Weimar

Last Thursday, it was Christ's Ascension, so we had holiday. As far as I can tell, no one celebrates that. It is also Männertag, or men's day. On this day, men gather together and walk around with beer all day (the first group we saw was probably at 8am or so) and get completely smashed. When I say men, I do not mean only college age kids. The majority of them seemed to be in their twenties, but there were also a large number of men in their seventies and older doing the same thing. The only difference was that the orange vests and silly hats of the youth turned into tuxes and top hats as they got older. Sadly, I did not partake in this holiday. Instead, I used it to take the train to Weimar. As usual, all of the photos that I took are on facebook. If you cannot see those for some reason, let me know and I will post the rest of them here as well.

First, we visited what remains of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. This camp was by no means the worst of them, but it was still absolutely appalling. None of the barracks remain. Only a few of the buildings remain. What does remain is an incredibly vast open space with rocks on the ground marking where each of the barracks (about 30) used to be located. I can say with complete certainty that it is the most terrible, disturbing thing that I have ever seen. As a German major, I am fairly well-versed in the history. I have read books. I have seen movies. Being there is completely different. I have no desire to ever go back to such a place. It is indescribably horrible, and all I had to do was visit it 65 years after it was liberated.
The crematorium is on the right. On the left is the old storehouse, where they now run the museum. Just out of sight on the right, on the other side of the fence, are the ruins of what once was a zoo. That is right. A zoo. If I were to stand in between the fence and the ruins, I could nearly touch them both at the same time. It is that close to the fence. And people flocked to this zoo during the war. I really cannot stress how disturbing all of this is. The only way to understand is to visit one for yourself. It really sickens me that there are still people in this country (especially this part) that support this ideology. Now that I have exhausted my vocabulary for describing bad things, I will move on to the happier portion of Thursday.

After taking the bus back into town, we walked down towards the down center and started the museum visiting. For less than ten dollars, one can visit nearly every museum in town (which is a hell of a lot) We started are tour with visiting Friedrich Schiller's house. The museum is largely just a recreation of the house as it was two hundred years ago. Somewhere else in the town is a Schiller and Goethe museum. That might have more interesting things in it. This one seemed to be a collection of beds and desks that said "don't touch" on them.
After visiting Schiller's House, the obvious next step was to visit Goethe's house. It is clear that Goethe was really rich, because his house is gigantic and it is full of greek and roman statues and paintings. It also has lots of other fancy things that you can look at. There is a large library that you are only allowed to look at through a cage door. That is a pity, because I would have much rather seen what books he had than a fifteenth statue of some person from antiquity. I feel that it was more impressive than any of the castles I have visited, because he wasn't royalty. He was just a man with a knack for writing good books and poetry. Old money can buy you impressive things over time. It is much more impressive when it is only one man over a span of 80 years. Behind the house, they maintain a garden. Goethe had a thing for plants and gardens, and they definitely do a good job keeping it up.
The back of the house, as viewed from the garden.

After the Goethe house, we made are way to the old graveyard. It is the second largest graveyard I have ever seen. The difference between this one and Arlington is fairly open and devoid of trees. This one is very full of trees and other plant life, making it seem very dark. Although, that could have been the fact that it was nearly 6pm and it was a cloudy day to begin with. It is a very beautiful cemetery with lots of old and famous graves. The only thing I didn't like about it is that it had a fairly small number of exits for its large size. By the time we finally found our way out, I was becoming more and more claustrophobic and was nearly ready to hop the fence.

After escaping, we made our way towards the Nietzsche archive. We got there at 5:42pm, by my watch (which is slightly fast) and we had to practically beg the lady to let us in (It had a large sign saying the last admission was at 5:45 and it didn't close until 6) She was practically packed up by the time we got there and would only let us look around for a few minutes. Including time arguing with her to let us in, we were there for less than five minutes. I don't care if it was a holiday, she was still being a bitch and I hope that she locks her keys in her house or trips and badly breaks her nose. That all being said, the brief time that I was there was very interesting. When I go back on my return trip to Germany, I hope that she is still working there, just so I can give her the finger. If you cannot tell, I am very bitter.
After that, we walked back to the train station with the intent of getting an early train. We took a brief detour to get some döner kebabs. As it turned out, this was a very costly detour. We arrived at the train station just as the train we needed left (we were there an hour ahead of what we had planned, so that was just a fluke) We killed some time in the train station bookstore and then headed out to the track to wait for the next one. Due to some emergency that came up (I suspect that it involved a drunk idiot, but I do not know) our train ended up being 40 minutes late. Not quite what we had in mind, but we eventually got home, even if it was pretty late when it happened. The next day we went to Leipzig. I will update about that the next time I feel like procrastinating homework. Wednesday seems likely. Bis dann, Marc.