For me, Germany was all about history. Today, Germany is an environmental pioneer, a paragon of social services and an example of a highly developed, democratic nation. But how different all of that was only half a century ago!!

Traveling around Germany, and I really tried to see as much of the country as I could, and Munich and Berlin in particular, were so paradoxical. It was a weird tourist experience, in that I would see something so beautiful, like the BerlinerDom, this fantastic and awe-inspiring cathedral... and then go inside and see pictures of what it looked like after WW2 -- that is, almost completely destroyed. And then I know I'm not standing in the original, but a restored version that is only 50 years old, not hundreds. Even when looking at sites that weren't meant as memorials to the war or as museums, most landmarks have taken on that quality through virtue of their restoration. Almost no part of Germany that I saw (and I went to Dusseldorf, Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munster), had been left untouched by the war and it still shows today.

I wouldn't say in any way that my experiences were tainted by the constant association with the horrors of WW2, I think instead they were given a new meaning and a profound depth. The history of a place is so important to a true appreciation of it, I think. Just in Germany the difference was how RECENT this history was, and how tragic.

I admire the German nation for not trying to forget, sweep things under the rug from such a dark chapter in their history, but I don't know how someone can live right beside the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. Dachau is a suburb of Munich, and the concentration camp there was the first of its kind in Germany, built in 1933 (6 years BEFORE WW2), and served as the model for all concentration camps built afterwards. Dachau is the only camp memorial which still has the original crematorium on site, all others were destroyed by the Allies and then reconstructed for the purposes of educating those who visited. Dachau was special, in that the prisoners, upon being liberated, stopped the Allies from tearing down the crematorium. The prisoners themselves!! Because the wanted the world to know what had been done to them, they thought that leaving it standing, in all its evil, could teach visitors something. And it did. I can't even begin to describe what standing in that crematorium felt like.

And this memorial was juxtaposed in a sleepy, family suburb. Leaving Dachau and heading back into Munich was a difficult transition, and you don't have much time to make it.

Germany showed how a nation can heal after something so devastating without ignoring it, which is inspirational, and also showcased the depth of human evil, which was so utterly shocking -- at some of these memorials, and in some of the museums, I could feel something in the core of myself shift. It's so difficult to describe - it's knowledge that will never be erased, its a new perspective on humanity and what we are capable of. It gave history a new immediacy, and altered by perception on current events, some of which I could definitely call genocide. And now I link these news stories with my experiences in Germany, and wonder why all the memorials said "never again", if those who made them didn't really mean it.