Audi, Bad Wimpfen and the Easter weekend

Last weekend the school took us on a trip to  the Audi factory in Germany. We got to see how cars were put together from beginning to end and it was really cool to walk through the factory and see how everything works. We walked through the Audi R8 factory and it was crazy to see that everything on that car is hand welded and hand assembled, with the exception of one or two robots. We also got to walk through a different factory and see how the "cheaper" cars were almost entirely assembled by robots. The craziest thing was to see how extremely accurate these robots were, and its almost impossible for me to figure out how you would program a machine to do such intricate work. I tried to sign a lease and get a car to take home with me but they weren't havin' it :(. Maybe in a few years haha.
After we saw the Audi factory, we went to a small renaissance town near by called Bad Wimpfen where we had lunch and walked around for a while. The town was surrounded by a wall, just like you would picture any renaissance castle or town, and it was so pretty. They had a huge extravagant church (what Germany city doesn't have one of those) and watch towers that you could climb up to look over the whole town.All in all that was a fun day, and it got us out of class so I can't complain too much!

With the exception of an exam, we have only had one day of class this week and we are leaving for Berlin tomorrow for just under a week. Needless to say, life in Germany is rough! This last weekend has been pretty laid back. The town has been closed on friday, sunday and today for Easter celebrations. We did get to get out of town on thursday to see Würzburg a bit, and then saturday to see a little bit of Heidelberg.(some pics below). This whole weekend we have been lucky to have 70 degree days, so even just being stuck in small ol' Bad Mergentheim hasn't been too bad. For Easter Sunday some of us headed to the Luthren Church for Easter service. Even though it was all in German and we couldn't understand the entire message, it was still a good experience and on the upside, only lasted just over an hour. We were afraid it would last like two hours or so. After church, we packed up some food and hiked up the hill for an American style BBQ with hamburgers and steaks. It was an unorthadox Easter, but enjoyable none the less. Today is yet another relaxing day around town, and tomorrow we will be taking a bus trip to Berlin until Saturday night. We have plenty of museums and various things planned (the trip is with the school so they planned some stuff for us) and hopefully some free time to explore and do stuff on our own.

Wurzburg pics:

Pictures from Munich

Yes, that is a skeleton of a once living person at the bottom. Imagine sitting in church and having that guy just stare at you.

München (Munich)

Where to start, where to start. The first night in Munich we headed to the Hofbräuhaus, where we were imediately exposed to men in Lederhosen with large liter sized beers having a grand old time. It almost felt like we walked into a movie set or something. For those of you who don't know, Munich is the city where Oktoberfest takes place, and the Hofbräuhaus is one of the big breweries that people go to to celebrate and drink beer, when they aren't at the designated park where Oktoberfest takes place. We sat down, ordered our liter sized beers and German Bratwurst (duh you're in Germany!) and had a good old time hanging out and occasionally hearing drunk German guys break out into song (they love to do that when they're drinking and I love it!). The next day in Munich we wandered around the city, visited the immense churches that were scattered through the town, saw a few historic places, visited the local H&M (well only one of the three H&M's that were on the street) and then headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit. After drinking out liter beers the night before, I didn't feel like round two sounded like a great idea but the boys found a supposed "Beer Tour" where we could pay for guides to take us to around the town to various Bavarian bars and teach us Bavarian drinking traditions. It sounded like a lot of fun so we all tagged along on this tour. It was a complete bust! We learned one song at the beginning of the tour, we were given one beer at the beginning of the tour (which i handed off to the boys to enjoy) and then we had to pay for the rest of the beers for the rest of the tour. After about the third or fourth place we visited, we were annoyed with the fact that our tour guides (none of which were actually from Bavaria, much less Germany) hadn't taught us about any of the Bavarian ways. We sat at the bar annoyed with what we had gotten into, when these two German guys started talking to us and eventually convinced us to ditch the tour and they would go out and show us around. Unfortunately it was only like 9:00 and nothing was really open yet, and the fact that I was exhausted from the night before, Ben and I headed back to the hostel, while the other boys went out on the town and had a good time with the Germans.
The last day we were in Munich, had to have been the most serious and thought provoking day. We decided to go see Dachau. Dachau was one of the concentration camps during WWII, but unlike Aushwitz, it wasn't a death camp. I can't even explain the emotions that I felt while going through the camp and listening to what people went through. Bunks that were only supposed to fit like 300 people, were filled with about 3000, guards got bonuses if one of their prisoners got shot because they were lagging too far behind the group, and after about 5 years, the crematoriums couldn't keep up with the amount of people dying they had to build a new and bigger one to keep up with the rate of people dying. The whole walk through of the camp was just so devastating, and the whole time I just kept thinking "How did this all go on for so long?" It is one thing to learn about it in school, but seeing it first hand is a whole different experience.
My camera died after the first night in Munich so I only have a few pictures of my own that I will post now, but I will be stealing some from the others that went if anyone wants to see more pictures of the city and such. I miss you all back home! Hope everyone is doing well :)

Rothenburg Pictures

Entrance into Altstadt

Christmas Museum

St. Jakobs church

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Yesterday a few of us hopped in the train and went into Bavaria and visited Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We were entering one of the most touristy places in Germany when the train that took us to the town, talked in English and German (which doesn’t happen ANYWHERE else). The altstadt (old city) is surrounded by a tall wall that was used to protect the city from invaders during the middle ages. The streets were all very narrow, but that didn't stop people from driving through their cars to get around the town, even if that meant driving through sidewalks and highly populated areas (which I have found is just a German norm). We first visited the Christmas Museum, which was like Christmas in April. It was awesome! They had a whole entire floor of Christmas ornaments and decorations; some old, some new. And then upstairs was the actual museum about the history of Christmas. Fun fact: Did you know that Santa used to carry around a stick that he used to beat bad children with while he was out giving presents? Even stranger, he started to have some devil looking guy follow him who punished the bad children by beating them and eating them. Needless to say, that story was quickly banned after it started. After the Christmas museum we walked over to the St.Jakobs Church. In this church there was a crystal that contains a drop of Christ's blood (you couldn’t get close enough to actually see the drop). The alters that they had were so amazing. They were huge wood carvings of Jesus in different settings and such that took usually about 15 years to complete.  From the church we went to the Kriminal Museum. This was a three story museum of all the different torture devices they used on criminals in the middle Ages. There were a lot of shame masks that they made people wear around town to indicate the crime they had done, there were wooden violins that they would put quarreling women in until they solved their issues, chastity belts, and my favorite was a wooden barrel they would make the drunks wear around town. Some of the crazy stuff that they did to people back then is so unbelievable! Could you image how much our crime rate would go down if we started doing that again? :-). I kid, but really haha. We finished off our visit by buying antique looking beer steins and such, found a nice table on the main street to eat some food and have a beer in the beautiful 70 degree weather before taking the train back home. All in all, a great day in Germany! I will post pictures from the trip later. I miss all of you, hope you're all doing well!

Stuttgart Pictures

Mercedes Clock tower above the train station

A random church hidden in the modern city

Outside the Penthouse Disko in Stuttgart

One of the five huge dance floors in the Penthouse

My new boyriend. He might not have a castle but he has a silver suit : )

Where the more recent kings of Baden-Wurtemburg lived.

Castle in Stuttgart. Like the church, right in the middle of downtown.

Aerial view of Stuttgart from the TV tower