Busy last week, busy next week!

Lots of new pictures with the busy week we had! I was going to add a caption under each picture, but then the website makes the blog entry so long, so I will just describe them in order, hope that works okay for you guys! After the awesome donkey carriage ride on Sunday, we went to a cute little cafe basically in a forest with Julianes mom, Anna, and I had my first Irish Coffee. Let me just say it was Whiskey with a side of coffee... it was really fun though and we had time to plan our week, so  we began by going to look at castles on Monday. The first couple pictures are of Wewelsberg Castle, which was built from 1603-1609. After 1934 it was used by the SS (protection squad for Hitler) under Heinrich Himmler and was to be expanded as the central SS-cult-site. It is triangular in shape, which was very unique for it's time. The next castle is the Paderborn Castle, which was built around the 13th century, and was the former residence of aristocratic bishops. It is gorgeous and has a museum inside that at times has art and photography exhibitions, one of which Juliane, her mom and I went to. It was about the natural beauty of nature and it was stunning. Now we are on to the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was one of the first and largest concentration camps on German soil. 238,380 people of various nationalities were incarcerated in Buchenwald, and the number of deaths in Buchenwald is estimated at 56,000. The camp was not technically an extermination camp, but the massive number of deaths were primarily caused by literally being worked to death, starvation and human experimentation. Being at the camp was such an intense feeling with overwhelming emotion to know what those people went through. It was about 18 degrees when we were there and we were all freezing, but the conditions were nothing compared to what they suffered through, obviously. The room with the doors is where many, many prisoners were being punished for any reason the SS wanted, and they basically waited to die from being hung, shot in the back of the neck or tortured to death. Anyway, it was an educational experience to say the least. The next pictures are in the town, Weimar, which is where Hotel Elephant is located. Hitler gave a well-known speech from the balcony and the town is well known for him staying at that hotel on occasion in the 30's and 40's. We had lunch at a nice cafe, and Weimar really has beautiful architecture all around, including the city hall which is the 8th pic. The picture of me is when I was driving 160 kilometers per hour on the AUTOBAHN!! It was so awesome! My main goal at some point is to rent a Ferrari and take a tour through Germany using only the Autobahn. Even going as fast as I was, Audi's and BMW's were FLYING by us. On Friday, Juliane, her mom and I went to an unbelievable cave in Attendorn. It is 3 million years old and so gorgeous. I have never been in a cave before, so I became a little claustrophobic, but I was fine after a little while. The rate of growth of the formations is estimated at 1 mm every 10 years. Can you believe that!  Friday night, Juliane, me, Julianes mom, Lena and her boyfriend went bowling! It was really fun, and they bowl just like we do in the states. The bowling alley was actually called New Orleans! Needless to say, Lenas boyfriend won all the games; there was also a raffle drawing going on and the man picked me to draw numbers out of a hat, but I lost for our team : ( We would have won a bar of chocolate, so we were all not to upset.The last four pictures are of last night, and for the first picture of us, left to right is Sabine, me, Lia and Juliane. Lia and Sabine are Julianes best friends, and they were so sweet and welcoming! I had such an awesome time with them. **Thank you both for having me over, it was so fun!!!** We had a fabulous dinner as well as a cocktail party with delicious drinks including Rumba (soooo goooood) and strawberry daquiris! We played a game called SingStar, which starts out pretty embarrassing because you sing along to all kinds of songs and the game judges you on how well you sing the song, but after a couple drinks, it becomes really fun! The picture of me with my arm up was when I was singing Air Supply, "All out of Love". It helped me with my pitch ; ) The dinner was with a hot plate type cook stove and these little mini-pots, and you pile the mini-pot full of vegetables, fruits, meats or whatever, then you put cheese on top of the mini-pot, place it under the hot plate and wait a few minutes. After the cheese is deliciously melted, your mini-pot is done and it is SOOOO YUMMY!! So that explains my amazing week in Paderborn! A few random things I forgot to mention: we also rode bicycles to town which was so nice and parts of the trail were so peaceful. We have lucked out with nice weather lately! Today it rained, but I think it was due. Juliane and I also visited an animal shelter last Thursday and took some very sweet, excited dogs on a walk. Germany is wonderful in many ways, but in regards to animal care, they truly take such good care of the animals in the shelter. They do not euthanize the animals, they just  try to create more room and have very strict spay/neuter rules. The cat rooms actually had so many warm, fuzzy beds, heaters and so many toys, you wouldn't believe it. They were really overwhelmed with cats; I think there was about 35-40 of them. Many of the dogs were German Shepherds, as well as smaller, mixed breeds. We took an older German Shepherd and a Chihuahua/ Jack Russell mix on the walk. It was a satisfying thing to do, and there were so many other people doing it as well, I loved it. This morning, Julianes mom invited me, Juliane, her sister Anna Lena and her boyfriend Jannis to an amazing breakfast buffet at a beautiful cafe in town. It was so filling and you could not have asked for a better selection and more delicious food! Also, every day we go over to where Julianes horse Nina is, and clean the paddock area and while Juliane works with Nina, I brush Eddie, Carlos, or any of the other wonderful animals there. I have really fallen in love with Glissi, a 30+ year old Icelander who is so sweet and has a bum front left leg, so he reminds me so much of my Cheyenne. Anyway, it is getting late and I am getting pretty tired, so I hope you all enjoy the pics and are surviving the crazy weather all around the world! Juliane and I are heading to Freiberg on Tuesday to visit her sister, so I am really excited for that and will post again soon!! Have a fulfilling week everyone!