February 25, 2012

Today we left for Germany. We had to meet in Copenhagen at 8:15 so my host dad drove me to the train station very early. We drove the nice long drive to Hamburg and it took us about 5 hours to get there. We watched a movie named the Pianist on the bus to Hamburg. It was very good, but very depressing film as it is the story of a Jewish man during the holocaust, and his struggle of surviving the war.

Our first stop was the Bullenhuser Damm School. This is the site where after WWII the children that were experimented on at the concentration camp were all taken, and hung. There were about 20 Jewish children who were hung there along with their 4 adult caretakers and 6 Red Army Prisoners of war. The cellar where the murders took place is now a museum, and there is a garden with a memorial outside. The building itself is used as a Kindergarten. Originally we were not going to be able to go inside because it was a weekend and the museum is not opened on weekends. When we arrived one of the people in charge of the museum was there and opened the museum for us so we were allowed to visit it. The woman also told our professor to let her know when he was going to come back so that all of the future classes would have the same opportunity that we had.

After that we had some time to explore Hamburg on our own. I walked around Hamburg with some of my friends and we saw a lot of downtown Hamburg. Sadly I didn't know that there was a Hard Rock Cafe in Hamburg because otherwise I would have made sure to get my T-Shirt. By the time I realized that there was a Hard Rock Cafe it was too late and we were headed back to the Hostel so we could leave for dinner.

We went to a place called Schlachterborse for dinner. Our professor had warned us how it was going to be a lot of food, so we were prepared. He also said it would be terrible if we didn't eat steak. When we first arrived we were skeptical about what we were going to eat because we started the meal with a soup. We then were given a 6 oz piece of steak and they had side dishes on the table served family style. We couldn't understand how we could be so intimidated by this food because it didn't seem too intimidating. No sooner had I finished my piece of steak when they came around with more steak and just put it on our plates without asking us. We then started to understand what he meant by it was going to be a lot of food. By the time they came around with steak the third time we decided we had to say no because there was no way we could eat anymore food. As we were leaving our professor said that if we left hungry it was our own fault.

After dinner my friends and I just went back to the hostel and we watched some German television and played airhockey at the little "arcade" area that they had at the hotel.