road trip numero dos

dearest family and friends,

first, pictures to come later; sorry! i am at a house without wifi which means i can't get my pictures onto this blog without significant difficulty. soon they will arrive! 
secondly, my apologies for the late arrival of my next blog. it is difficult to find an hour with the computer when you are in a new city every day, and sometimes more than one city!

this blog is to fill you all in on the second raod trip i was a part of this past wednesday and thursday. after meeting up with david last tuesday, we spent the day with jonas and a.c and then headed out on wednesday with 3 goals:
- 1) to see more of europe!
- 2) to reconnect with david
- 3) to let jo and a.c get ready for their wedding as it was only 2 days away!

we drove to the memorial at the site of the former buchenwald concentration camp. this was a sombering trip, but also a really good experience. many of the buildings in the camp were no longer standing, but the foundations were still visible to give the visitors a good idea of what the camp would have looked like during WWII. buchenwald was one of the biggest concentration camps (it was a work camp, not an extermination camp) and held over 240 000 inmates during its existence. at the time of its liberation, buchenwald held 110 000 people, if i remember correctly. the whole place was ... well, depressing, but really good - i have read so many books about the holocaust and the camps, but seeing one of these camps with my own eyes still was shocking - how humans can express this sort of brutality against other humans is atrocious. my prayers that day were that God would continuously be teaching the human race love, grace, mercy, and a desire to follow Him. how blessed i am to live in a peaceful country!
i have many more thoughts and things to say about our experience at buchenwald, but not everyone will want to read them, so please feel free to email me or talk to me when you see me if you would like to hear more about the camp.

david, brady, and i slept at a hostel that night (my first hostel!), and headed out in the morning to the town of erfurt, germany. that morning we saw st mary's cathedral and had a tour of the cathedral by the lovely, british tour guide georgia! she was enthusiastic and genuine and everything anyone could want in a tour guide! we enjoyed having her as our tour guide - she was so loving and wonderful the whole time! 

after lunch, we went to wartburg, which is the castle where martin luther translated the new testament! so cool! just like much of our european experience, the tour was really expensive and we couldn't go inside the main living area of the castle without a tour, so we satisified ourselves by exploring every other possible nook and cranny of the place. we had a great time! it was also very neat to see a place that is so important to our faith. just thinking about luther walking around the very place we were was an incredibly neat thought. yay for ancestors of faith! 

then we headed into eisenach (wartburg sits on the outskirts of eisenach) and saw the house where johann sebastian bach was born! (or so they think..... kind of takes away the charm when there is a sign directly outside the house that says "we are not entirely sure if this is the exact house where bach was born." but it was still exciting!!) that was a nerdy moment and highlight for me, because i love music and i have studied bach's music as a piano and theory student! very cool! we also saw the house where luther lived while he was a student. also very cool! 

a delicious pizza supper ensued. we ate at an italian restaurant in germany run by greeks with canadian guests. what a multicultural supper! fun times. the evening was beautiful, with the sun coming down on us at a not-too-hot-and-not-too-cold type of temperature, the food was good, and company even better. what a lovely evening that was :) 

after that we made it safely back to jonas' parents' house (where we stayed)! next up: blog about my first german wedding! SO MUCH FUN. 

soon, 
tejal :)