Leipzig

We headed south east towards the town of Leipzig - well more correctly the town of Markranstadt to meet our new host - his name was Andre. Really cool guy - had lived in Australia for 2 years, and had been to NZ and Indonesia and a bunch of other countries. Was really interesting talking to him about his travels throughout Australia.
We arrived mid-late afternoon to meet Andre and his parents (who really didn't speak English) my German learning has been all but a failure as I can't even order food yet. The combination of words has got me stuffed. But I'm giving it a crack. We had some dinner there - nicely cooked kababs and some capsicum, some weird raw mince again, tomatoes and some bread. We then went to watch Poland play against Germany is a sportsbar down in the city of Leipzig. Germany almost lost - a late goal helped them salvage a draw, much to the relief of the 5 person strong crowd. We then went to another place - annoying that the no smoking law isn't introduced here - came home reeking of smoke, very unpleasant. It was a really good night though - talking to someone that has been to Australia makes it a lot easier to communicate. - plus the added bonus of not having to listen to a broad Australian accent. The next day we got up reasonably late (mark starting to get sick) and he took us around the city of Leipzig. All in all it was a good day - we saw a bunch of stuff - up the tower there, saw a few nice churches, saw a old historic train, walked around the old town (there you go dad!) and all via Andre's nice touring. A bbq dinner - a nice chat in Andre's shed with his girlfriend, and we went to bed earlier.

Read for itself.

The next day we went to the concentration camp "Buchenwald" well... we have been to memorials all over Europe - and we finally got to see first hand what the fighting was for.. The camp was - it had an eerie feel to it - now buchenwald was not the biggest camp, or the one that had the most people killed - it wasn't a death camp, it was a labor camp (that was a death camp) so we got a large amount of information about the conditions that the people endured while inside. It was pretty crazy - they loaded massive numbers into barracks - gave them little to no water or food, and worked them into the ground - if you resistsed or fell over unable to work - you were shot. This was in the early days as well. Buchenwald was a camp that the prisons were taken to when the war was turning - the picture that I will post up shows what happened.

The most telling thing was the 'medical' room, they had a surgical table with a drain built into it.... now... why do you need that... Also was the picture in the room showing a pile of bodies outside the house we were in. It was just creepy.

Another really interesting thing was that the Soviets had a camp after the camp was broken up, they held nazi's or "nazi supporters" in the camp - and they were subjected to the same conditions that the inmates were. Some of those were held without trial amongst other things. My initial feeling was 'So what?' The amount of people that were killed al over was a grain of sand in the bigger sandy desert! so what is a few people who were responsible suffered a little" But you have to take stock and understand a few things. 1) The people that were against hitler and his ways could not have objected without being killed or shipped off to a camp themselves, nobody should have to endure such torture - we are the only species on the earth that has systematically tortured and killed itself - or it's fellow species.


We left - grabbed a quick bite to eat (my first real vegi pizza - cauliflower, pumpkin, broccoli, carrot and some other stuff. It was good enough :)

We got home to have a competition with Andre and his girlfriend about german words and questions about Australia.

I am going to sleep now - will update later.