We woke up to a snowy Lauterbrunnen morning and made our way to the train station to catch our ride to Germany! At about 14 hours and four train changes, it was quite a long day of traveling. Having to change trains with kids, strollers, luggage, and a car seat once is no fun...having to do it four times is exhausting! For the most part it all when off without a hitch...except for when we missed one of our trains. Long story short, we were standing in the wrong place on the platform, the train left just as fast as it came, and then a little chaos ensued. Thankfully there was another train coming an hour later and all was right with the world again.
It was dark when we got to our apartment so we didn't really get a good idea of what our surroundings were like. Man were we in for a treat when we opened the curtains in our room the next morning!
Ooopps! Bright flash!
After breakfast we went out to catch the bus into town. The snow covered everything was sooo beautiful!
Of course he was loving it!
It was an overcast morning which made it even more beautiful!
Ready for our tour of the town.
We met our tour guide here at St. Sebastian's Church. Garmisch Partenkirchen used to be two separate towns (Garmisch and Partenkirchen). Adolf Hitler forced them to come together in 1935 in preparation for the Winter Olympic Games that would be held the following year. Even though the two towns became one many years ago, the differences and separation between the districts were evident as we toured. Partenkirchen seems to be holding on to tradition, but is very quiet with many empty places of business. However, Garmisch looks as though they have progressed better with the times with many shops and restaurants.
These are wooden masks that people wear during their carnival.
This is a fountain that celebrates the barrel makers as the first people to come out and start working again after the plague was over.
The most unique thing about Garmisch Partenkirchen are the murals painted on the outside of the buildings. A lot of the paintings symbolize the family that lives in the house or the business that is done in the building. The others are usually of a religious nature.
How fun would it be to spend some time in that house!?!
The ski jump at the Olympic Ski Stadium.
LSU Tiger fan in Germany! The funniest part was that Connor is the one who pointed it out!
Next we stopped for beer and a traditional Sunday meal.
This is written with chalk on the houses and somehow translates into God bless this house in 2015. They leave it up all year and only change it to reflect the new year.
Another beautiful mural.
Traditional dress for the women.
Our guide explained that you can tell if a woman is married or not by which side her apron bow is on. If you are married you would tie it on the right side because when you walk with your husband you are hooked to him on your left side. If you tied it on the left it would get messed up so that's why it's tied on the right. Unmarried girls tie their bow on the left.
Connor showing off part of the traditional dress for males.
As we walked back to our apartment I couldn't help but stop and take a picture of this!
After a day of touring the town and picking up our ski equipment for the next day, we enjoyed a low key evening.
Finally it was time for our much anticipated ski day! Harry and I had skied twice before so we were excited to do it again. This would be Connor's first time and he was beyond excited! He thought the skis and helmet were just the coolest thing!
Connor had a really good instructor and he learned quite a bit in a few hours. Our instructor was also pretty good, but definitely not the best one we've had. He made us do a few crazy exercises as if it were the first time we had ever skied and I was completely exhausted even before our two hour lesson was over! Harry did a few more runs afterward, but I was done for the day.
Time for lunch!
Back at it!
After a little more fun on the slopes it was time to make our way back to the apartment.
We were all sore the next day so we decided to stay at the apartment and have a fun snow day!
Our little snow lover was in heaven!
Snowball fight!
Connor is the best big brother!
Snow angel!
He loved it when he wasn't falling down.
We love Germany!
It is nearly impossible to get a good picture of Jameson smiling or laughing so I was so mad when my camera strap fell just as I snapped this one!
He was soooo proud of this snowman!
The next day Harry and I went check out the Partnach Gorge. We took the bus to the ski stadium and then started the loonnng walk to the gorge. Of course the scenery on our way there was beautiful!
We finally made it and I was so glad that we didn't bring the boys. I knew it was a bit of a walk to the entrance and strollers weren't allowed, but I can't imagine bringing two small kids through the gorge. I would have been a nervous wreck! Some parts of the walkway are really narrow and even though there is a railing I was a little nervous about being next to the edge. And the rushing water is so loud! All of that made me really anxious, but it was so amazing so I tried to concentrate on that.
The gorge is about 2,305 feet long and up to 263 feet deep in some places.
Icicles were everywhere and it looked so cool!
Here part of the waterfall is frozen.
We were actually walking behind the waterfall at this point.
As I look through the pictures I realized that none of them really do justice to how incredible the gorge is!
As cool as walking through a gorge was, the real adventure began when we attempted to find our way back to the ski stadium.
We followed the signs and the one that said ski stadium pointed to this path. There was a small clearing in the snow so we went that way and figured it would lead to a more clear cut path. We. Were. Wrong.
After a while the small clearing disappeared, but there were still footprints so we kept going. I kept saying that I felt like we shouldn't be going that way.
After about 30 minutes we stopped to try and pull up our location on the GPS, but that didn't work. We were starting to climb higher and higher and I got nervous that with the snow cover we would step somewhere we shouldn't and fall. All of a sudden this guy that was with us in the gorge came walking down the trail. He was dumb enough to have followed us...he didn't know if we were going the right way either. We were pretty sure we knew where we would end up, but I wasn't going to chance falling off a cliff so we decided to turn around and go back through the gorge and take the same path we came in on.
We finally made it back to the ski stadium and caught the bus to the Marienplatz where we grabbed some lunch and did a little shopping to end our last day in Garmisch Partenkirchen.
On our last day of vacation we took the train into Munich where we met our tour guide and set out for the Dachau concentration camp. Dachau was the first camp to open in Germany and it's initial purpose was to house political prisoners with a max capacity of 5,000. Of course the population grew to include Jews, ordinary criminals, foreign nationals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and pretty much anyone else they felt like throwing in there. There is a record of over 206,000 total inmates. American troops found over 30,000 people being held prisoner when they liberated them in 1945. 30,000 people...in a space meant for only 5,000! It was the camp that all others that followed were modeled after.
The prisoners were subjected to unspeakable torture. They endured things like standing cells, flogging, pole hanging, and many people suffered and died when they were forced to participate in various medical experiments that took place at the camp. The leader of the camp was so evil that when he knew liberation by US forces was imminent he ordered that everyone should be exterminated, saying "No prisoners shall be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy alive."
The entrance gate used to have a sign that read "Arbeit macht frei" which means "work will make you free". This was an example of the propaganda that the Nazis used to make it seem as though the camp was doing something good for the people who were held prisoner there. Unfortunately the sign was stolen a few months before we visited so we didn't get to see it.
The patch of grass was considered no man's land. If a prisoner stepped foot on the grass it was to be assumed that they were trying to escape and they were immediately shot by the guard in the tower. Guards would sometimes take a prisoner's hat and throw it on the grass as a game to see if the prisoner could get his hat back before being shot. It wasn't uncommon that a prisoner would become so desperate that they would walk onto the grass as a way to commit suicide.
This is a picture showing the prisoners standing at attention out in the square for roll call. They did this every morning and every evening and it would sometimes last for several hours.
Here is a guide to show the various patches used to identify the reason each prisoner had been arrested.
A monument inside one of the buildings.
Inside the prison.
Another memorial.
An example of what the inside of one of the barracks looked like. The camp became so overcrowded that the inmates would basically be sleeping on top of each other.
Here are the foundations for each of the 34 barracks.
A crematorium was used to dispose of the dead. This was also used as a way to hide any evidence of many of the unrecorded deaths. The sign says "Think about how we died here."
Even though one is located on the camp, there is no solid evidence to show that a gas chamber was used at Dachau. This is the slot on the outside of the building where the canister would be dropped into a room, killing anyone who may have been in there.
Inside of the chamber. You can see the ports on the wall where the canisters would come in and fake shower heads on the ceiling.
The incinerator room as well as the site of many hangings.
About 32,000 deaths were documented while the camp was in operation. Of course thousands more went unrecorded.
The memorial for the unknown prisoner.
While walking around the site and listening to our guide tell the stories, it was extremely difficult to wrap my brain around what actually took place. It is hard to imagine what a group of people were capable of doing to millions of others. Even more unbelievable is how long they were able to get away with it. There is video footage that was taken throughout the camp after its liberation. Parts of this video plays in one of the buildings. It is extremely hard to watch. We had Connor put on headphones and play Harry's phone while we went through that area because the video and images are that bad. Deplorable isn't a strong enough word to describe what the conditions were like. I don't think I'll ever understand how the atrocities of the Holocaust were able to take place.
After our tour ended we took the train back to Munich were we settled in for the night before flying back to KSA the following day. We had an incredible two weeks of traveling, but we were ready to go home! We were very ambitious and we got it done, but we were exhausted. We were beyond tired of packing and unpacking, maneuvering through trains and buses, trying to decipher about three or four different languages, and finding our way around five different cities.
This is pretty much how we all felt!
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