kind of amazing. We had planned on spending most of our time in Germany here, but changed our mind after we found out how hard it was to get accommodation, and also how early the beer tents closed because of terrorism fears (this was only about two weeks after 9/11). Luckily the wine tents stayed open late for some reason, so we all developed a taste for Reisling. Most of the evening is pretty fuzzy, which I’m sure is directly related to my getting separated from the group.
We had decided earlier that if we got split up, we’d all meet at a certain place at midnight. Well, somehow I couldn’t quite located the meeting point, and at about 1 am, I realized that I might be in trouble. I didn’t have any way of contacting the others, so I figured I should probably think about finding someplace to sleep. I talked to a taxi driver, and he told me that every place in town was full and no place could help me at this time of the night. Well, I remembered the hostel in the town of Dachau that we’d stayed in the previous night, and decided to go there. It was about a 30 minute drive, and was about 2:30 am by the time we got there. Of course it was shut tight, but in my drunken state I wandered around and finally found an unlocked window leading into the kitchen. I figured at least it was safe and out of the elements, so I passed out on the floor. Luckily I woke up early enough to get out of there before anyone found me. When I was sober I realized that I had Christine’s cell phone number with me the whole time, so I called the guys and they headed over to pick me up. We were all very relieved that we’d found each other, and proceeded to take advantage of the hostel’s showers. It turns out that they had all slept in the van the previous night, and had a miserable time. We decided at that point that one night in Munich was ok with us, and decided to head off to Prague that day.
This was the most sobering part of our entire trip. I had very mixed feelings about going to this place, but I felt that I owed it to myself, and both the victims and the survivors to experience the horrors of this place first hand.  Of course I’d read about the Nazi atrocities in school, but until you actually see for yourself, you can never fully grasp the evil of what happened here.Â
The camp is maintained by a society of survivors who have taken it upon themselves to remind the world what happened here, and to promote their slogan of "Never Again". There is an excellent museum tracing the rise of the National Socialist party to power, and the beginnings of the crimes that were committed in the name of improving humanity. Unfortunately this message has not reached everyone it needs to. When we visited, there were signs on the buildings explaining that a week before we arrived, Neo-Nazis had snuck in at night, and vandalized several of the buildings with Anti Jewish slogans, and swastikas. No leads had been found to the identity of the perpetrators.
I didn’t take many photos here; because of the atmosphere of the camp it feels very unnatural to take photos while you are there. One feels that they are intruding on someone’s private memorial.
