August 9

We awoke to the sound of someone’s excessively annoying alarm sometime around 7:00 am., however, I didn’t know the time at the moment because my clock had quit ticking during the night. After we got out of bed, we had about forty-five minutes to get all our drying clothes packed away, get breakfast, and get outside to wait for our tour bus. We rushed through breakfast, but I still managed to make two sandwiches from the breakfast menu to take along with me for the day. All I had was 1.54 PLZ in my pocket which is equivalent to about 0.50 USD. I also had spent my remaining Euros on both of our Auschwitz tours the previous day. It’s not a good feeling knowing you have to make it about thirty hours before you will even be able to purchase anything if you needed to. This is the reason for the squirreling away of food from breakfast.

Our tour bus showed up a few minutes late, so we didn’t end up getting to Auschwitz at the time we were told, but the tours ran constantly, so that wasn’t a problem. Once inside the concentration camp, I began to feel the unfortunate history that was created there. We had passed under the main gate where over one million prisoners had read the same words. In German, the famous sign over the entrance reads “WORK WILL SET YOU FREE.” In one of the German words, there is a “B” that is flipped upside down. This sign was allegedly built by the Jewish workers and they formed the “B” in this manner to warn others to beware that something was wrong. Throughout nearly the entire tour, I had a slightly sick feeling in my stomach from all the evil that had taken place there a little more than a half century ago. The most disturbing displays were the rooms full of women’s hair that had been harvested from the bodies, combs and brushes stacked three feet high, and the suitcases that often bore the names, addresses, and birthdays of their owners. Each of these had filled at least one giant room. Another sobering experience took place while walking through the gas chambers; seeing the holes where the Nazis dropped the gas and the incinerators designed for human flesh in the next room. There were shower heads in these gas chambers to help convince the victims during their last moments that they were simply taking a shower to disinfect before moving into their new home. They were also told to leave their luggage and belongings in a place where they would remember in the luggage room so they could recover it quickly after their shower. If this seems extremely graphic in print try imagining how men’s minds could have become so warped to go along with such transgressions on a daily basis. In fact, some of the Jews themselves would be put in charge of the exterminating with the promise that their lives would be saved. This promise usually lasted about three months before they themselves could no longer be trusted.

Our next stop on the tour was the nearby death camp called Birkenau. Here eighty percent of the prisoners never lived for twenty-four hours after passing through its gates. The area inside the barbed wire fence was more than a half square mile based on my estimation. There were many buildings that served as living quarters for the prisoners that were allowed to live. Inside one of these small buildings, it is staggering to imagine that 800-900 people were kept inside. There were only forty-four tri-level bunk beds in each building according to my count. If ten people fit into each bunk (with beds of straw smaller than a normal single bed), that would only account for 440 people. Even while inside, I could hardly imagine 100 people inside this building. I still cannot fathom the truth. The wash rooms were just as bad. They were nothing more than a line of holes in the concrete above a trough. The workers were only allowed to go once in the morning and once at night and were on a strict ration of only a couple minutes for each use. During plagues of diarrhea and other sicknesses throughout the camp, disease would be the biggest threat. It is documented that even a few guards died because of the unsanitary conditions. After we checked out the living quarters and a wash room, we went to the main lookout tower to get the best view of the entire camp. The camp was built in the area where six small Polish villages had been established. After the Nazis came through and demolished the communities and the people that were their livelihood, they proceeded to use the bricks of the destroyed houses to build their own buildings on the premises. This is the reasoning for the first twenty-six (I believe this was the correct number) houses being constructed of brick while the others were made of wood.

After this tour had concluded, we got on our bus to retreat back to Krakow. The tour had been and interesting and humbling experience, but we still had a couple disappointments from the whole thing. First, we were told that the trains don’t run to the town of Auschwitz so we had to pay for a bus, but we learned this was not true. We were also told that the famous documentary video shown at the museum was included in our tour price. However, when we brought it up to our tour guide, she knew nothing of the sort and dismissed the issue without much consideration. Another issue was that we were told that the whole thing (round trip of two hours included) would take six hours. However, we left Krakow well after 9:00 am and returned before 2:30 pm. In the end, it was still worth the price of admission.

Back in Krakow, we walked back to the hostel to pick up our bags and then went to the train station to figure out when the next train left for somewhere south or east of Poland. It looked like we would be hopping on the 10:15 pm train to Prague. We first needed to find out from the ticket booth if we needed a reservation, ticket, or both. She told us, somewhat rudely, that we would need to purchase the ticket for full price since our Eurail passes weren’t valid in Poland, as we suspected. We decided we would just forget about the reservation and jump on the train anyway to see what happened. We figured the worst case scenario would be that we would have to pay the full price of the ticket on the train. Either way, we would have to wait over seven hours for the train to find out. We ended up spending the majority of this time with Michelle in her hostel. After joining us for the last twenty hours of our trip, she was going to be staying in Krakow for a few more nights before heading to Berlin as well. Since we had nowhere better to be, we just hung out in her hostel and drank their free coffee. We then spent a couple hours sitting on a park bench outside the train station. We ended up boarding the train about a half hour early and Michelle sat with us on the train until a few minutes before it left. We may miraculously meet up with her again since she is flying into Toronto only an hour before we land on August 23. She says she may also come visit us in Reese to find out if all of Ben’s crazy stories have any legitimacy in them. She claims to enjoy a good road trip and has visited Grand Rapids a few times, so this one might actually happen sometime.

While on board the train, Ben and I had just began to doze off when the ticket lady came to look at our tickets. Fearing the worst, we handed our tickets over to be inspected. Reluctantly, she handed them back to us and continued on with her route. As of now, it looks like we will be escaping Poland without having to pay for a ticket. It is midnight now and we should be in Prague by 7:00 am. Then if all goes well, we will be in Berlin by early afternoon.

August 10

Our ride on the train wasn’t as extremely pleasant one. First we had four people join us in our cabinet. As soon as they got up to get off only a couple hours into the ride, another group of three guys took their spots. I was really looking forward to having a cabinet to ourselves for a while which would allow us to close the shades and sprawl out across four seats apiece. Instead, I ended up sleeping with my head on the seat next to me and my feat uncomfortably on the small ledge of the vent. I say sleep, but really it turned into a series of naps because our tickets got checked about every two hours. When the train finally arrived in Prague, my neck and shoulders were sore and stiff from this uncomfortable position. We waited for about an hour in Prague until our train left for Berlin. Neither one of us had much food. I ate a Snickers bar, which turned out to be my only food for about twelve hours. I don’t think Ben ate anything during that time. After an easy ride to Berlin, though, we found a McDonalds with chicken burgers for one Euro apiece. Ben had three and I had two. We then started making our way around the city. There were no free maps, so we were going to have to rely on the kindness of the Germans once again. All we knew about Berlin was the Reichstag and the Berlin wall. We found out that we could see the Reichstag from the other side of the train station, so we walked there first. We had also learned that we could take a free walk to the top of the dome of the Reichstag, so we were hoping to get that accomplished during the day. When we got there, however, there was at least an hour long wait, so we decided to come back in the morning after the worker assured us there would be no queue at 8:00 am. He then directed us to a small section of the wall that we could check out. We started walking in that direction, but got distracted by a huge park with a bunch of nice sleeping places. We decided to lay down for a while. It ended up turning into a two hour nap fairly easily as we never really got much sleep the night before. After our rest, we wondered around aimlessly until we found a map and found our way to the wall. During our walk, we had been looking for a grocery store and a place to spend the night. We found neither. We ended up seeing the wall and then the holocaust memorial among a few other things.

During the past few days, my left foot had really started to become quite sore. Unfortunately, the heavy-duty Velcro walking shoes that I had purchased for the trip had begun to collapse on the right side of my left heal. Over time, this made my steps quite uncomfortable, but not enough for me to dust of my wallet to purchase another pair (which might take excruciating pain to accomplish). We were walking through an obscure trail in the park we had found earlier in search of a place to sleep after our day’s excursion when we stumbled upon a pile of clothes in the woods. It had looked like somebody had dumped their unwanted belongings there. After spotting a pair of shoes in this pile, I was elated to see that they were in decent shape and actually fit me. Now I am walking around in a pair of Puma athletic shoes. To Ben’s disgust, I am still carrying around my other shoes in case these one’s don’t work and to hopefully take back once I get to the States. It takes only the most frugal of men to haul around a pair of shoes for two weeks just to have a slight possibility of being able to return them for $30.00.

Once we finally decided on a place to sleep, we sat with our feet in the water at a nearby pond until the sun began to drop low over the horizon. We went back to our spot and Ben found a mat from another pile of junk in the woods. We laid our mats out under the low lying bush and wrapped our blankets around us tightly to avoid being bitten my the many bugs in the area. We fell asleep rather quickly and comfortably under the bush, even though we were only about 100 feet from a road. However, while only a few hours into the night, I woke from a rain drop slashing on my face. I woke Ben up and we packed up quickly and moved to our first designated rain shelter. This shelter was a monument that was tall and skinny with the roof about fifty feet high. We though that we could hide inside one of its interior walls to escape the rain. However, after setting up inside, we realized that every inch was susceptible to the rain. We then moved to the next building over where all the lights were on under its balcony. We decided to sacrifice inconspicuousness for a rain shelter. Inside the building, there were a multitude of tents spread out inside the building. We weren’t sure why they were in there, but we assumed we would get kicked out of our spot under the balcony early in the morning. Either way, at the time, we had a perfectly dry spot to try and get some sleep. I picked out a flat concrete bench that had no back or sides and Ben found a spot on the ground. Both spots seemed exceptionally comfortable.

August 11

We woke up from one of the best sleeps we have had outside at 7:50 am. The only time either one of us woke up during the night was when people came to open the building up sometime in the early morning. We were somewhat surprised that we weren’t asked to leave then, but we rolled over and went back to sleep. The Reichstag opened its door at 8:00 am, so it didn’t look like we were going to be making it in time to be in the first group. We assumed that there wouldn’t be a problem getting in since the guy told us there was never a line early in the morning. However, once we got there, there was already over a half hour wait. Since we had nothing better to do, we sat in line before entering through the doors. Security was pretty tight, so we were forced to empty our pockets and send our bags through a scanner; something we have become quite familiar with on this trip. Once through security, we were taken via elevator to the dome at the top of the building. I was surprised at the technology employed in the dome. First of all, you were given a free audio guide to take along with you on your walk around the spiral inside the dome. This audio guide was set to inform you of every site in Berlin that you would see through the dome windows. As you walked, the guide automatically adjusted to where you were in the building to tell you what exactly you were looking at. If you wanted to move on before it was done explaining your view, you just kept walking and it immediately started talking about the next site. Inside the dome, there was a complex mirror system that was designed to light the inside of the debate room down below. They had a special rotating shade around the dome that slowly moved around each day to keep the glare from reflecting inside. As we climbed around the spiral walkway to the top, we could see everything there was in Berlin. It was here that we were informed that the building we slept next to was actually the old congressional building. We could see the monument we first tried to sleep under and the building in plain view. Once to the top, our audio guides informed us that the hole in the top of the dome was designed to allow fresh air to circulate inside and a giant basin underneath the hole was designed to catch all the rainfall. The whole thing was a pretty neat experience.

After our visit to the Reichstag, we walked back to the train station to make our way to Hamburg. We had found a grocery store in the train station and we all set to go to Hamburg when we remembered that we wanted to stop in Wittenburg on the way to see if we could find the church where Martin Luther posted his complaints. Neither one of us were sure of the exact facts, but we thought we would give it a try on the way. Since the train to Hamburg wasn’t stopping in Wittenburg, we needed to find another train to get there. It was a pleasant surprise to find that of all the many platforms in the Berlin station, the next train to Wittenburg was leaving on the platform exactly across from the train to Hamburg. All we needed to do was turn around and wait twenty minutes longer.

Once in Wittenburg, we were disappointed to find the information booth made no mention of any catholic church in the area. It didn’t look like we were in the right place if the church even existed anymore. We were able to find a post office and a cheap grocery store though. We ended up finding ourselves back at the train station waiting for the next train to Hamburg less than an hour after we arrived. We needed to wait another hour before our train left. Our train ride turned into an interesting one as well. We met a couple Americans who were in their sixties. At first I thought they might be brothers. Then I started to think they might be gay. Once one of the men told a story about his “friend’s” brother and called him his brother-in-law, it pretty much closed the door on that question. They were pretty interesting, however, to say the least. It was one of those situations that you just had to see to believe. I could not explain these two in a reasonable amount of time…and we can just leave it at that.

After that experience was over, we said goodbye and got off at the Hamburg central station. Our first order of business was to take a nap. We headed for the first grassy spot we could find. It wasn’t very well secluded, but it was going to have to do because we didn’t feel like walking another step at that point. Our hour long nap ended up turning into four hours and the next thing we knew it was nearly 8:00 pm. We still needed to decide where we wanted to sleep for the night. We ended up finding a nice bridge to serve as our rain shelter, so we set up camp in a park right next to the river. We aren’t more than fifty feet from the bridge in case we get rained on again. It has been overcast all day, so it looks like there may be a distinct possibility of that happening. I hope we hear the rain before we wake up soaked because we are set up about fifty feet from a busy set of train tracks and about 100 feet from a main road. Even now at about 11:00 pm both are extremely noisy. I may have a hard time sleeping based on this fact and that I just woke up from a four hour nap only a few hours ago. Ben is already in a coma for the night so it doesn’t look like these points are bothering him. The time has come for me to put down my computer for the night and hope for sleep.

August 12

The night was not kind to us. Among the car traffic, the pedestrian traffic, and the train traffic, sleep did not come easily. On top of that, I managed to develop a cold over the night from the stiff, persistent breeze. One that would progress throughout the day, although never growing into more than a mere annoyance. And as if the night hadn’t been tough enough, it began to rain shortly after I woke up around 6:00 am. I woke Ben up and we walked to our designated rain shelter; a bridge that was only a ten second walk from our places in the grass. It was there that we would end up spending the majority of the day. Even though it was a cold, rainy day, we still managed to find a few moments of enjoyment throughout it.

After the rain had ceased and we decided to try to make something of the day. I started to get packed after wiping off a dozen spiders from my bag as I had rested my bag against a spider’s nest on the wall. When I put my ball cap on, I felt something moving around in my hair. I ended up pulling out some sort of worm about the size of my little finger. After inspecting the rest of my hat, we walked to the train station to find a place to go for the day. We already had our reservation set for the following morning to head to Copenhagen, so we were sure that we going to be spending another night in Hamburg. We decided to get on the train that headed to the other side of Hamburg to see if the other side of the city was more interesting. After making the ten minute ride, we looked out the window to see nothing of interest at all. We just kept on riding. After a couple more stops, we saw what looked like a nice small town, so we got off. There we found a Penny Markt just as in Reutlingen, so we were thrilled. We went in to buy some things to stock up on groceries for the next few days, but decided to only buy a couple things and then come back before we left the town. I ended up buying a pack of oranges for the Vitamin C and Ben bought one of his favorite yogurt drinks he has been ranting about for a couple weeks now. We then found a nice bench down the street and prepared for some serious sitting. I dove into the oranges while Ben got bored and went for a walk. He left his bag with me since he had been complaining of its weight constantly for the past few days. He had already sent some clothes home, but had taken on some souvenirs to weigh himself down. He had been contemplating throwing some clothes away over the past few days. However, despite these complaints, he ended up coming back from his walk with a new pair of pants and a few pair of socks. I made sure to point out that he had lost his right of complaint.

After going back to the Penny Markt to stock up on our groceries, we headed back to the train station while the afternoon was still young. Ben said he wanted to go back to our bridge to take a “shower” in the lake, even though it wasn’t even 70°. We didn’t say a word to each other during the entire train ride because our four previous conversations on the train platform had all resulted in arguments over the price of beer compared to milk in Germany, the cause of World War One, the differences in climate from Michigan and Germany, and the meaning of the word ‘anarchy’. With such a wide variety of conversation pieces gone awry, we each quietly decided to quit trying.

Back under our bridge, Ben decided that it was too cold and the water was too dirty for his bath after all. We ended up sitting around for the rest of the day. Since it was only about 2:30 pm when we got back to the bridge, it seemed as though we were in for a long day of relaxing. Among the highlights of the day was when Ben was eating lunch and he managed to eat a section of his sandwich that a certain bee was also enjoying at the time. By the time he realized that the crunchy part of his sandwich wasn’t a chunk of bone, he had already bit the bee’s head off and had gotten stung with the other end. This caused the inside of his left cheek to throb with pain for a while. He must stink more than I, because he has gotten stung nearly a half dozen times so far and I have hardly even seen a bee on the trip.

Later, after about 150 pages had been read in my book, I decided that I didn’t want to try to keep my eyes open any longer. I snapped off a picture of the hundreds of sailboats on the lake and got ready for sleep. Although it was only 8:30 pm and there were still many people walking back and forth under our bridge, I was exhausted from the previous night and wanted the morning to come quickly. Just after I watched a man haul in a nice fish (which looked like a walleye) about fifteen feet away from my bed, I rolled over and closed my eyes. I fell asleep well before the sun went down.

August 13

(9:00) After sleeping for a majority of the night, we woke up around 6:00 am as the sun had just peaked over the tree line. Our train left for Copenhagen at 7:25 am, but we decided to start walking there right away just in case. We dusted off our blankets and sleeping pads, packed up our bags, and started walking. We got to the train station with about an hour to spare, so we took the time to eat our breakfasts. I imagine that eventually Jagswurst sandwiches will get old soon since I bought two loafs of bread and three packages of this meat. For now, though, it made for a good breakfast with another orange.

After we boarded our train, we were happy to see we were seated next to an American couple in their thirties or forties who had been enjoying a trip similar to ours. We exchanged stories and travel tips for a while until they were upgraded to first class. Then another couple came to sit in the open seats. They only lasted for a few minutes before they found other seats. After the third couple came to sit next to us and proceeded to leave within mere minutes, I began to think that we really did stink pretty bad. This must be a distinct possibility due to our lack of shower for the last four or five days. Even though we have grown accustomed to our stench and my nose isn’t working properly due to a cold, I am still surprised that we can’t smell ourselves. Right now we are going to meet my mom’s old friend from high school, Brian, in Copenhagen. If the first thing he offers us is a shower, then it may be obvious.

(24:00) Before getting to Copenhagen, an odd thing happened with our train. It ran into a boat. It didn’t collide with a boat, but it literally rode right onto the rail tracks inside the ferry. We were told we needed to leave our stuff in the train and head up to the deck of the ferry for the forty-five minute cruise across the sea. Once we crossed the water, we got back onto the train and then rode through the other side of the boat as we continued toward Copenhagen. Once we got to Copenhagen, we needed to find a specific train station so we could figure out the directions I had written down to get to Brian’s house. Everything went smoothly except a fifteen minute detour we took when we went the wrong way out of the train station. It was worth our effort less than fifteen minutes upon arrival. We met Brian, and later his family, who are all extremely kind and hospitable. I took a shower for the first time in at least four days and emailed my mother to let her know we made it safely. We were thrilled to see that the boys, Jonas and Jakob (pronounced Yonas and Yakub), had a Playstation 3 and enjoyed all the same movies and video games as us. Even there television was in English with Danish subtitles.

Later in the evening, we sat down for dinner outside on the patio area. We enjoyed lasagna, salad, fresh bread, and I had a glass of Coca-cola. This was the first pop I remember having during the entirety of our trip. The dinner was delicious and filling, but the conversation was even better. Brian enjoyed hearing about some of the people in the community he hadn’t heard about in a while, and I enjoyed talking to somebody other than Ben. After dinner, we went to the park where Brian and Hanne kept their horse Endy (not sure of spelling). We took a few bikes along for Brian, Ben, and I to ride while Hanne rode Endy, a beautiful Icelandic horse. Hanne told us how Icelandic horses could not come back to Iceland once they left because Iceland has a ban on imported horses still standing from over 1000 years ago. If an Icelandic horse leaves Iceland for a competition or show, they were not allowed to come back, which is how they acquired Endy. As we rode through the park, Brian told us of its history of being a hunting grounds for three different species of deer. He said we would probably see some and boy did we ever. We ended up seeing probably more than 1000 deer during our bike ride through the woods. The deer were unafraid of humans, so I was able to get extremely close to a few. Each species of deer were a different size. The biggest of the deer closely resembled an elk although their body size wasn’t quite as big. Their antlers were massive, however, and we got extremely close to a group of bachelors in an open field. On the other side of the park was a castle that only allowed motor vehicles to through its gates once a week. In the field in front of the castle, there was deer as far as the eye could see. I would honestly believe that there were about 1000 deer just in the field. On the other side of the hill, you could see the sea, and across the water was Sweden. I can’t believe I forgot to take my camera along with me for this little excursion. After we had made the loop around the area, we came back a different way to see Copenhagen’s theme park which was the oldest in Europe. Brian, Ben, and I locked the bikes up and took a walk through the theme park while Hanne took the horse back. After we made our way through, we then rode back to meet Hanne at the horse stable. We then walked the horse back to its grazing area where it stays during every hour of the year as it can handle the cold with no problem.

Back at the house, we eventually settled down for tea, coffee, and a few snacks. One of the oddities was one of the snacks which didn’t seem odd at all at the time. They were black licorice gummies, but they had an odd tang. At first I liked them, then I didn’t, but in the end, I decided I liked them in a unique way. Besides the normal black licorice taste, they also had an extremely salty tang to them which is apparently a Danish quirk. I was told that the strong taste wasn’t even strong compared to most Danish black licorice. Anyway, we again delved into some interesting conversation. It is unbelievable how nice our hosts have been to us. First dinner, then a tour, then tea, and then an immaculate set up for our sleeping arrangements. I told them that they might be careful or else we could end up staying for the rest of our ten days left in Europe.