Germany

Today started out sad, as we were all very depressed to leave the beautiful city of Paris, but also some what excited to see Germany. We drove about 3 hours and stopped in Verdun to see Fort Duoumont and Citadel. At Fort Duoumont we followed Dr. Bradford through a series of tunnels that showed what the soldiers living conditions were like during the war there. There bed chambers were the most interesting i thought. They had a bunch of bed bunks in a room, each bunk smaller than a queen but much larger than a twin. Now, that wouldn't be a problem if each bunk didn't have to have 3 people on it. This meant that six men took up the space of one bunk bed. The room wasn't even that large, but multiplying the amount of bunks in the room meant almost 100 men in this small area. I can't even imagine having to live in a place so cold and dreary.

After the Fort, we all got back on the bus and headed to Citadel. This was another set of tunnels. However, instead of walking around we got in this little cart thing and rode through the tunnels, watching videos and seeing models of what would be going on back then. It wasn't the most exciting ride...but still pretty cool to go through the tunnels. After that we headed towards McDonald's for lunch, and then got back on the bus to continue on to Germany. It was another 3 hours to Otzenhausen, so I'm really glad I fell asleep.

Alex and I are roommates once again (I know we just can't get enough of each other haha). Our room is really nice, we each have our own beds, and the room is very spacious. The hotel room we shared in Paris was gorgeous, but if you were at all claustrophobic you would have dropped dead within two seconds. This place is also very convenient, everything we would need is very close by. Our classroom is just downstairs from our rooms. There is another building right next door that is kind of a "party room". They have a ping-pong table and Foosball table. There is also a laundry room downstairs. In the last building there is an extremely nice bar that plays American music and has a pool table. It really is a nice place! And perfect to focus on school work since we won't be going downtown or anything. We had dinner near the bar tonight which was delicious! Mom, I know you said German food wasn't really that good, but this was pretty wonderful haha. We had BBQ sausage and ham for a main dish, potato salad, pasta salad, bread and some kind of carrot thing. They also had roasted corn on the cob which was delicious, and some tomato thing that had some garnish stuff on top. All in all it was a great meal and I'm really excited to eat again haha.

Well it's pretty late here...Alex and I decided to do Watson's extra credit paper tonight before classes started back up again. So we each had to watch a movie and write a 2 pg review on it. Alex watched Schindler's List (amazing movie, but I had already seen it), and I watched the movie Strike; a German film that talks about the Polish workers strikes after the war. It mainly focuses on Agnieszka Kowalska, a woman that becomes one of the founders for Poland's Solidarity Union. It was a great film and very easy to write about because of the powerful story line. But anyways time to get some sleep, night!