Today was a little extra special for Darcy as he turned 16 today, he was awoken by five really great kids at 6 o’clock in the morning, who sang happy birthday and gave him a pink princess cake, which was a great start. After another hotel buffet breakfast today we planned to go to Sachsenhausen (a former Nazi concentration camp) and onwards to Amsterdam.
Entrance to Sachsenhausen
We arrived at Sachsenhausen concentration camp with our fantastic tour guide Rob. The thing that instantly struck me, was the stone map of the camp and seeing the sheer and some of the statistics to the place.
We were given an amazing tour of one of the most chilling, emotional, eerie and strangely impressive places we’ve ever been. You hear plenty of things about the terrible atrocities suffered by Jews and prisoners alike by the Nazis in a classroom, but being where a lot of it actually happened was incredible.
What we observed was that the chilling quotes were often made around 30 years after the war as if the prisoners looked back on their life and their suffering was all they could remember.
Luckily it was sunny and everyone was relatively awake. Berlin had plenty of amazing World War II. history, but Sachsenhausen was truly terrifying.
The rest of the day we spent on the bus on the 9 hour long bus trip to Amsterdam. We spent the time chatting, bonding and watching movies. We spent the night relaxing on the hotel, where we ate dinner and gave Darcy another brilliant birthday cake and a card that featured everybody’s native language which made us all realise how lucky we are to be from all over the globe and to be sharing this amazing experience together.
Happy Birthday Darcy!
Heidy, our chaperone
by Darcy Matthews (Australia) & Emma Catchpole (Australia)
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