On a much more serious note we visited the Bergen-Belsen Memorial - this is the site of the infamous Belsen concentration camp. From 1940 to 1945 Belsen  housed many thousands of prisoners of war, Jews and other minority peoples. Around 70,000 are thought to have died there, around half of

them from an outbreak of typhus just before and after liberation. This was a comparatively modest number compared with some of the other extermination camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka (over a million people are thought to have been killed in each) but Belsen was particularly well documented  and photographed by the liberating soldiers at the time and the resultant evidence was publicised widely - at the time this was shown to the British public in cinemas in contemporary newsreels. What was particularly horrific was the huge number of unburied corpses lying around and the photographic evidence is especially harrowing - you can look this up, I'm not going to upload any here but the museum and the site have quite an impact on visitors. The British soldiers demolished and burned the camp buildings to try to eliminate the typhus epidemic and almost all that remains are the mass graves where up to 2500 bodies at a time were interred.

She's there somewhere!

Bergen-Belsen is close to the Hohne garrison one of the largest British Army garrisons in Germany and we were very pleased to attend the parade of the Desert Rats, the 7th Armoured Brigade to which Lyndall's Military Working Dogs regiment is attached.
Over 400 troops received their Afghan medals on a very warm day and Krombacher, Bitburger and Herrenhauser all pitched their beer tents to provide post parade sustenance together with a hog roast!

While we were in this part of Germany we stayed at a lovely town called Celle which is full of half timbered buildings and fine parks and Vicky was very taken with a life size sculture of a horse and trainer in the grounds of the local schloss so she took a chance and stood beneath the big beast! We also managed to sample some of the local ale - it's not all pils and lager and we tasted dunkel (a brown beer), dunkel weiss (a brown wheat beer) and alt which is a very tasty speciality originaly from Dusseldorf. The tastiest of the lot in my book is the somewhat stronger doppel bock style which is from Munich but now found all over Germany - we were able to sample the Paulaner Salvator and Andechs versions....mmmmm! Won't say too much about the food but we had various schnitzels and sausages in ample portions - and the ice creams were pretty good.

What happened to the second girl?

And guess who made the podium - third in her age group in the Bentfelder Abendlauf 10K in a best time for two years of 67.55. Lou got 4th in her age group with one second slower than her pb in 52.31 and I sneaked onto the top of the podium rather struggling to get round in 42.14. Running is not the same in other countries - or is it? We saw the same early birds warming up and getting their entries in on time, runners from various clubs milling around together, competitors of all ages and wise cracks in the showers afterwards. Refreshments were a little more interesting though - each finisher had a pint of wheat beer thrust into their hand (this was non-alcoholic but the best non alcoholic beer I've ever had) and the barbecue sausage hit the spot!