Friday, June 30, 2006

Watiting to tour Weimar


This is me with my classmate, Lara, from Jordan. She loves Bon Jovi and America and speaks more English in class than German. It is pretty funny! She's very energetic and always smiling. She is going to be doing a PhD at the University here in Goettingen.

Trying Thueringen's famous Rostbratwurst!

One of the more happening centers in Weimar

Home of Lucas Cranach, painter and friend of Luther

Pretty streets in Weimar

Famous Goethe-Shiller Statue

This space marks off where there was a young persons block of barracks.

By the time the camp was liberated something like 90% of the inmates where under the age of 23 and the overwhelming majority where from countries other than Germany.

One of the remaining watch towers surrounding the prisoners camp

Road leading to the path taken on the death marches

View into the Crematorium Courtyard. The pathological facility is just to the left

Buchenwald Crematorium


Survivors have remarked that it is not the chimmey that they most recall but the horrible smell that was always coming up from out of the chimmey.

View of the Gate Building (Bunker) from the Prisoners Camp

Experiencing Buchenwald Concentration Camp. I will not forget!!

The picture looks out across where the muster ground was to the depot (big building) and the disinfection station to the right of it.

"It was Sunday, yes, a beautiful Sunday in March. One life later, many lives and many deaths later, I stood there again in the dramatic empty space fo teh muster ground of Buchenwald. The birds had returned, the same wind blew over the Ettersberg. As I contemplated the landscape, I felt my whole life spreading out before me in memory, becoming transparent with its dangers, its misconceptions, the blindness of its ideological illusions, its stubborn striving for knowledge and clarity."
Jorge Semprun, speech held on the occasion of his receipt of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1994. He was an inmate of Buchenwald from 1943-1945 and went on to be a politician and writer.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Luther pix in a church

Sometimes, at first, you aren't 100% sure whether a church is Catholic or Lutheran. Then, all of the sudden, all becomes clear!

Duder-doggie!

That's for you, Dad! There were many cute dogs in Duderstadt but it was hard to get the camera out and set in time before they went past or I freaked the owner out!

Some countryside from the bus window

Discussing literature and life with "the boys"!

A "little" afternoon snack? I think not! Pure pleasure!

Pretty House (Goethe himself lived there for 2 whole days!)

Here I am!

Occasionally I find it good to give this "solid" evidence of my presence in Germany! So here I am in front of the pond in the park in Duderstadt! Yes!!!!