Tuesday, May 22- Day 9:

Today we took a bus to the Mauthausen concentration camp. This experience was one like no other that I have had before. Our tour was guided by an electronic headphone guide. Walking through this camp it was easy to imagine the atrocities that took place less than 50 years ago. There were rooms no bigger than a bedroom that held 2,000 people all at once, there were mass grave sites, and many other unnerving things. The most unsettling part was in the basement of the buildings where you could see the crematoriums, gas chambers, hanging rods, and a wooden wall meant to catch the bullets that went through the bodies of their victims. It is hard to describe the atmosphere of the concentration camp. Walking in and knowing that so many helpless victims once walked in those same doors starving, beaten, and sick that never got the chance to walk out is unsettling.




After the concentration camp the group headed to Salzburg. We had a brief tour of some key sites many of which were involved with the shooting of the movie "The Sound of Music." If you didn't know, Salzburg was the place that majority of the movie was filmed. We also got to see the childhood homes of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. My favorite part of the tour was the top of the Salzburg fortress. The fortress is located on the top of a hill overlooking the city on one side and the mountains on the other. The views from here were amazing.