It's difficult for me to write about Germany. We live about 50km away from Germany ourselves, and the northern part of Germany, which was the destination of our trip last week, is almost exactly the same as the northern part of Holland. As we went further Eastwards away from Holland things got more and more different, and when we arrived in a place called Schwerin I finally had the feeling that I was really in Germany. The castle was quite impressive, and very different from English castles.
I over-HDR'ed this one a bit because the weather was not very good. You don't see it in the picture but the lighting was pretty bad.
Before arriving at Schwerin we day-tripped our way east by car, stopping at hotels near watery places, which are my dad's favorite. The first day we stayed at a place called Farge, which offered a pretty decent sunset.
Our final destination was the highlight for me: the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
I've never been to a concentration camp before, and I was quite moved. It was raining for the whole morning, but when we arrived at the camp the sky started to clear up. It kind of felt like inappropriately good weather for such an occasion. We walked around the camp and visited the museum, which itself looks deliberately bunker-y and drab.
I was hugely impressed by some of the photos in the museum. Ever since I took up photography I've been looking at photos in museums with a different eye, and shocking photos like these really impressed me a lot. It was a valuable history lesson.
Next week I'll be going to Belgium for another holiday o_0. This one will be a bit different from usual holidays, but I'll keep that a surprise for next time. Until then!