The Adventure Continues....

First and foremost, I need to thank Fund for Teachers once again! Sheila and I were awarded another fellowship through this wonderful organization and will be travelling to Europe this summer to study the Holocaust. We are leaving July 20th and returning August 6th. Our first stop will be Krakow, Poland to see Auschwitz/Birkenau  Concentration Camp and Oskar Schindler's Enamelware Factory. We will stay two nights in Krakow and then take a night train to Prague, Czech Republic. Sleeping on a train is an endeavor I am looking forward to experiencing. Going to sleep in one city and waking up in another sounds interesting! A friend of mine told me I could practice sleeping on a train by climbing in the back of a pick-up truck and trying to take a nap there! Ha!
We will stay in Prague for three nights and visit Terezin Concentration Camp and Prague Castle. Terezin was the "model concentration camp" Hitler created and allowed the Red Cross to visit in order to show the world Jews were being treated humanely by Nazis. He set it up to look like a Jewish community, instead of concentration camp and had the inmates pose and lie about the conditions. A school house was set up and an art teacher continued to teach art to children there during WWII before she and all her students were shipped off to Auschwitz to be exterminated. There is a children's gallery there displaying their artwork. I want to video and photograph this work to bring back to show my students.
Our plan is to take the 6 hour long, early morning train from Prague to Munich, Germany to explore the city where the Nazi party was founded. Some of the places we will visit are Dachau Concentration Camp, Hofbrauhaus, and the Neuschwanstein Castle (the model castle for Disney's Castle.) We will take a flight from Munich to Berlin and spend four days checking out the city where the Nazi Party Headquarters were established. Our tours will include Topography of Terror, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, Hitler's bunker, and what is left of the Berlin Wall, as well as the Memorial for Murdered Jews of Europe. From Berlin, we will take another flight to Amsterdam to end our trip in The Netherlands and visit The Anne Frank House.
As of today, we have booked the flights from the U.S. to Krakow and from Amsterdam back to the U.S. and have also booked our hotel rooms and apartments. We are waiting on the train schedule to open up for July's dates. As soon as the train schedule opens, we will book our two flights to Berlin and Amsterdam and train trips to Prague and Munich.
To say I am excited is an understatement! Everyone is asking me how I am going to spend so much time away from my family. It will be hard, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime! A free trip for 18 days to Europe to learn about something I am interested in is completely worth it. I will Skype home!
My 22 year-old niece, Katie is also going to take this adventure with me and Sheila, so I am super excited about sharing this experience with her! She has been interested in and curious about the Holocaust since 3rd grade, so she is probably more excited than me!