Today we bid goodbye to Enschede and took a detour out of the Netherlands to explore the small and historic German town of Münster.

Throughout our entire trip, there has been an underlying theme of how war, specficially World War 2, has effected the places we’ve visited and forced them to innovate. In WW2, after the Allies had retaken power in Europe, they helped to rebuild the parts of Germany they had bombed during the power struggle. Münster was one of these places, and even though it was rebuilt to mimic its original style, you can still see the modern influences throughout the city by looking at their architecture and a building materials.

We first focused on the churches which show a mix of old and new sandstone bricks. You can pick out the old ones by looking for any gray brick and for any sign of damage or shrapnel in the sandy-colored stones. The new stones are much easier to spot by their very clean and undamaged appearance. While visting the chruches, we learned about the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, who was publically against Nazi rule all throughout WW2, but was never killed by them due to his status in a majority catholic Germany. He knew this, and used his position to delay the implementation of several Nazi laws. Despite these actions, von Galen was still a proud German who wanted them to win the war to spread catholcism across Europe. My surface level interpretration is that he only spoke out whenever the Nazis “crossed the line” in his eyes, but I need a more indepth understanding of this point in history before I solidify that opinion. His actions denouncing the Nazi’s dehumanizing laws and warcrimes still resulted in a net positive, and it was very interesting to learn about his motivations. It provided a window into the different layers of living in Nazi Germany and the conflicting thoughts that come with still holding some national pride that I had not considered before.

Moving past the churches to the city center, we saw more modern buildings mimicing the city’s original design. All the shops along the main street were built with brick, but they had façades built with recycled sandstone to look like old Münster. We got to explore this mainstreet during our free time before moving on to the rest of the modern city. Most of the stores were closed because we visted on a Sunday and the majority of Münster is roman catholic, but we still got to try good food and had a nice time out.