Could I Be Any More Blessed?

Last week was our Germany trip. I hate that it has taken me so long to get caught up on this, but it is really difficult to find time when you get back from a week long trip where all you are carrying is a backpack. That's right, I'm officially a backpacker :) I never thought that I would be able to fit everything that I needed into a backpack for a whole week, and let me tell you, it was really difficult and I ended up wearing the same pair of jeans for like 5 days, but so did everyone else... and I'm in Europe! So who cares? :)

I never expected that I would have loved Germany so much. I knew it was going to be beautiful, but I was a little bit discouraged by the places in Germany where we had already traveled. I thought: "If they're going to be like those places, how are we gonna find enough things to do for a week??" Oh me of little faith. We spent more than 10 hours traveling to get to Freilassing, Germany which is where we slept the whole trip but spent very little actual time. Freilassing is a little bitty town on the border of Germany and Austria, and it is adorable, but there is very little to do in the town past 6 p.m. and because we were having to leave so early to get places and getting back late, we never really were able to see very much of the town. We were only a seven minute train ride to Salzburg, Austria so we spent a great deal of time there, and I loved it!

I suppose the best idea to tell about the trip is to just quickly tell what happened day by day and try to include major details. We spent forever on a train on Monday, September 1, to go to Germany. We arrived at around 8 that evening at went straight to our hotel. The owner of the hotel had dinner for us (not for free, but for cheap! And it was good dinner too!) all ready and it was frites and schnitzel (basically french fries and fried pork chops). I was so exhausted at dinner that I pretty much sat there staring at the ceiling before our food came, and even accidentally dozed off a few times :) After that we got settled into the hotel (a few of us had a room to ourselves-- it was AMAZING!) and went to bed because we were off to an early start the next morning. The next day we went to Berchtesgaden, Germany to take a cruise on Lake Konigssee which is situated in the middle of the Bavarian Alps.. GORGEOUS! We spent some time doing some shopping and then headed to Salzburg, Austria. Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was filmed (well, mostly) and where Mozart's house is. Let me just tell you, the town is covered in everything Mozart. There are little chocolates with his face on the wrappers everywhere. We finally gave in and got some an they were pretty good-- ridiculously rich though. The next morning we went back to Berchtesgaden and went to Hitler's Eagles Nest and the Salt Mines. The view from the Eagles Nest was AMAZING! It was so gorgeous up there. Then we went to the Salt Mines that are there. That was pretty awesome, the tour was boring but we got to put on these jumpsuits that were like spacesuits and we went down these giant slides and on a tram to the center of the earth :) Basically, it was great. The next day we went to Cinderella's castle!!! We took like 14 hours of buses and trains and made it to Neuschwanstein and climbed a mountain to get some amazing views of the castle. It was beautiful! The next day we went to Vienna and didn't have a whole lot of time to stay there, but we were able to see Schonbrunn palace and while it wasn't as pretty on the outside as Neuschwanstein, it was WAY prettier on the inside. Saturday was one of my favorite days of the whole trip. A group of us left Freilassing at 12:30 A.M. and went to Budapest, Hungary. It was not as beautiful as Germany was, but we had a really great time walking around the city and going to the zoo!!

Sunday gets its own paragraph. We went to Dachau Concentration Camp. Dachau was the first concentration camp to open and it remained open for all 12 years of Hitler's "reign." I can not begin to explain how sobering it is to visit a places where so many souls have died at the hands of men so merciless. All I could think the whole time was the fact that these Jewish people thought that they were following God... and yet, they died for something that was not right. It was so sad to wander through the area and see places where people's ashes had been scattered. To think about the people who were so completely malnourished and ill and yet they still had to work harder than I will ever have to work. It's just impossible to imagine just what they went through. That'll really make you stop to think, huh?

We are leaving for Paris in about two hours and I need to shower and finish getting all packed. I should have internet while I'm in Paris, but I don't know how much time or energy I will have to post much on here. Hopefully I will. I'm going to the Eiffel Tower today!! :) Yay!

I love you all so very much and miss you more than you know!!