Munich, Germany
Trip Start
Feb 27, 2008
1
19
31
Trip End
May 28, 2008
Munich,
Germany
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
We arrived in Munich and settled into our hostel. I was relieved to have free Internet again and I soaked it up as soon as we arrived. In Vienna, Munich, and Berlin we are staying in the "Meininger" line of hostels. They are some of the cleanest, most versatile hostels we've stayed in so far. They all have free wi-fi, a bar that sometimes sells food, luggage storage, breakfast included in the price, options for box lunches, postcards and stamps sold at the front desk, and tons of things that most hostels don't think about but many long distance travelers need. The beds also have duvets and feather pillows as well. We took the train into Munich to see what we could see and eventually find the Hofbrauhaus.
BMW building
We took the train to Marienplatz where the first thing we saw was the giant town hall and clock tower. It was exactly 6pm when we walked out of the subway tunnel so we were greeted with a lovely serenade from the clock tower. It sounded like there were 15 or 20 different bells inside the tower because it was able to play a whole song melody (including harmony) every hour. The little characters decorating the belfry spun around and a crowd began to form in the plaza. After three movements, four rotations of all the characters and about nine minutes, we grew tired of watching the clock tower. But it still wasn't finished. We walked down a side street while the clock tower strained to echo its last chorus to the now thinning crowd. At the end of the side street was an absolutely massive cathedral with two belfries, each had large green onion shaped domes on them. Karla remembered reading that the onion shaped domes were placed there temporarily until spires could be build, but they were left an never replaced. The cathedral honestly looked bigger from the outside than it did inside. It was decked out in Neo-gothic style and I wanted to see the organs but there was a mass going on so we couldn't explore the inside. We then navigated our way through a market, down a side street and to the Hofbrauhaus. Built in the 1580's, this beer hall was the model for the Oktoberfest area in Disneyland. The architecture is similar, but the atmosphere is not! It's widely known that the Hofbrauhaus is a tourist trap and few locals would be caught dead in.
BMW dream car
But it still manages to maintain its air as an authentic Bavarian beer hall with sausages, sauerkraut, pretzels, and busty blond women in traditional dresses serving beer by the liter. Some dark beers had the option of being sold by the half-liter, but for the most part, a liter was the smallest beer you could get. Karla and I were introduced to an interesting new kind of beer called Radler, it's basically a lemon-flavored pilsner. (For those of you following along at home, just buy a German pilsner at the grocery store and add about 4-6 ounces of sprite to it.) It sounds like blasphemy to add anything to beer but the lemon really compliments the flavor and makes it light enough to enjoy on a hot day or even for breakfast ☺After beer and a pretzel, we ended our night at the hard rock café, I'm collecting t-shirts from most of the cities that have Hard Rock café's. We decided to get the Munich one out of the way on the first night so we could enjoy German food for the rest of the time.
Day 56 - We woke up and took the train to Dachau this morning. Dachau is a small suburb of Munich that is unfortunately known for housing the first Concentration camp set up by the Nazis in 1933. I didn't really know what to expect from the memorial. What we found was a terribly accurate depiction of what most of the concentration camps were constructed like. The symmetrical offices stood at the head of the camp. To the left and right were the entrances and exits for the camp. Directly in front of the main office was the roll call yard.
BMW Hydrogen
Prisoners had to stand in tight ranks and files while roll was taken every morning and night. Sometimes they would be punished for hours and would have to stand at attention regardless of the weather. Behind the roll call yard were foundations of thirty-two barracks separated by a road down the middle. It was lined with tall trees. Only the first two of these thirty barracks were reconstructed. The rest of the foundations were filled with gravel and left to show the massive size of the camp. Dachau was built to hold over 2,500 people. At the time the allied troops liberated the camp, over 30,000 people were currently imprisoned within its gates. The audio tour around the grounds took us two hours, we saw the barracks, the religious memorials, and a gut-wrenching documentary about the camp and its history that left everyone silent afterward. Then we walked the crematoriums and the gas chambers. Dachau never used its gas chamber for mass executions but it did use them on a handful of people for tests with that intention. Regardless, it was a powerful tour that was so eerie that I can't even put it down on a page. We were really depressed and we wanted to leave, but we realized that we hadn't even gone through the museum. It was in the main building and was the majority of the memorial. It covered the rise of the Nazi party from the beginning in 1919. It then walked the visitor through where the prisoners were registered, showered, numbered and introduced to the yard for the first time. There were posters and exhibits with descriptions of daily life, and also individual accounts of brutality in the prison.
BMW world
It's impossible for a person to get through the entire museum in a single day, we sped through it and only managed to get 75% of the way through. When we got to the "human experimentation" part of the museum I decided that I didn't want to finish the rest of the tour. After five and a half hours of walking around in shock and feeling sick to my stomach we had to leave. I really didn't enjoy the experience that the camp gave me, but at the same time, I think it's important for everyone to see this place. It provided a much more accurate understanding. In US schools we are definitely educated on this topic, but like most history, it feels detached and distant from our school and everything going on in America at the time. Actually visiting this camp made it less fantasy and more real-life, bringing it down from its pedestal in history and making everything concrete, and even more scary than it was in school. Something that isn't covered in American schools enough is the number of non-Jewish people that resided in the same camps. I'm sure there are a good number of Americans who believe that there were only Jews in these camps. But in actuality, Priests, Austrians, political opponents, Polish, homeless, Gays, Gypsies, and any form of criminal, be they German or not were held without trial for indefinite periods of time. Dachau citizens who lived just yards away from the camp had no idea what was really going on inside. The official statement was that it was a rehabilitation and education camp, questioning this explanation was strictly forbidden.
BMW world window
For scheduled tours, the Germans would create a fasade including the camp orchestra playing in the roll call area and the victims singing-from far away so you couldn't tell how malnourished and abused they were. This kept many of the locals from asking questions or raising suspicions. We ate lunch and caught the train back to Munich. I still felt depressed. We lounged in the hostel for a short while and then we motivated ourselves to go to the Olympic park. "Isn't that your umbrella?" I asked Karla as the subway pulled from the station. This was the second time I've watched Karla's accessories go by on a subway bench. And this umbrella was blue and really cute. I offloaded Karla at the next stop and ran back as fast as I could. It's amazing how far subway trains can travel in just a few minutes. Anyway, I arrived at the station about 8 minutes later and no luck, no umbrella. It was a noble attempt but you have to be fast in the big city. I felt bad for not saving the day but Karla assured me that the 3 euro umbrella would not be missed.
We continued on to Olympic park where the Olympic spike was located. There is apparently a rock and roll museum up in the top, but I had no desire to go see what the Germans have to say about Rock and Roll. In 1972 the Munich Olympics were struck with a terrorism attack. I learned all about that in the Olympic museum in Barcelona. Parts of this trip are starting to relate to themselves and I'm really enjoying myself. This is exactly why total emersion is the best way to really get into an area.
Christian memorial
We walked to the modern looking building across the park. It was a towering ergonomic structure, decorated with stainless steel and mirrored glass. It's every little boy's dream after they stop dreaming about Disneyland. I'm talking about BMW World. A complete experience that will help you understand why BMW's are clearly the best German car (for those who don't already know.) I saw all the lines of BMW cars including the 1 series and a hydrogen powered 7 series. BMW Factory tours are conducted at the plant across the street, but we had missed the last presentation in English. Oh well, more to do when we come back next time. Karla was more interested in the interactive visits where she got to see how fast she could hit colored lights...girls.That night we had sausages and Radler again at the beer hall. Munich really has a load of authentic beer halls. They're warm and friendly, with good food and good service. It's definitely something about Bavarian history that I had forgotten about.
If I haven't mentioned it yet, here's a tip on European table service: After your last beer or your meal is done or whatever, you have to ask the waiter for the check. It will not automatically appear like it does in the states. Customers in Europe are allowed to take as long as they like in a place where they eat or drink. A single cup of coffee or a beer allows you permission to use the facilities for an indefinite amount of time.
We sat for a while before we finally realized that we had to ask for the check. After taking the train home settled into the hostel and started watching the Sound of Music, At about 11pm, two girls walked in and started putting down their bags and setting up beds. Their accent was strangely familiar and we asked them where they were from. "Portland, Oregon." They replied casually thinking that we probably wouldn't know where it was.
"Portland!" Karla and I shouted in stereo. One of the girls looked up, startled....
We told them we were from Portland and then I made good on my promise. (I said if I meet anyone from Oregon on our journey, I would buy them a beer, so that's what we did. We sat in the bar downstairs and talked about where we lived. It was good to hear familiar names pronounced correctly: Willamette, Hawthorne, Couch (like the street).
It was really good company. That night at about one thirty, two other girls who had set up their bed earlier came in stumbling. One girl went straight into the bathroom and started puking her guts out. Anyone who didn't wake up when they came in was awake now. The second girl attempted to look busy while she waited for her friend. She developed a loud hiccup. Short little drunk hiccups over a symphony of drunken wretching from the bathroom. I heard Karla snicker and I had to turn over to keep from laughing.
Comments
Berlin/Munich
Great Blog. Your comments were very helpful. Would have loved to be on your trip. We are going to Berlin and Munich and was happy to read your experiences. Hope to have as much fun.