a depressing day...

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 :)

business day... i had forgotten what they were like!

this morning we went to the hoffbrau plant! all of the boys were way more interested in this than they had been at any other tour! first we saw where the beer was brewed. there were HUGE metal containers brewing the beer, it was insane. one of the rooms we walked into reeeeeked of beer, so gross. our tour guide (the brew master) only spoke german so we had another guy translate, so that was a little rough and i had no clue what was going on, oh well. we got to see where the beer was bottle and packaged. it looked very similar to coca-cola with the bottles spinning really fast, being capped, then labeled, etc. we saw big kegs being filled and rinsed off. we also got to walk through the storage place where they were just thousands of kegs and boxes of beer, just insane. the tour guide explained to us how long the beer can be held without going bad and how than influences their international expansion, it was pretty interesting. at the end we each got a free 6 pack, so everyone seemed pretty excited about that.

after hoffbrau, we took the bus back to the hotel. dr. fields didn't think it'd be very appropriate to each be carrying a 6 pack of beer into siemen's (our next visit) so we dropped off our beer and then took the bus over to siemen's. we had 2 hours of free time to grab lunch. after wanderign for a while, natalie, janine, aubrey, turner, dan and i found a little place in the main square and got pizza as usual. they served us tap water though so that was a big plus! after that, i broke down and hit up the starbucks. it had been over a month so i felt like i deserved it. i had a white mocha and it was AMAZING. aubrey, natalie, janine and i relaxed there and then left to walk back to siemen's. as we were leaving, we saw all of these rows of people sitting outside a coffee shop. it was weird though- all of the chairs were facign the same way and in the front 2 chairs were really nice and plush looking. we thought something must be going on so aubrey asked a cop who laughed and told us it was just a coffee shop. pretty embarassing i must say.

we made it back to siemen's and had a verrrrrrrrrrrry long lecture. the guy who spoke to us was actually retired from siemen's but just wants to impress upon everyone the importance of international business. it was interesting i guess, but i was having a hard time staying awake after my big lunch (and coffee? i don't know how that worked out). the lecture was 2+ hours and then it turned out we had a tour of this museum type thing! everyone was pretty mad and wanted to get out of there asap. our dinner reservation was moved up to tonight instead of tomorrow, so we had to get ready fast. the fields' paid for cabs so we all rushed back to the hotel to get ready.

tonight we had dinner at hoffbrau! it was a buffet- which was awesome. i had really good pork and potato salad and potatoes and all sorts of things, sooo good. there were dancers and singers and aubrey participated in this bell ringing thing a la miss congeniality. it was such a fun night. we each ordered a beer and they were HUGE- a whole liter! just insane. my favorite part were the pretzels. we ate all of ours at our table, so i got janine to go get one from another table, to which i told her she was my favorite person on the trip. aubrey was not too happy. but yeah, definitely one of the best dinners yet!

last train ride!

this morning i got up at 6 am to get my stuff together to leave for munich on our last train ride! i thought i was late when i got my stuff on the bus at 7:15 (which was when we were supposed to leave) but apparently i was early, because no one was on the bus. we had crazy mahem running around trying to find everyone. dan and joe never woke up, and didn't make it ont he bus until 7:45. needless to say, the fields' were not happy. so that bus ride was rough. as soon as we got to the train station we had to RUN to the train, throw our stuff on and barely made it before the train left. overall a very stressful morning. i was sad because i had to sit with my group. our boys were really lame gettign the stuff on the train too, apparently danielle and i were supposed to load ALL the luggage on the train by ourselves.

after a short nap on the train, i went over to the dining car and got lunch with aubrey, joe and jen. i had risotto and it was so yummy! i was so hungry and it was so good!

the train ride went by pretty fast and then we arrived in munich! our hotel was only 2 blocks from the station so we carried our stuff to the hotel and checked in. me and teri's room is alright- kinda dark but could be worse. this is definitely my least favorite hotel though. i let teri have the double bed and sprawled my stuff all over the single and the couch. i showered really fast to get ready for the city tour.

we met our tour guide and took a bus tour of the city! at first i was so tired that it was hard to pay attention but this tour guide made that impossible. he was so funny- he kept picking people from the group to sorta act like the different people he was talking about. mr. fields was the lion? janine was his wife, dan was some king... it was just funny. he was so animated! he showed us this MASSIVE field where octoberfest is held and a big statue that supposedly the statue of liberty was modeled after.

after that we went to a palace and saw that. it was really pretty and cool because of the way he explained it. we also saw the stable and all of these really pretty carriages. finally we saw the downtown area, the town buildings and wandered around for a few. then it was back to the hotel to get ready for dinner really quick.

we went to this cute italian restaurant. we ordered SO MUCH FOOD. i had tortellini soup, tomato and mozerella, bruschetta, 4 cheese pasta and then some of cara's tiramisu for dessert. janine and aubrey ordered a ton too. it was just insane- we were like starving children. we also sang happy birthday to jen too, that was fun.

tonight we just relaxed in aubrey and natalie's room. their room has a balcony that overlooks some of the other rooms so we threw stuff into other peoples room and entertained ourselves middle school style.