Author: Nathan Bouman

Worshipping at the cathedral in Köln was very different to say the least. First of all I think it was Catholic so it was already very different from the CRC that I am used to. There is next to no singing only hymn singing that was very monotone and in Latin. People also got on their knees and the benches were made so that people could be on their knees for long periods of time without feeling uncomfortable. I did enjoy the parts where we sang because it was interesting to listen and to participate in singing, even though it was in a different language.

I thought that it was a little strange to see people gathered in the back waiting to get into the church once the service was done but it did not really phase me that much. I mean it is a major tourist location and it is right next to the train station so it is kind of hard to avoid that. I just do not understand why more people did not just join in on the service even if they do not believe in religion. It is a very interesting experience and I know I would at least like to see what it is like.

My first impressions on Bremen were that this city looked very ancient. The church in the center of Bremen was super tall and still standing from hundred of years ago. You do not see that very often in America. We walked through a very interesting shopping center where it was all just alleyways. It looked like something that wasn’t real because every shop was just a whole in the wall.

We also took a boat tour which described the history of Bremen. I liked this tour because we got to see even more buildings on the water and the professors would tell us about all the bridges we would go under because we were learning about them in Engineering!

This was one of the beaches along Lake Zurich in Switzerland. When my friends and I went to Switzerland we swam in this lake and laid out in the grass afterwards.

This was when we visited the Colosseum in Rome. We could not find any public transportation so we walked half an hour in 90+ degrees Fahrenheit to see this. We did not stay long in Rome to say the least since it was so hot.

This was in Bremen, Germany. We went here as a group and although we did not stop to look at this view for very long I found that this view was simply amazing. It was the first time I had a seen a classic European style windmill and it looked amazing from across the water and in the trees.

When I first showed up to the concentration camp, I  thought that it was just going to be a small broken down area with a few building to walk through. But when I walked through the entrance I was instantly overcome with how enormous and how preserved  the whole camp was. There were so many barracks where the Jews were kept and in these barracks there where so many relics from the inmates that stayed there. I felt like I could feel the death and pain that the inmates experienced when staying there.

1. The most moving thing I witnessed was the execution pit where the Germans would crowd live Jews into and either shoot them or torture them before killing them. When I walked through this pit and would look up at the ledge where the Germans would stand with guns executing people I could feel the terror that the Jews must’ve felt while being in the pit.