The Nazi Camp

The Nazi Camp

This morning, yet again, my parents woke me up at 8:15.  Yet another morning with no sleep!  I do not think I would have been looking forward to this bike trip as much if I had known about the “get up early” policy!  Yeesh!  Give me some sleep!  

Our first stop today was a concentration camp in the village of Mathausen.  It was used during the Holocaust.  It was just shocking to see what the Nazis did to people during World War II.  The camps contained many different groups of people.  There were political dissidents, prisoners of war, and homosexuals, as well as Jews.  The Nazis would throw prisoners off high cliffs to their deaths!  Other prisoners were shot dead. The lucky ones were worked to death.  Probably the worst thing the Nazis did was to do experiments on the prisoners, when they were still alive!  They would take out their organs, or inject them with poisons and see how long It would take them to die.  I could not look at the camp for long.  It was too emotional for me.

Our next stop on our daily route was a playground!  It is really interesting to me that playgrounds in Europe are much more fun than the ones in the U.S.  For instance, this playground had a huge, sideways barrel that you could step into.  Once inside, I had to start walking and the barrel would start spinning.  I had to run in it to keep myself from falling.  It was similar to a gerbil exercise wheel.  The playground also had a slide that was about 9 meters long.  That’s 27 feet!  There was a teeter-totter that was made for four people.  It was basically like a big X with a seat on the end of each arm.  The playground was practically like an amusement park!

The Giant Barrel

The Long Slide

Dizzy David

After the play ground, we biked to our next hotel, a pension in the village of Grein.  The people at the hotel are really kooky.  When we rang the door bell, the manager, an old lady, opened a window upstairs, leaned out and asked us what we wanted.  The halls  reek of cat pee.  Thankfully our stay is only one night!  Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic!