yay for sleeping in! today i didn't set an alarm and it was AMAZING. i'm pretty sure this is the first time i've done that this entire trip and i freaking loved it. too bad i actually woke up at like 6:30 am, but oh well. it was nice to be able to just go back to sleep.
finally at around 9:45, i decided to be productive. after going to bed before 1 am, the 8+ hours of sleep felt so good! jen and i went to do our laundry. we met this really nice austrailian army guy who we chatted it up with while doing our laundry. the laundry was a very interesting process. you had to put the wash in, then do this spin cycle thing. it was very weird. the dryign was kinda funny too. it was only 60 cents, which i thought was sweet. until i learned that 60 cents only got you 7 minutes of drying. needless to say it was entertaining watching jen, austrailian guy and i walk back and forth to buy little drying tokens for 7 minute increments :)
after finishing our laundry, we rushed back to the hotel to shower and then i ran to burger king for lunch. then we all got on the bus to go to dachau. at first i really didn't feel like being there but it was such a good experience, even though it was so depressing. it was weird to go from constant laughing/fun/etc to such a somber mood.
some of the camp had been destroyed by the germans afterward, i guess they were embarrassed about it and wanted to cover it up, but kinda sucks. there was still some stuff left and some of it had been reconstructed. there was a little chunk of train tracks left... weird to think that those trains used to bring in thousands of people. the gate that read "arbeit macht frei" (work makes free) was the original gate that was there when the camp was open. we saw barracks that had been rebuilt to show what they were like. it was insane- some many people sleeping on top of each other in these thigns that looked like they were designed for animals. we also saw the prison where they interogated people, there were these tiny "standing cells" that were so small you couldn't even sit down. they would torture people by hanging them by their arms behind their back. it was just so awful. we also saw where they would line everyone up for hours and hours. there were some cool memorial type things too..
the worst part by far was off to the side of the camp. you had to cross this little bridge over a river and they said that once you crossed that bridge there was 0% chance of survival. we walked into the place where they gassed people. our tour guide explained to us step by step of what happened, it was so creepy to walk through it and be shut in that room. i had chills. finally we saw the ovens. it was just insane. so depressing.
after a somber bus ride back, life seemed to be back to normal (how quickly we forget) and then i went to dinner with aubrey, janine and natalie. we grabbed dinner at some random italian place (again.) i had the best tomato soup EVER. seriously so good. we stopped at this grocery store on the way back and got "ice cream nachos" which were basically like choco tacos! i hadn't had ice cream in so long! we opened them up right as we were walking down the road... pretty ridiculous to eat ice cream in the middle of a freezing cold january night but oh well. totally worth it!
friday night was pretty much about packing, relaxing and sleep :)
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