Buchenwald KZ: The only sad chapter in our trip is to the Konzentrationslager only twenty minutes from Weimar's center. The unbelievably huge area contained 250,000 prisoners and served as a work camp. The SS soldiers who kept watch over the camp ordered prisoners to build a mini-zoo to entertain their families just outside the camp. See the pictures below: The exhibition in the Buchenwald museum was sobering but very informative. The most shocking things I saw, I couldn't make myself take a picture of. It just seemed wrong somehow to make a document of them. For instance, Soviet POW's were ordered to go into the medical examination room and stand against a wall where their height was taken with an adjustable meter. Directly behind the wall, however, was another room where an executioner stood with a rifle pointing through the narrow gap of the meter(where the headpiece shifts up an down), aiming at the neck of the soldiers.
Wartburg:
Wartburg is my favorite castle so far. The medieval Burg stands on top of a steep mountain, offering a view over the city Eisenach. Far from the Baroque style of decorating every room room with gilded angels and silver mirrors, each room in Wartburg has a different character. Some very understated, and some overwhelmingly replendent with frescoes and glass. Felipe says it's even better than Versailles, but since I've never been to France, I don't know if I'd agree. But Wartburg has certainly got personality.
Oh, and also, be careful what you order in German restaurants. The name of a dish, like "Medieval Watchman's Vesper," might sound incredibly cool and romantic, but if you don't read the descriptions in small fonts, you might end up with bread and a generous ball of lard as your meal, which was what happened to me. Well, at least it wasn't head cheese.
The famous Wartburg where Luther translated the New Testament.