I see London I see France...

see all photos »

I was goint to write the newest French phrase I have mastered, but I'll have to get back to you on that one because I have no idea how to spell it.

This is a French keyboard, so I apologize in advance for the typos and bad grammar. OK. I have been very bad. Amsterdam, was I done with that? We went to the Delftware factory which was right down the street. I am proud to say that we both escaped without buying anything. Only 2 real delftware factories are left, the rest are fakes. Most of their painters work there their entire lives. It is really pretty and really expensive, and if I have learned anything in the last 6 months by living entirely on the contents of a 15 kilo backpack, it is that I don't need any more candlesticks. All joking aside, I have actually learned that I don't need so much stuff. So there you go.

So after the pottery, we went to the beach! It was cold and windy, but the sea air smelled great after all the canals in Amsterdam. Have to recommend Delft as a base for seeing Amsterdam... they have nice canals and buildings, too, but no crowds. We also stumbled into a concert of marching band music in the cathedral! I went back to Germany with my friend Andrew to see what life is like in a little town on the edge of the Black Forest where there are no tourists. It is really nice! The town, Buehl, has a lovely platz lined with shops and cafes, perfect for drinking a cappuccino and reading a book. He also has a gas stove and a washing machine. And a train station 3 blocks away. So I took day trips to Strassbourg, France, Freiburg, and Baden Baden. Taxed my German abilities to teh max, and I didn't even know I had any German abilities. Didn't go to the spas as I'm not quite down with the whole nudity amongst strangers thing. Also cooked and ate pretty well. Andrew and his friend Chris were excellent hosts; they took me to castles, scenic lookouts, and an alpine lake which is supposedly inhabited by sirens that lure fishermen into the water where they are eaten by the Devil. You can buy nudie pictures of these lovelies in the shops.

Last Thursday, I went to Munich. It is a really lovely drive through the countryside on the A8, especially between Stuttgart and Munich. Driving on the autobahn is definitely an experience. The Germans are excellent drivers, but there really are no speed limits and they drive FAST. The traffic jams are epic, too.

Next morning, I went to Dachau, which is about 20 km outside of Munich. I will only give a quick recap of what I learned, but will talk much more in depth with anyone who is interested. Dachau was a concentration camp, not a death camp; its purpose was to keep certain elements of society segregated and demoralized so that they were unable to organize resistance to the third reich. Only men were imprisoned there, an estimated 400,000 over the 15 or so years the camp was open. But that is only the official numbers, probably many more actually were there. The Nazis considered it their model camp, and most of their totally scary ss bigwigs trained there. The men worked grueling jobs like stone quarrying, rolling highways, and munitions. It was liberated by the US Army Rainbow division which was advancing on Munich after 2 prisoners escaped from their work parties and informed teh American troops that there was a large prison camp nearby. The Americans arrived to find a typhus epidemic, incenerators working 24 hours a day to burn the stacks of unburied dead, the ashes from which were used to fertilize the prison kitchen's vegetable gardens and fields, living skeletons packed into the so called endless bunks in row after row of rickety sheds, a train full of recent arrivals which had been forgotten as teh commanding officers fled and left junior ss guards and trainees in charge; the train had been left sitting there for a week and every single person onboard had died. The Americans opened the doors and the people just spilled out all over the tracks. Shocking stuff, folks. They show ss film footage of the conditions at the camp which is absolutely overwhelming. Interestingly, every German schoolchild, military inductee, and police cadet must visit Dachau or one of the other concentration camps before they graduate. And, as my tour guide said, there is much more to modern Germany than this piece of history. I had to keep repeating that to myself so I wouldn't throw punches back in Munich. It is inconceivable to me that the locals didn't know about this horror. I cannot believe that this took place during our parents' lifetimes. Well, some of our parents. Not my mom who as we all know is only 39. Nationalism is a really scary thing. We allow this sort of genocide to continue today. Just some of the things I had to think about that evening.

I was ready for some gorgeous nature, and boy did I get it! As my last entry states, we tried to go hiking in Austria, but the car was mad and gave up on the steep hill. That was Saturday; Sunday we walked around part of the lake next to the town of Zell am See after it stopped thunderstorming. Monday we got the car back and took our chances on the road again, and this time it was drama-free. The views are breathtaking. Too many people, but we were able to get off the road and onto the trail for a walk on Austria's longest glacier. It was awesome! During our walk, we heard someone doing what sounded like avalanche control which was a bit scary as we were in a big valley. The climb back out kicked my butt, but I finally made it. I kept trying to buy more water at the top, but was always ending up with the nasty fizzy stuff. Very frustrating.

I have a whole cd of awesome pictures from the mountains; I'll post them as soon as I find an internet place that will let me do it.

So issues thqt Germany needs help with: -BO, ever hear of deodorant? Obviously not. -Manners, like pushing old ladies out of the way on the sidewalk -TV, they dub everything in German so the only channels available to non-German speakers are CNN and MTV. Hey, nobody speaks German except you guys!

-everything is verboten, including jaywalking and riding the shopping cart in the grocery store parking lot

Issues that they have mastered and school the US on: -pretzels, fresh baked, with cheese and bacon on top. Oh my god. -drinking in public and not making a big deal out of it -no speed limits -putting on the hazards as you approach a traffic jam so the guy behind you doesn't slam into you

-stopping or yielding for peds and bikes -train travel Now onto France... I have actualy scored accomodation in teh town where Monday's Tour de France stage ends. It is an individual time trial, so I'll get to see more than just one big technicolor blur.

Au revoir! Erin