school begins again

It's good to get back to a routine. School started today, though I had only one class. After this week I should have three on Monday, so the day won't be as empty. But tomorrow I have no real class, so I'm going to have to find some other way to entertain myself. The class I did have today was European history, which I am looking forward to attending.

I will begin a fencing class on Wednesday, and I am sure I will write about it in my next column. I spent a long time today reading about fencing in English and in German so that I can hopefully understand everything better, because it will be taught in German, and I assume with most of the commands in the native French.

This past weekend I went on one last adventure for my holiday break, with a trip to Linz and two nearby towns. I visited a couple of museums in Linz, toured the Mauthausen concentration camp, hung out with some friends and their families, and then went snowboarding on a real mountain. My friend Kathi and her mom took me to Hochficht, which is near both the Czech and German borders of Austria. They are close enough that you can breathe their air, but you can't touch either because of some forestry regulations that won't let the ski place expand into either country. The experience was fantastic, but I really want to go snowboarding again so that I can say that I've been snowboarding in the Alps. My visit to the KZ (the German abbreviation for concentration camp) was much more chilling than my visit to Sachsenhausen, north of Berlin. The camp is much more complete because the Nazis didn't bomb it upon leaving like they did in Sachsenhausen, so you can see complete crematoriums and the gas chamber. I also toured the camp with someone whose family has always lived in the town of Mauthausen, so he had personal stories to share about the camp.

Here's my latest column:

Column 21: My break is winding down, yours?