Dogs & Good Deals

It was a crazy day.  Brad is going to the states next week to spend spring break with the kids.  I was able to use my Delta frequent flyer miles to get his ticket, with the least miles flight available on KLM Airlines.  Since Mom had generously offered to take the dogs early, and KLM has a much higher pet weight limit (dog & kennel up to 165 lbs, whereas the US Airlines all limit out at 100 lbs), and with Bow weighing 75 lbs and Cruiser weighing 97 lbs, we saw opportunity knocking.  The dogs & Brad are going back to the states, including Brad's return ticket for @ $600, unlike when they came out here and it cost us $3500 to ship them as cargo.

So today was the first step in Bow and Cruiser's return trip to the states -- getting cleared by the vets.  The onbase vet checked them out, gave them a clear bill of health, updated shots, and signed the Health Clearance waiver.  Since we have to get them to Amsterdam for Brad's flight, I also had to take the dogs out in town to a German Vet and get Pet Passports for them.  Three hours, two vets, two shots and two blood draws later, the dogs have all their required paperwork and are ready to go!  Mission step 1 accomplished!

Heidelberg in March

We headed off to Heidelberg today.  First we took the train, purchasing state discount tickets that allow you to travel all over your state (in this case Baden Wurtenberg) for relatively cheaply as long as you stay off the fast (ICE) trains.  The train we took was a double decker, with us on the top level.  Jess and I spent most of the 1hr 45 minute ride to Heidelberg taking pictures of all the clock towers we saw - see my last blog for the results, while Andrew read a book and Brad and Mark checked things out.

After we got to Heidelberg, we hopped a bus then took the tram up to the entrance to Heidelberg castle.  The next picture shows us at the entrance to the main garden above the battlements.  The ground was incredibly slippery - it didn't appear like they used any salt or gravel so it was either snow or solid ice and you had to be real careful where you stepped.

Here's Shelly and Jess in the same garden area.

After we went on a tour of the inside of the castle and walked all around, we headed back down by tram and found a place to eat traditional German fare.  Between the six of us we had schnitzel, pizza, sausage, and cheesy noodles with wine, beer, soda, hot tea and juice.  The Bier Brezel restaurant where we ate was on Heidelberg's main pedestrian route right across from the Church of the Holy Spirit.

Here's a picture of the church I took looking down from the Castle:

After lunch we went and walked around the church.  We're never certain what the right etiquette is for this but today I went in and asked the man sitting at the entrance with reading material (who I think was a priest) if it'd be okay to walk around.  He said it was okay so we did, lighting candles in honor of Brad's deceased father and my deceased brother, Justin.  Beautiful stained glass and high arced ceilings were worth going in to see.

We then walked over the the famous bridge across the Neckar, where this photo of me and Brad was taken, with the castle in the background.

Following this we went around and window shopped, going into a couple places.  Here's a good picture of Brad, Mark and Andrew walking up one of the streets - in the background you can see one of the towers at the entrance to the bridge.

This picture I took to just because I thought both the courtyard and the door looked really neat.

Then this picture was taken as we continued our walk, finally hopping a bus back to the train station and a train back home.  Challenges today included the freezing cold - I think the high was below 30 degrees - and a car that holds five people max, requiring two trips to and from the train station.  Good thing tomorrow we pick up a rental van that will hold all of us!

Clock Towers

One thing that you see all over Germany, far more common than church spires (though they are often the same thing), is clock towers.  Unlike in the states where most churches have a cross on the top, that is far less common here.  We rode the train from Stuttgart to Heidelberg, then walked around Heidelberg and these are some of the clock towers we saw.

Munchen (aka Munich) - Part 2 of 2 (the city)

After Dachau, we got on the bus again and headed to Munich. In German, the city name is Munchen. I've always though it was fascinating how we call places by the English names, when the name they call themselves is completely different. For example: We call Munchen: Munich; we call Deutchland: Germany. I would think the locals have the right name. To Extraterrestrial's I bet our world isn't "Earth".

Anyways - back to our tour:

We stopped for lunch at the Hofbrauhaus - this place is a tourist center because it's Octoberfest all year long here - when you order beer it comes in 1 L glasses (ours are .5 L, we ordered the one beer with a smaller quantity since we only had 45 minutes to eat). There is both an downstairs and upstairs to this place, and you find a spot at the big tables and benches to eat. It was really crowded since there was a soccer game on the tv and it was Saturday afternoon.

After lunch we walked around and saw all the key sites from WWII. The Hofbrauhaus is where Hitler gave his first speech to the public. We walked to the war memorial, then the sites of Kristalnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) began, the site of the Beerhall Putsch (Hitler’s 1923 violent attempt to take power, resulting in his arrest. Why they didn't deport him - since he's Austrian - is a mystery), Munich’s war memorial and victims’ memorial, the Nazi art museum, Munich’s Gestapo headquarters, Nazi Party headquarters, site of the former “Temples of Honor” and Hitler’s personal office building where the infamous Munich Agreement of 1938 was signed.

So let me talk about the pictures:

The triple arched building is the Field Marshall's Hall ("Feldherrnhalle") built in the 1840's in honor of the Bavarian Army.

Next is a bush, but I included it because, even with the weather in the 20's and all the snow, flowers are still blooming.

The grey, square pillar is an eternal flame at burning at the Plaza for the Victims of Nationalism ("Platz der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus") You can't see it in the picture, but there is a flame burning in the center of the top area.

The picture with the orange building in the back and the large cupola in the front shows the Theatine Church, which was built in the 1600's taken from the Hofgarden park.

The picture of me and Brad is taken by the War Memorial, which is a small underground room representing a tomb by the Bavarian State Chancellery (this building was to be a Nazi museum, but now it's a government office building).

Brad is enjoying a beer in the Hofbrauhaus.

Another picture of the yellow/orange Theatine Church.

And finally a picture of the outside of the Hofbrauhaus.

Munchen (aka Munich) - Part 1 of 2 (Dachau)

Saturday, we went on a USO tour to Munich focusing on WWII significant sites. The guide did a good job showing us all the key places, though I how I envisioned the tour taking place and how it actually happened didn't match. I thought we'd tour around on the bus with some stops at Dachau, lunch and museums - but this isn't what happened...


We started out the day - in typical German fashion - getting stuck in a 50 mile long traffic jam (called a "Stau"). Arriving two hours late at Dachau ConcentrationCamp we met up with our guide. Since we were running late, we didn't spend as long at the camp as planned, but since the high temp yesterday was 27 degrees and most of the tour was outside, abbreviating it was fine by us!

Dachau is an interesting site to see for several reasons.

- It was the first concentration camp.

- It was built to hold political prisoners, then expanded to include other "unfavorables"

- It was a labor camp, those interred here were used as slave labor both in "workshops", on farms, and anywhere else needed.

- This was the first camp, so it was used to train SS before them went to the other camps.

- There is a gas chamber here, but they don't think it was ever used as an extermination camp, like Auschwitz (which is in Poland), in fact they believe it was never really used. They did use the big incinerators to burn all the dead, mostly from starvation and sickness.

- This is the only gas chamber in Germany.

- Water was never an issue, they always had fresh, clean water.

- It was the last camp to be liberated.

The second picture is the gate - the only way in and out of the camp. You can see in the middle of this a much smaller, door sized gate with the words "arbeit macht frei" (it's backward - I couldn't get a clean shot from the other side because of all the people!). This is the picture most often seen of Dachau, and I was surprised it was small and in the center of the other gate since it's normally the focus of photos. The words mean "work makes free".

The long buildings shown here, in the third picture, were the "barracks" buildings. There were 30 some of these buildings. The camp was built to hold 6,000 but had over 30,000 in it at the end. In front of the barracks is the large yard where the prisoners had to muster every day.

We also saw the crematorium buildings, the gas chamber, and were able to warm up in the museum where we watched a documentary on the camp.

Even though countless people died in this camp, were tourtured, and were experimented on, that was never the primary focus. This place was about slave labor. While the gas chamber creeped me out, the thing I found most shocking was the map at the top of the blog. Each and every one of the squares and triangles was a concentration camp. The darker squares were the main ones with several smaller hub ones around the outside. They started this system in 1933. It really illustrates why the Germans didn't do anything to stop the attrocities - why they let these camps exist. The answer is simple - if they protested or argued against them, they'd quickly find themselves prisoners. The Nazi's were at war with their own people first, years before WWII began.

Munich here we come!

Saturday, we're going on a tour to Munich. We will visit Dachau Concentration Camp where we will see the prisoner barracks, the crematorium buildings and gas chamber and also visit the museum and see the documentary film. Dachau was the Nazi’s first concentration camp and served as a model for all the others. It was also the only one to operate through all 12 years of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945. The guide, who is to accompany us through the entire day is supposedly extremely knowledgeable on the subject matter. Then lunch at Munich’s famous Hofbrauhaus where Hitler gave his first speech to the public, we will visit other memorial sites in Munich such as where “Kristalnacht” (The Night of the Broken Glass) began, the site of the Beerhall Putsch (Hitler’s 1923 violent attempt to take power), Munich’s war memorial and victims’ memorial, the Nazi art museum “das Haus der Kunst”, Munich’s Gestapo headquarters, Nazi Party headquarters, site of the former “Temples of Honor” and the “Führerbau” (Hitler’s personal office building where the infamous Munich Agreement of 1938 was signed).

Wild Boar

Brad had a German wild boar cross the road in front of our car today as he was driving down frog road on his way to Panzer. He was BIG, hairy and had HUGE tusks. Glad he didnt hit him, would have totaled the car. Frog Road gets its name from the fact that several frogs swarm across frog road to get to another pond, probably for mating. During the spring the speed limit on this road is 15 kph (like 10 mph) on certain stretches and at certain times of day. There is a 18 inch high wall that lines the road about 30 yards off to the side to contain them - Brad has named this the "Great Frog Wall" because it goes up and down the hills and twists like the Great Wall in China.