Ciao tutti!
It has been a while since my first post and I am sorry for the delay! There has been so much I have been up to I have hardly had any down time. Between school and travel I have been quite the busy bee.
It has been a while since my first post and I am sorry for the delay! There has been so much I have been up to I have hardly had any down time. Between school and travel I have been quite the busy bee.
Where to begin!? The weekend after my first post was our trip to Germany. Thirty people from UC Siena went with a program to Munich Germany for the famous beer festival, Oktoberfest. We left on a bus at midnight from Florence, Italy, drove all through the night, and arrived in the morning very tred but excited in Munich Germany.
Our accommodations consisted of two person camping tents at a campsite run by a bunch on consistently slightly inebriated Australians. That in itself was entertaining. We quickly settled in, threw on some fresh clothes,and headed off to the festival. That first day was incredibly fun. No one had any issues getting into any of the tents and the weather was great.
Some friends and I all sat amidst thousands of people and drank fine German beer, sang songs we had no idea of the meaning to, and socialized with people from all over the world. 
I had REAL pretzels ( amazing ) and even ventured to try a bratwurst ( also amazing ). We sang and danced into the night and returned to our tents for some much needed sleep. Unfortunately, the next day was not as successful. We were a little bit late getting up, even though 8:00 is not late by my standards, and found ourselves unable to get into any of the tents at Oktoberfest. We had the pleasure of standing outside in the rain for several hours, only to make it to the door and have an extremely angry German man, whose blood pressure was probably through the roof, all of a sudden claim that they were not letting anyone else in and to “ECSIT NAAWWHHH!” Fun. Not.
We ended up wandering around the festival, buying new sweatshirts we didn’t want just so we could have some dry clothes, and returning to the campsite early to thaw ourselves and visit with other travelers.
The upside is that I managed to steel an authentic German beer stein ( the first and probably only thing I will ever steal!! Don’t tell!! I thought one was hard enough to sneak out, so imagine my surprise when some of my friends returned with as many as seven in tow!)
The third day in Munich, some friends and I decided to go visit the Concentration Camp Memorial in Dachau. That was a very depressing and sobering experience. We did a self guided tour, that really turned into us splitting up and wandering all over the camp. We walked through the torture and interrogation rooms, the baracks, and the hospital. We stood in the gas chambers and the crematorium where thousands and thousands of people were murdered. It is one thing to read about the holocaust and study it in texts, but being in a place where such tragedies occurred put everything into a completely different context. My most resounding thought the whole time I was there was “how could one human being do this to another?” Visiting the concentration camp was a very dark insight to the lack of humanity that exists in this world. I left the camp angry, frustrated, and sad, but still grateful that I was able to visit a real concentration camp at least once in my life.
After the camp we realized we were cutting it close on time. We took two buses and a train back to the campsite and had just enough time to throw everything in a bag and snatch the last seats on the bus back to Siena. We returned at one in the morning exhausted and happy to be home.
I had REAL pretzels ( amazing ) and even ventured to try a bratwurst ( also amazing ). We sang and danced into the night and returned to our tents for some much needed sleep. Unfortunately, the next day was not as successful. We were a little bit late getting up, even though 8:00 is not late by my standards, and found ourselves unable to get into any of the tents at Oktoberfest. We had the pleasure of standing outside in the rain for several hours, only to make it to the door and have an extremely angry German man, whose blood pressure was probably through the roof, all of a sudden claim that they were not letting anyone else in and to “ECSIT NAAWWHHH!” Fun. Not. 
The third day in Munich, some friends and I decided to go visit the Concentration Camp Memorial in Dachau. That was a very depressing and sobering experience. We did a self guided tour, that really turned into us splitting up and wandering all over the camp. We walked through the torture and interrogation rooms, the baracks, and the hospital. We stood in the gas chambers and the crematorium where thousands and thousands of people were murdered. It is one thing to read about the holocaust and study it in texts, but being in a place where such tragedies occurred put everything into a completely different context. My most resounding thought the whole time I was there was “how could one human being do this to another?” Visiting the concentration camp was a very dark insight to the lack of humanity that exists in this world. I left the camp angry, frustrated, and sad, but still grateful that I was able to visit a real concentration camp at least once in my life.
After the camp we realized we were cutting it close on time. We took two buses and a train back to the campsite and had just enough time to throw everything in a bag and snatch the last seats on the bus back to Siena. We returned at one in the morning exhausted and happy to be home.
