#jessabroad ~ Weimar/Buchenwald

   Our second week in Osnabrück consisted of more classes, more shopping, and preparing ourselves for our long excursion. From fighting over the laundry machines to navigating our way through Kaufland's to gather snacks for the bus ride across Germany! We left around four in the morning on Wednesday, after a night of staying up all night so we would sleep on the bus ride, headed to our first destination--Weimar! The bus ride was filled with naps, charades, and card games as we made our way to Buchenwald.

   Once we arrived in Weimar and got to Buchenwald, the atmosphere completely changed. It sounds cliched to say, but it really does just feel heavier when you arrive at a place that was the site of so much hatred and suffering. Since we'd read Night by Elie Weisel in our class during the semester, this was a particularly heavy place to visit for us. The visit is hard to describe in words, and the value of the visit is more than I can describe in words; it's one thing to learn about the tragedies of the Holocaust in a classroom or from a book, but to see firsthand where these things actually took place is more valuable than all of the information you can read or absorb during a lecture.  

   After our visit at Buchenwald concluded, we boarded the bus once again to make our final drive to Dresden. We arrived at our hostel and unpacked our bags before heading off throughout the city to find a place for dinner. We ate as a class in a brauhaus, trying various traditional German foods and beers, before heading back to the hostel to get rest before the next day.