The finale

After 5 weeks of exploring, sightseeing, and enjoying Eastern & Mediterranean Europe/Africa. I am happy and excited to be back in Dallas. It's great to explore the world and then realize and appreciate being back home. I guess that feeling is especially strong now that it's July 4. God Bless America. In the 5 weeks of my trip I visited 9 countries and 13 different cities and knocked many sights off my bucket list. And while I am always excited about my next trip, at this point I'm excited about being home and finding ways to grow, learn, and give here in Texas.

For those of you that have asked me to write another photoblog, I hope you've enjoyed the journey as much as I enjoyed writing about it. I love sharing stories and memories from my adventures and am honored that anyone wants to share them with me. Much love to you all!

Frankfurt

I flew out of Frankfurt, Germany on my last day of the trip so I spent a night in the city. Frankfut is one of the financial centers of Europe and contains the European Central Bank. I spent the night enjoying the local ale at a beer hall - a sweet, cider beer. I then went to the top of the Main Tower and ate dinner - one of the tallest buildings in the cities.

Auschwitz II - Birkenau

The Birkenau camp was the camp most publicized in Schindler's List. This was the primary death camp where an estimated 1.8 million Jews were ruthlessly killed in gas chambers. In a highly organized and systematic way, Jews from all over Europe arrived via trains into Birkenau. Woman and children were separated from men and taken to the women's side of the camp. Men were then separated into the following groups "able to work" or "not able to work", which was based off mere observation. Those not able to work were then marched down a path where they were told they would take a shower. They were lead into a changing area where they were told to undress and hang their clothes on hooks with numbers - they were told to remember the number where their clothes were hung. They then walked themselves into the shower room where they were gased. It took approximately 20 minutes to kill a group of up to 5,000 people.

The majority of the camp still remains with only a few bunks being destroyed. The crematorium remains still exist, although they destroyed 4 days before the camp was liberated by Russian forces.

Auschwitz I

The Auschwitz concentration camp is made up of 3 separate camps all within about a half mile from each other. The first Auschwitz camp started as a camp primarily focused on political prisoners and contained the adminstrative headquarters, a "hospital", torture chambers, as well as a small crematorium. It also contained the home of Rudolph Hess, who was the leader and visionary behind many of the key operations of Auschwitz. It also contained the site where Hess was hung after the Nazi war crimes trials.

Auschwitz I also contained displays of the items Nazi's took from the prisoners of victims of the Holocaust. Items like eyeglasses, shaving cream containers, prostethics, clothes, and luggage were taken and the utilized for other purposes. The items in the displays were reamaining from when Auschwitz was liberated.

Oskar Schindler Museum

One of the more interesting sites I took in was the City Museum of Krakow located at the enamel factor owned by Oskar Schindler. This factory, which was the subject of Spielberg's movie, was the home to almost 1100 Jews during the Holocaust. And while I'd like to believe Schindler hired the Jews out of a desire to fight back against the government, the museum highlighted that it was mostly done because the Jews provided a quality labor force that was extremely cheap. By the 1940's, Schindler had gained a reputation in Germany as willing to make a buck in any way possible.

While Schindler's life was a major focus of the museum, it also told the story of life in Krakow during the Nazi occupation during WWII, including the renaming of the city square to Adolf Hitler Platz.

Krakow Town Square

The town square contained a bustling tourist crowd that enjoyed one of the many restraunts/bars as well as live music on the weekends. Poland was one of the hosts of the Euro Cup so you could feel the excitement around the city.

Poland - Krakow and Auschwitz

To end the trip, I took a few days to visit Poland and Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp. Krakow is Poland's most historic city and contains a large castle district, a crowded town square, as well as a progressive and quiant Jewish District. Auschwitz was and hour long bus trip from Krakow and was one of the highlights of the trip.