Germany Days 1-3

It's Saturday evening, and I am having so much fun.  We left Chapel Hill at 3 on Thursday and headed to the Charlotte airport.  Because of traffic we arrived just in time to grab food and board the plane.  I've always not enjoyed flying, so I was a little weary.  We were all sitting together though so I was excited.  About 30 minutes in I ended up getting sick, but my friends were amazing and helped me feel better real soon :) The rest of the flight was fine, and I watched a movie and slept (very little though).  We arrived in Frankfurt at 10:30 am on Friday and were pretty worn out.  We boarded our bus and were supposed to head into the city.  Frankfurt has certain days where buses are not allowed in the city, and Friday was unfortunately one of those days.  We ended up just heading on to Erfurt.  We stopped at a rest stop where you had to pay to use the bathroom, but it had a full restaurant in it.  We drove on for a while to Erfurt.  We were able to sleep on the bus and enjoy the beautiful German countryside.  We checked into the hotel, showered, and went out to find dinner.  A bunch of us found a place called the Rathskeller, so we had to go there. Chapel Hill used to have an awesome restaurant of the same name but it closed).  It was very traditional German food, and I'm still not sure I like sausage all that much.  It is also hard not knowing what you're ordering, especially when the waitress speaks absolutely no English.  Later we went to get ice cream and were able to speak Spanish to the employees.  Imagine speaking Spanish in an Italian gelato shop in Germany as Americans!  We had devotions, and I went straight to bed and slept wonderfully. 
Saturday we woke up and had a big and good breakfast at the hotel.  We got on the bus and headed to Weimar, which was a big city for the Nazi regime.  We spent a few hours simply walking around and enjoying the city.  We saw a pretty church and the Hotel Elefant, where Hitler gave a famous speech on the balcony.  Now I've been to a ton of historic places in the U.S., but it was just very eerie to be standing at this spot.  Afterwards we went to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, which was an amazing experience.  I have always loved learning about the Holocaust, so it was somber but good.  We walked around with headsets that told us different facts at various places across the grounds.  Walking through the crematorium was very eerie, and looking out upon row after row of barrack remains really caused me to think of the horrible atrocities millions of innocent people faced.  This camp didn't have gas chambers, but they still executed thousands.  Author Elie Weisel spent time here after being at Auschwitz. The camp even had a zoo at one point for the SS members and their families.  A very cool memorial at the camp is a plaque on the ground that is kept at a constant 98.6 degrees, the temperature of the body.  Touching it on a cold day sends chills up your spine.  I firmly believe that everyone in the worlds needs to visit a concentration camp at some point in their lifetime.  We headed back to Erfurt, where we rested a bit.  A few of us started watching a German show for teenagers, and it was the funniest thing ever.  Something about not knowiong what they're saying and making up the storyline is so fun :) A group of us went to another traditional German restaurant, and I bought my first beer (I didn't like it) and had roasted meat, fried potatoes, and a salad.  The menu had English descriptions of the food, so that was helpful for a picky eater like me.  We just had a very good devotions discussing God Chills and are getting ready to go out for Michael's birthday!