Let the Walls Fall Down

Hello from Berlin! Well, it's our last night in Continental Europe.... what a wonderful adventure it has been. Lots has happened the past few days, here's a basic rundown:
Salzburg was a breath of fresh air and we all agreed, our most relaxed stay. Meeting up with Katie Miller and Mallory Duran was so wonderful! We got "Mexican" food at a place called LEMONCHILLI and met an Austrian waiter named Bernard who wants to move to Australia after couch surfing through the western United states. Then Mills and I went for a little walk and got some apple struedel... this all put a little extra pep in my step, as did our own 4 hour bike tour around the city in the rain singing "Doe a Deer"! We saw lot of the things in the Sound of Music (just missed the gazebo from the sixteen going on seventeen song!), fantastic cathedrals, a street full of the craziest most intricate shop signs I ever saw (alliterate much?), royal gardens, and a huge waterwheel that powered a lift up the mountainside up to the fortress. I also got a chance to hike the mountain nearby on my own up to the fortress/ castle (whose name I can neither remember nor pronounce) and did a painting of the gorgeous Austrian skyline as it stretched out for miles out into the hills, with the teal green cuppolas and church bells ringing all around.
The next morning we had our free breakfast with REAL coffee and toast, said goodbye to my brunette Azusa beauties and hopped the train to Munich!

MUNICH.
Well, if you've ever been to Edinborough, something about the flavor of this city reminded me of the Scottish town. It is not huge, but it does have a lot of historic buildings, including a church with a huge clock that a life-size Dutch-looking boy and girl come out and dance on the hour. Crystal, Ames and I decided we wanted to try and hit "Lenny's free bike tour" at 4 PM in the city center at the "Fish fountain"... We got there and realized why it was free.
Lenny never showed.
Thankfully, there were four American guys standing around looking just as dazed and confused as we were, and we became fast friends with Peter, John, Kyle and Kevin from Chicago. Peter was German-blooded and had the book with all the facts, so we decided to go out and discover our own tour! It rained again (the rain has followed us everywhere we go and it's become a joke between us and God at this point) but we didn't care. After a humourous tour with no historical or relevant information whatsoever led by our very own Amy Orr and the witty Kevin, we ended up in the famous "Chinese beer garden"-- which is really a bogoda with a bunch of picnic tables under it. The only out-of-the-ordinary sight there was a rather intoxicated woman sitting next to us, singing loudly, whose pants had slid down well beyond her Y shaped undergarments thus enticing the guys to believe she was a man because, they claimed, she had a man's derriere... as inappropriate as it sounds, the conversation was the only possible way to cope with what we were seeing. It looked-- painful .
Anyway, the gents thought it was fascinating that three girls could possibly only come to Munich for one night and not really care about drinking, but we had a good laugh anyway and experienced the culture enough to have the smallest mugs of quality wheat beer... I've discovered that a glass of wine only every now and then with a good meal is what I enjoy most. Don't worry, dear parents... none of us has even gotten remotely close to getting drunk. We do you proud. We're already too self conscious about looking like dumb tourists to let our American stigmas be enhanced by any amount of "liquid courage."
We continued on from there saw the royal palace and a beautiful garden... and my favourite part-- the river surfers!! Yes. There is a spot on this river-- it's more of a creek really--- near a bridge with lots of currents that the surfers meet and surf from bank to bank like it was a skate park! About fifteen young men in wet suits carve the water on their short boards for a few intense seconds, do incredible jumps and swishes, then dive downstream to the bank, make the hike back up and do it again. It was so awesome!
The girls then went back to Jaeger's hostel, grabbed Carissa and got a sweet dinner at this Italian place before meeting back up with the guys at a beer hall called "Augustiners" where we met a bunch of local students and sang songs. Again, no worries, mom. Sobriety is sexy... We like to remember our fun :)
We headed back, got our free "drink" of juice at the bar, then konked out early for the next day.

DACHAU
Dachau was the hardest thing I've experienced on this trip. I never want to forget what I saw or learned there as long as I live. We arrived mid-morning, got our audio guides and split up as we walked the route of thousands of Jews, Poles, gypsies, intellectuals, priests and anyone who resisted the Nazi regime. In a concentration camp orignally labeled as a "re-education camp" we saw and in a small way felt the experience of the death spot. The camp has been preserved in spots and leveled in others, but at each spot you could listen to the history where the "role call" happened every day, see where the barracks of some 30,000 men were housed where only 5,000 were supposed to reside. They built artillery, had a small bowl of soup for their rations, had their heads shaved, were forced to give up three things at the entrance-- their property (including civilian clothes), their rights, and their dignity as human beings. This is the place where some would not see freedom for twelve years, from 1933-1945, but most would never go beyond the rectangle hell, until their premature deaths.
The conditions were gruesome, the stench of bodies burning in the crematorium increased daily, and the doctors who did experiments testing humans for how hypothermia shut down each individual organ had one principle for dealing with the sick and dying: the more exterminations, the better.
At both ends of the walkway that runs through the middle of the camp with 20 or so barracks on either side stand memorials. On the south end is a gigantic rusty iron structure that looks like very thick barbed wire, only when one does a double take do you see that the barbs are actually fingers, and the twisted knots are actually heads, the thin lines are the limbs are of the bodies mangled and stretching out into harsh shapes that evoke the agony of the prisoners. Below this structure is a ramp walkway that goes below ground level in a T shape to another monument in the wall. A series of different colored triangles linked together in a chain shape that symbolize the solidarity the prisoners formed amongst themselves in spite of the SS tyranny, and at the other end of the walkway is a large stone with the words printed in German, Hebrew, English, French, Italian and Sweedish:
"Never Again."
At the other end of the camp stand three chapel-like memorials: protestant, Catholic and Jewish, each building with its own shape, color and message, but all crying out to God for a mixture of justice and mercy.
As I entered the space of into third, chapel, the protestant building with all it's funky angles, clean yet unrestricted lines and weird floorplan-- a direct and purposeful contrast to the controlled right-angles of the camp outside, I said a prayer and was overwhelmed with grief. How could this happen? How could one human being do this to another? And the hardest question-- could I do this? Inflict this harm? Commit murder? In my heart I know the sin is there, and the capacity to sin in every way... my only hope is in knowing that God is good. I wrote a sort of poem and read out of the lone Bible there on a wooden stand in the center of the room Romans 12. That chapter that haunts my life it seems.

God save us from ouselves
From the sin in every life
And the hate in every heart
Thank you for life, for liberation
For the strength to stand up
To face evil and declare it void
In the presence of your love
Conquer the last enemy
That is called death
Let us not be overcome by evil
But overcome evil with good.

There was so much despair, and yet so much hope. So much pain. And yet the healing and reconciliation between the German people and the Jews of Europe continues fifty-three years later.
Let us not forget. And declare with conviction, reprimand, solidarity and hope:
NEVER AGAIN.

I love you, pray for Europe. The church is here, but it is quiet and in need of revival. I covet your prayers as my heart is heavy today. Tell you about our stay here in Berlin with the Keltners tomorrow :)
-Lo
Ve