Trip to Essen
Wednesday, October 17th; 11:03pm Essen Time
Hello! We made it to Essen this afternoon and hooked back up with our friends we are traveling with. The trip here was sorta funny, I'll get to that in a few minutes ....
First, this morning we went to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. The trip there was pretty easy, train and one bus. We got there right after 9am when they open. It was still pretty quiet. We picked up a guide handout with a map and some information and headed off.
I'd been once before when I was 12, with my Grandparents, and was pretty reluctant to go back. But Hubby really wanted to see it and I didn't want him to have to go alone, plus I thought it might be interesting to see it again as an adult. We walked down the road to the front entrance gate, and I was struck at how beautiful this walk was. There was a small river running next to the road and there were gorgeous tall trees on either side. When we got to the front gate it looked rather plain, If you hadn't known what went on there you'd probably not have guessed it. Except, of course, for the "Arbeit Macht Frei" on the black iron gate. "Work Makes Us Free". Right.
It was a little different than I remembered, of course it had been 24 years. There is a museum of sorts now in the main Maintenance Building with lots of photos and information. We didn't have a ton of time so we only read some of the boards. Towards then end when they started in with the pictures and stories of the torture and human medical experiments I had a hard time and didn't read much more. Then we went to the bunker, which is where most of the torture and experiments happened. There wasn't much there really, but you could see the small cells where they would keep the prisoners who they were "interrogating" and what not. So inhumane. It makes me physically ill to think that there were people who could do such things to their fellow humans. I am so sad that there are people like this in the world.
Because of my feet - blisters! - I have been walking pretty slow the past few days, and since we were short on time, James went on to see the last part without me. See, it was alllllll the way on the other side of the camp. Plus it was the part that has pretty much haunted me since I was there 24 years ago. He visited the "Krematorium", where the gas chamber was for mass executions and the ovens to burn the bodies.
Enough about that. We then headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags and catch a train to the airport for our flight to Dusseldorf. That was uneventful and we arrived at the airport with plenty of time to have some lunch before our flight. The time came for our flight to begin boarding so we passed over our tickets and went through the little gate thingy .... and down 4 flights of stairs .... to a BUS. Uhm. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be flying to Dusseldorf. Ha! The bus loaded up and then we drove, and drove, and drove, oh yeah, and then drove some more. To a tarmac where there was a plane waiting with steps leading up to the doors. So weird! We climbed the steps and found our seats. Luckily it wasn't very crowded so we got to stretch out some.
After we arrived in Dusseldorf, we decided to chill and wait for our friends who were arriving a couple of hours after us. They showed up and we caught a train to Essen. The wrong train. Oops! Not too much of a biggie, we got off and found the right train and got here just a little late. We checked in to our rooms (nicer than London, not quite as nice as Munich) and then went to eat at a good Italian place close by called Alfredo's.
Now we are back and about to head off to sleepy land so we can get up in the morning and head off to Spiel Essen!!! The "main" reason for this entire trip :)
Check out all the newest pictures on my Flickr page (of course).
Til next time ...
p.s. it's raining here and 50 degrees!
Labels: vacation
