un día en sevilla: Deutschland

During last week's holiday weekend in Andalucía, I traveled to visit my wonderful boyfriend in Germany. He spent hours driving so that I'd get to see the all places I wanted to during my short stay in Southern Germany.

Here are some select pictures from the weekend...

Neuschwanstein - a princess' dream castle!

(and also the inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle)

View of the German countryside...

In Munich, we did the two most touristy things there are to do:

Hofbrauhaus (royal brew house)

At the Hofbrauhaus we ate white sausage with sweet mustard and a German meatloaf, the name of which when translated to English is "liver-cheese." And of course, we drank beer.

We watched these little puppets "dance" on the Munich city hall building.

I overheard a tour guide telling his tour group that the dancing puppets is actually the

"#1 Most Overrated Thing to Do on a European Vacation."

We also went to the German Museum in Munich, which showcases all German technological and mechanical advances, from certain old boating techniques to renewable energy and nanotechnology.

We stopped next at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum. As intense and sobering as the experience was, I am grateful to have been able to visit. The museum portion is very thorough, well-done, and tasteful. I learned a lot of new facts about the Holocaust. Dachau was the only concentration camp to have been in use throughout all 12 years of the Nazi regime.

The entrance to Dachau...

View of the grounds and a watchtower...

One of the preserved bedrooms...

Ovens in the Crematorium...

More of the camp and where the barracks used to be...

I don't mean to trivialize the experience by posting pictures as if it were a trip to any normal museum or tourist attraction, but I think the desolation of the site is evident in the photos. For me, the overwhelming part was not necessarily thinking about the number of people that died in the place where I was standing. Rather, I was struck by the thought of the infinite extent of sorrow and degradation that were felt by the prisoners of the camp as I stood in the same spot they did.

In Gaggenau, Felix's hometown, the main attraction is the Mercedes-Benz Unimog museum. We rode in an Unimog around an obstacle course, through rough terrain, over logs, up and down 70º angles. The Unimog can clamber through a forest, knocking down trees of up to 15cm in diameter. It can be submerged in water, and climb snowy

mountains.

And it's definitely not the worst tourist attraction that a small town can have.

We also visited nearby natural hot springs, which are not the muddy, hole-in-the-ground natural hot springs I was expecting. The springs, which look like hotel swimming pools, have been transformed and incorporated by a large spa, complete with steam rooms, sauna, gym, and more.

The last portion of my trip was spent in Felix's university town, Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe is actually well-known in the urban planning community for being a "fan city," meaning that the city has a center point from which all the streets go outward. The center point is a castle that is located on Felix's university's campus: