Day 3: Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

After a really nice first night in the hostel, we had the pleasure of being woken up at 4:40am by our new roommates, who walked in and exclaimed loudly "hey, what's up!" to which Rachel replied "Um, we're all sleeping?" One of our new roommates was also a heavy snorer, so the three of us were actually awake and taking showers by 7:30am.

We then took our time and made our way downstairs where we had a leisurely all you can eat breakfast at the cafe in the hostel.

Eventually we made our way to the train station and started the hour-long journey out to visit the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Since we'd dropped a few euro on the bike tour the day before, we decided against doing an organized tour and instead rented the audio guides when we got there.

According to the guides, the concentration camp was built as a model concentration camp in 1936 and was initially used for political prisoners and foreign prisoners of war, especially from Poland. Eventually they expanded it to include all other "antisocial" groups, including Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's witnesses and anyone else they had a problem with. Gas chambers, firing squad trenches, and crematoriums were added on accordingly.





It was a pretty somber tour around, we spent a good 3-4 hours walking around the camp; there were a lot of interesting documents (sadly most of them in German and without translation) in addition to the exhibition of the original buildings.

It was definitely an interesting and educational experience, and despite seeing it with my own eyes, I am still shocked that this kind of thing went on, in a small village filled with people who apparently did not object to the electric barb wire fences, guard towers, and frequent shooting that took place within their sight. Unbelievable.

We got back in the late afternoon and were pretty starving, so we stopped to eat somewhere near the train station. I was a little annoyed when I tried to buy tickets for our trip to Prague and the 4 people at the ticket counter- in the train station- claimed they didn't speak any English. I thought all Germans spoke SOME english, and even the ticket agents in France (who are notoriously bad about speaking English) know how to help their English-speaking tourists.

After getting over my annoyance, we walked around some more, went to visit the Reichstag, but the line to get up into the dome was way too long,a nd we decided to go have a drink down by the river instead. It was a really nice night out, and there was some excitement in the air from the first games of the Euro 2008 soccer tournament going on.

We took a leisurely walk back to the hostel, hung out for a bit with our Canadian friends Brady and Emily, and then hit the sack for a decent night of sleep.