guten tag from switzerland & germany

wow, i am having a great vacation for this first week with chris. i am so glad he came.
we visited Nurnberg (famous from the enormous nazi rallies there) & dachau concentration camp near Munich during the week, which were 2 very fascinating and thought-provoking places. dachau especially, was fascinating since it was more of a "working" camp than an extermination camp so we learned about the various really sick logic that went into the concept of concentration camps, especially the extremely complex psychological torture, which you can imagine was much even more horrifying than physical torture.

pictured above is a monument at Dachau which represents the many camp inhabitants who chose to commit suicide on the electric fence rather than die under such conditions.

one very basic thing which i learned which i never before knew, was that the original plan for the camps was to cage these people up for a number of years until their "spirit was broken" and then release them free back into society where the rest of the world would see them as poor and pitiful idiots, basically, and society could make their own conclusions from there... it's almost an even crueler thought than the idea of mass killing people. dachau i would highly recommend to anyone who visits germany, the monuments are beautiful and the exhibitions shocking yet very appropriate and educational.
on a lighter note, we really enjoyed the beer and pretzel scene in Munchen.

here´s chris with our Liter-sized beir and his favorite, huge pretzels which come with everything...

pictured above is Schloss Neuschwanstein (noosh - van - stein) a castle in the Alps right between the German and Austrian border which was breathtaking, both in the scenery and the very steep 2 miles you hike up to get there.


Saturday we enjoyed beautiful Lucerne (Luzern) in Switzerland with no real plans there but to wander around the streets & explore. pictured above is Luzern´s main drag- so beautiful and it was our one sunny day so far!!


sorry & no offense coloradans - but the Alps are so, so, so much more impressive than colorado´s rockies... like triple the size. I took a 9-hour train trip through the Alps to Austria afterwards. Many people were taking the train as a tourist activity, but I actually needed to get there. The windows were extra large so you could take it all in.

German-speaking countries go crazy for Easter. chocolate bunnies are everywhere, even in the shape of a little smart car (check out its ears!)