you have freckles on your fingers...

we'll apologize in advance, but the z key and y key are switched on thess keyboards... so there may be some fun spellings coming up.

we've been in berlin for 3 nights now, and it's not possible to completelty describe everything we've seen. here is a list of things, and maybe some commentary if it comes to mind.

train from frankfurt- figuring out where to sit. note:reserve seats on holiday weekends!

grumpy german ticket service personell who dont 'spechein sie englisch'

finding a hostel- without an address. luckily we had directions.

our first night we just walked around and saw quite a bit, we just werent really sure what it was we were seeing. yesterday was the one probably one taht hasnt quite sunk in yet.

we went to a working concentration camp, Sachsenhausen (sp?) outside of berlin. it was about 6 or so hours for the whole thing with travel and such, but for a bit over 20 bucks it was well worth it. our tour guide was Adam, and we had him again toda
back to the camp. first to note, it was not a death camp like auswitz (please ignore spellings, i onlz have so much time) but a working camp where the germans used prisoners for producion of supplys and such for war. not having much knowledge of concentration camps, we left the day knowing more and experiencing more than we could've really imagined. Reality kind of hit Kyle more near the end of the tour when he found a death list from the camp and he looked up his name- there were about 40 nowak's listed, and maybe a total of 70 or so of names similiar.

as we walked to the camp, the same walk that the prisoners took, we walked through the town of orienanburg, and we were asking ourselves what would we have done back in that time, or what would our familys have done. we asked ourselves that all day, and the only way to really answer... let's just hope that we never get the chance.

heres a quick list of things that come to mind when thinking about the camp

brainwashing on both sides
public execution
roll call, twice a day
standing room
beatings
death trench
fake doctors and getting shot in the back of the neck when you thought your height was being measured against a wall
boot testing track
brothel-used to turn prisoners against each other
revolt of 18- biggest revolt
suicide and alcoholism of ss gaurds from looking in the eyes of 20 plus people at a time before they shot and killed them.

and i could go on.

our ady in berlin was a bit lighter today, and we walked around on the free tour... saw the hotel where michael jackson dangled his baby out of the window, stood on the dirt parking lot that 'commemorates' hitlers bunker where him and his mistress slash wife killed them selves with cyanide, as well as his german sheperd. we also saw the sqaure were the books were burned, and a view into the empty chamber below filled with empty bookshelves with enough space for 20,000 books.

it's amazing that so much history exists in this city, and how the whole world has been affected by some of the happenings here.

We haven't killed each other yet, finding our way out of train station on the local system is the closest it's been. Amanda was done with carrying her pack around, and Kyle was frustrated with wandering around not knowing what was going on... and of course the one person we decided to ask decided to not remember how to speak english... i feel.

k, goodnight for now, we'll write soon. write us!