Forgot to mention. In Berlin-Tegel Airport, while we were waiting at the baggage carousel, I got talking to a guy from Syria who worked in Norway, but was visiting Germany for a couple days. We first got started talking when I was laughing at how the bus took us a distance we could have walked more quickly and he said “it's very German.” I told him a bit about our trip, where we had been, he said he was a computer engineer working in the south of Norway and that it was sort of boring, he'd had enough of nature. The most interesting thing to me was when he asked if we had been to the Middle East and I said we had been around the edges of it, Egypt, Turkey. He agreed that Turkey was sort of an in-between, but Egypt was definitely the Middle East to him. Interesting to hear a perspective from someone from a very different country. Nice guy, too.

Tuesday, March 30th, roughly 5:45 PM local time

Rooming with Swaffie here at the Elsa Brandstrom house, only mit more umlauts. It's a nice place, really good meals, a pretty view. Yesterday we had class and then went into Hamburg, saw a lot of the sights. We went into a St. Michael's Church with a tower that was a lot more stairs than we thought it was, but it had a great view. Kind of the Empire State Building of Hamburg, but a lot shorter because Hamburg is a lot shorter, obviously. They have a single room on the way up with four or five bells, which is pretty cool. We also saw a St. Jacob's Church, which apparently is part of an ancient pilgramage from way up in the north down to Spain. If you do the pilgramage, you can stay one night in each of these St. Jacob's churches for free, which is sort of neat. Came back to the house and chilled all night, nothing else really exciting. Tried a jever, a local beer, pretty good.

Today we left at 9 AM for Belsen-Bergen, a concentration camp about two hours from where we're staying. It was a work camp, but that's not to say thousands of people didn't die here, a lot from disease and exposure, and a whoooole lot of Soviet POWs, for whom the official policy of the Reich was that the Geneva Convention didn't apply. It was a long walk to the Soviet cemetery, since they were housed in a slightly different facility, and it was interesting because the area is still used as a military training ground. Don't go off the path. Cool to see, though I didn't stay long because I wanted to spend time in the museum. The whole place is sort of incongruous, it's a beautiful natural area that would make an absolutely stupendous park if it weren't for the history. I don't usually believe in Evil with a capital E, but 1933-1945, visiting Dachau in '06 and visiting Belsen-Bergen today might change my mind. If you ever want to see the purest face of evil (Evil), you could do worse than visiting any one of these camps.

After that another bus ride and on to Luneburg, a town still retained from medieval times. It wasn't damaged at all in the war, so there's still a lot of original architecture. Very cool to see, certainly more uplifting than the morning. I had a kebab for lunch, it was just okay sadly, and some gelato as well. Pretty churches, walking around, seeing the architecture and some great street art that was extremely incongruous, but really good. I found a little store called Mythos that was mostly toys and books, in addition to childrens' stuff and LEGOs it had a lot of fantasy stuff, board games, that sort of thing. If it wasn't all in German I definitely would have bought some, as it is I picked up a puzzle for 3 euro just for fun. Almost bought some dice, but I already got some in Turkey and they were just eh, okay. Walked a bit more, met in front of the town hall, that was cool, tried to find steins with people, no such luck, headed out. John and Clay peed on the side of the road, back to Elsa Brandstrom, dinner was downstairs at the bar, had a good beer, soup, bread, meat, cheese, and some sort of chicken salad, and then we met for a class/meeting. This weekend should be absolutely fantastic, the plan is to see the Easter Fires and then stay up all night and go to the fish market (which is really a flea market) that starts at 4 AM Sunday.

Thursday, April 1st, roughly 9:20-9:30 PM local time