Timberwolves Europe 2013, Kassel to Halle, 9 May.

[Categories: EUROPE, FREEDOM, Photography, Travel.]

Let’s see. I owe full posts for 7 and 8 May. I want to post more photos for Mareike and Peter’s Frenzer Muhle we visited Tuesday the 7th. (Their website, previous link, is in German. I can probably use Google translate, or an app for that, when I take time to sort that out, but right now it’s a pain. The iPad2 is not cutting it for ‘mobile’ blogging and research.) (UPDATE: I think I found the translate link. I’ve modified the previous.) (If the link doesn’t work for your browser google Frenzer Muhle and select ‘translate page’ by the appropriate link.)

Today was a simpler day. I’ll post for that and then work on getting current on 7/8 May. I should be caught up in about a week.

Last night we spent one night in a hotel in Melsungen, Germany. Today we are on the road to Halle by way of Vierlangen and Nordhausen/Mittelbau-Dora. No problem.

We have a quick coffee at the hotel in Melsungen before leaving for breakfast in a nearly undisclosed location.

We wind our way through hills and back roads (good driving Derrick!) on our way to Verliehausen for breakfast at a Gasthaus.

Timberwolf Pups and brothers Don and Mike Davis have a picture of their father (r.) in front of the Verliehausen train station in 1945.

Tour guide Patrick scouted this location in persond (!) before the tour started and has arranged for breakfast across the road from the now-rundown station.

Mike and Don show Frau Ursal Otte the photo. She was born in the room above our dining room.

Breakfast is delicious and filling. I’m glad, I think, I’m not near a bathroom scale on this trip.

Everything is served on bread. Good bread. And it’s nice looking. I must be polite. I must eat the bread.

Mike and Don with Frau Otte.

Mike and Don with a gentleman from the Gasthaus.

The train station building from the angle of the WWII photo. It’s a private residence and the train doesn’t stop here anymore thought the track is active.

68 years after the 104th Inf. Div. was here.

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Off we go through the German countryside to the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp by the town of Nordhausen.

The hills are alive with rapeseed fields (canola oil and other uses). You would think Germany has cornered the market judging from the numer of beautiful yellow fields we see. (The same with wind turbines. They are EVERYwhere.)

We cross the “Iron Curtain” into former East Germany.

Guide Patrick keeps up an almost non-stop monologue about conditions in the former ‘DDR’, Deutsch Democratic Republic. We are never bored!

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We arrive at Mittelbau-Dora for lunch at the museum cafe, a viewing of museum photos, a documentary movie, and a guided tour of the grounds and part of the tunnel complex.

This was a labor camp to build V1 and V2 rockets, and jet engines. The tunnels built under the surrounding hills are about 2 miles long. The entire network criss-crossed is 9+ miles. 60,000 were sent here to work. 20,000 died. Not so great to have a plush job in a rocket factory.

Our guide allows us to photograph the tunnels but requests they not be published (though they contain only rubble and rusted rocket parts), perhaps out of respect. You can find photos on the internet.

A V1 rocket in the documentary, like the one Marcel Schmetz built a model of for the Remembrance Museum.

Entrance to the camp area. The woods behind weren’t there back then and there was a large complex of barracks. There was a crematorium nearby also.

Heading into the tunnel complex. As much as I like cold weather, it’s VERY COOL inside the tunnels. Wish I had my parka from the mountains.

Entering the museum and cafe. Friends of the Timberwolves Hank, wife Josay (sp?), Piet, and others have driven about 5 hours from Holland to join us.

Waiting for the documentary film to start. Photo op for half a group picture.

The other half of the group picture.

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We leave the camp and go into Nordhausen to the site of the Boelcke Barracks. Camp prisoners that were too ill to work were sent here. When the GI’s liberated the camp members of the 104th Timberwolves came here to assist those still living. Dead and living alike were stacked atop each other. War pictures of this are horrific. The 104th guys had to try and figure who was alive, then move them to better quarters in hopes of their recovery.

The only survivors now are mostly monuments. We assemble for info from Patrick and the reading of a 104th GI’s letter home about the horror.

Some of the camp prisoners were housed in a Luftwaffe airplane hangar, which was bombed by the British with them inside.

Belgian Friend Vincent reads the GI’s letter.

Only a few monuments remain in a fairly quiet, dilapidated part of town.

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We drive on to our Halle hotel and are greeted by a costumed woman with a tray of chocolates. Quite a difference between then and now.

Goodnight.