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Finney Goes To Kamp-May 3,2025 continued

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So today was a very busy travel and discover day for Mr. Fin. He started to get fussy so Gramma just happened to have a Bueno bar in her backpack. Guess Fin liked it. One of the things I never really thought about was how the Germans moved Jews etc to the concentration camps. Yes I knew they were deported. Yes I knew they were treated terribly and I have been to different places emphasizing the Holocaust. So the extent of the horror that happened to these people really hit home when we visited Kamp Westerbork. We arrived later in the afternoon and totally missed the museum but what we got to see was vast. Kamp Westerbork was originally built in 1939 as a refugee camp for Germans and Austrians who fled to the Netherland to escape Nazi persecution. In May of 1940 the invaded the Netherlands and by 1942, Kamp Westerbork was repurposed as a staging ground for deportation. It was considered a humane camp by Nazi standards as families lived in 200 interconnected cottages with 2 rooms, a ...
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Finney Finds Big Rocks

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 This is a boulder garden. Easy to take care of. These rocks traveled here during the Saalian Ice Age. About 150,000 years ago, the northern area of the Netherlands was covered in a sheet of ice about 1 km thick. Carrying glacial rubble, clay, sand, gravel, and lumps of stone, this ice came from Sweden and Finland. When the ice retreated a thick layer of loamy boulder clay and these erratic boulders were left behind. Many of these rocks are known as Indicator Stones that tell us exactly where in Scandinavia they come from. These rocks were collected from all over Drenthe and placed here. Hence the name boulder garden.  There are Dolmen or Hunebeddens all over Europe. During the Neolithic period, megalithic architecture appeared.These large stone structures were used as burial sites, temples or standing stone formations. In the Netherlands it is believed there are only burial complexes. These large stone tombs or hunebeddens were built between 3470 and 3240 BC by a Neolithic gr...
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Finney Finds A Fort - May 3, 2025

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So bathrooms are different in Europe. Most have a separate shower area. The toilets are in separate small cubby holes. The tanks are in the walls and a some older places have tanks in the ceiling with a chain. Some toilets have a shelf in them so you can examine your excrement before flushing it away with a torrent of water. Of course there is always a toilet brush to clean up any remaining leftovers. Note the shelf in the toilet picture. We decided we would venture out towards Germany to the village of Bourtange, Groningen and go to Vesting Bourtange, a unique historical fort that combines defence and small fortified town.  It was originally built by William the Silent, commonly known as William of Orange, who lead a revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs. The was completed in 1593 to control the only road between Germany and Groningen which was controlled by the Spaniards. It was in use during the Eighty Year's War from 1593-1851. After it's final battle in 1672 the fort was us...
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