Weimar, Germany

We arrived safely in Weimar for a visit with Mariella’s friend Kimberly. Weimar is a small town filled with college students and tourists. Kimberly is an art student at the nearby university. She is a great cook of vegetarian meals and is a bee keeper. She is educating us about bees and sharing the variety of honey her bees produced, they are fascinating insects and produce great tasting honey! Kim has invited us to visit her bees this weekend. Yesterday Katie and Kim showed us a bit of the town. While out we met a friend of Kim’s named Kai who runs a hostel. He invited me to join him for a jog. Unfortunately I am not in jogging shape so I told him I would ride a bike while he ran. This was a wise decision as Kai ran for close to two hours. We ran and biked past parks, ponds, castles and farmland. We discussed many things while on the road. Kai told me the history of places as we passed by them. The last part of the jog/bike was done in the dark. As we went from the outskirts of farmland back towards Weimer a monument was lit up on the hill in the distance. Kai explained that the monument in the distance was the site of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. “Between 1937 and 1945, more than one fifth of the 250,000 people incarcerated here (Jews, gypsies, children, political opponents, etc) died. The location on the side of a hill only added to the torture of the inmates as there are sweeping views of the region-a place where people were free while those here died.” –Lonely Planet