Published Thursday November 18th, 2004

Three days have passed now since the last time I wrote and I find myself back at my grandparents apartment in Switzerland

There were so many boats entering and leaving the Elbe river in Cuxhaven it was amazing! Constantly ships passed by our hotel as we ate breakfast. and it was a Sunday morning!

We left Cuxhaven after breakfast and drove South back towards Switzerland. There are so many wind powered electricity generators, or windmills in Germany. All over always scattered patches of them. Because it's relatively flat as well, one frequently sees tall communication towers piercing the sky with their antennas and misc other things.

We drove south until we reached the town of Walsrode where we went to the Walsrode Vogelpark, or a bird exhibition park, a bird zoo. We spent a few hours walking around there as well as eating lunch. At around 16.00 we continued driving until we reached the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp memorial. 50,000 people were killed or died in Bergen-Belsen. Anne Frank and her sister among those buried there in mass burial mounds. All that remained of the camp were mass graves. Mounds of dirt scattered about the memorial. There were no more buildings. It was actually rather, if not very peaceful and beautiful there with the trees and the other miscellaneous foliage, but still depressing because of the history, as well as erie.

We spent the night in a really nice hotel, Moormuhle Hotel in Burgdorf, Germany. We found it on the side of the highway as we drove south and needed a place to spend the night.

The next morning we drove back to Switzerland which was 800km away. After lunch I drove around 500km the rest of the way back into Switzerland. To give an idea of how cool the autobahn is.. One could drive from L.A. to San Fransisco in a bit over 4 hours going 150km/h (93.75mph), traffic permitting and California being in Germany.

Driving from Northern Germany, from nearby Hannover to Switzerland is about 800km. Going at an average of 150km/h (93.75mph) one would be in Switzerland in 5.3 hours with ideal traffic conditions. From Camarillo to San Fransisco on the 101 Freeway it is about 624km (390mi). Going at an average of 112km/h (70mi/h) It'll take about 5.5 hours with ideal traffic conditions, of course. On the autobahn you could go more than 112km/h, or 150km/h and travel greater distances even faster, in less time.. Have I mentioned how cool going 200km/h+ is? Oh, it is awesome!

Heh, another noteworthy thing. Of the Two concentration camps I visited, the amount of Germans who visit the concentration camp memorials is staggering. Sunday evening at Bergen-Belsen and the parking lot was well and comfortable filled, and this was true for Sachsenhausen, too! There are many "gedenkstaette" or concentration camp memorial sites scattered about Germany.. Tells me, or says to me that the German people in general do not want to forget history, and make sure these are, "wounds that must never heal."


Tuesday was a slow day of laying around and watching Futurama episodes. In the evening I went to Jakob's to go fix their Internet connection access. Somehow during a thunderstorm a section of Ethernet between their dsl-router and the hub friend without anything else being damaged..? I found the section with band Ethernet and bypassed it with other Ethernet cable and temporarily fixed their lack of Internet problem.

Now it is Wednesday and not much interesting to say.. Trip to Germany is over and next comes my trip to Greece!

Note that photos in this entry have not been altered and could possibly use some white-balancing, contrast, brightness, saturation, and hue adjustments among other touch-ups.