Venice and Germany

Hi!
Nina again. We've been having a great time in Germany, and Sara agreed it was the perfect place to spend her birthday (Sara turned 14 today!!!). Sorry we haven't blogged in a while (more internet problems) so I still need to tell you about our astounding time in Venice! OK, enough chitchat. Let's start with Venice.
Instead of training to Venice, we decided to drive in order to save time. When the 2 hour drive was FINALLY over, we were certainly glad to be out of the car! It was just kinda sad that our first view of the glistening canals was in a parking garage, but who am I to complain? Speaking of glistening canals, though, the waterways were drop dead gorgeous!!! Gondolas docked in where a normal city would have parking lots, and motorboats zoomed tourists across the river. We got a gelatto (Italian ice cream) and stared at the breathtaking picture in front of us. Next, we headed over to St. Mark's Square and shopped our way through. "Venice displays the beautiful Murano glass," Mom explained to us as we peered through a window at some unique glass designs. We ate lunch at an authentic pizza restaurant and boy was it delicious! Mom and I ordered anchovies and Dad and Sara ordered pepperoni.
THERE IS NO PIZZA THAT COMPARES. END OF STORY. Anyway, I've spent so long on Venice that I think I'll move on to Germany.
Germany: In Munich the city consists of mainly fat men drinking beer( Ha ha, just kidding.) We relaxed for the first day, after a long car ride and had a nice dinner of meat and cheese at Stefan and Kati's house.  They are wonderful people with the cutest children.  They are friends of my Uncle Robbie, who lives in Munich.  Seeing Uncle Robbie was great.  The next day, we began our day with a tour of  a concentration camp called Dachau. This was the very first concentration camp in Germany. Hitler imprisoned Jews, Poles, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehova's Witnesses and Catholics here. It was so hard to see the bunks where people once had slept. We were actually IN the concentration camp. We even went to the Crematorium. The thought of Hitler makes me want to cry. Who would do such a thing? As we made our way through the camp, I couldn't help feel that I was walking in the footsteps of the prisoners. Prisoners who were human beings, were tortured, abused and ridden of their human dignity -  Prisoners who had died because of their beliefs or political differences. I don't even want to go into the details of what we saw at the camp, some things were too horrible: like the gas chamber. Mom, Sara, and I actually stood in the gassing chamber where hundreds of people died every day. We saw the ovens where humans were cremated. It was awful.  We cried.  We will NEVER forget.  NEVER.
For the rest of the day we were pretty depressed, but we went downtown and toured some of Munich. Munich is a pretty city with many vendors and churches. Germany was very educational.
Now for the pics.

 Ovens in the crematorium

Bunks made to sleep 50. The Nazis crammed 400 in.

No sleep actually took place here

 The gate to the camp.

The Dachau memorial

Dachau's main grounds used for roll call.

 VENICE!!!

 The main canal in Venice

 Beautiful, huh?

 Gondolas lined up like cars

 Lunch- a gigantic pizza! Look at Mr. Puffin in scale!

 

Italy's famous gelatto

Alrighty then, this is the puffin, here to blog about my birthday~!
Well, turning fourteen in Germany was certainly a treat. In fact, it was more than a treat, it was excellence.
For dinner, we had schnitzel. I tried to joke around a bit, you know how I am....
"Holy Schnitzel!" I cried as the plate arrived. The flat hunk-o'-meat was way big. After I finished, it was another "Holy Schnitzel. That was big."
That was pretty much my bday!
-Puffin