Munich - Beer Drinking Capital of the World

Trip Start May 01, 2007

Trip End Apr 29, 2008

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Flag of Germany Munich, Germany
Sunday, July 15, 2007

I loved the description in our travel book about Munich and beer: "Munich is also the place where someone first connected the 'beer' concept to the 'garden' concept to create the beer garden." And what a concept it is - row upon row of picnic tables under giant trees, with enough beer to kill a heard of elephants. Munich is apparently the beer drinking capital of the world, and for good reason - the beer is bloody fantastic. I made sure to have as much of it as I could.
Munich wasn't so chock-full of great sites to see as some cities are, but it was certainly a pleasant place to visit. It would be a very agreeable place to live. Transit was awesome (I'm not sure why I'm continually surprised by this - I guess public transit in Canada just sucks) and there were great place to eat and relax. There are plenty of green spaces, including a city park 4 times the size of central park in New York. The English Gardens, as it is known, contains a clothing optional beach along a river

01 New City Hall

. Out of sheer curiosity, Terri and I took a stroll down there, and learned something unfortunate: nearly everyone inclined towards nude swimming are middle aged men whose diet consists nearly exclusively of beer and bratwurst. I've seen more attractive sights in zoos.
By far the highlight of our stay was a visit to Dachau, or more specifically the concentration camp in the town of Dachau. It was one of the main camps in use by the Nazis, and it operated for their entire 12 year rule. It wasn't an extermination camp like the one at Auschwitz, but something like 40,000+ people were murdered there during the camp's operation. The inmates there were killed by work - work set up to be so horrible that it actually killed some undesirables there. It didn't just house jews, but also political prisoners, gypsies, homosexuals and other such enemies of the state. It was billed during it's entire existence as a "re-education and protective custody" camp, and had a fantastic propaganda machine set up to convince Germans, and the world, that that was all it was, all the while thousands of the inmates went up the chimney of their crematorium. We took a guided tour of the camp, and were shown reconstructions of the barracks used to house prisoners. At the beginning, people lived in a semblance of dignity, with their own personal space and belongings, but by the end up to 2,000 people were crammed into a barrack designed for just 50 odd men. Random beatings and executions of people "trying to escape" by the SS were commonplace. One particularly popular method was to bind the wrists together behind the back, and hang the person by the wrists from a hook high above the ground. It would apparently often result in dislocation of the shoulders. Our tour guide made it clear that we shouldn't demonize the people that did those horrible things, that we should realize that they were normal, everyday people who did extraordinarily terrible things to other people - that we are all capable of such acts. It was certainly a powerful experience, and very depressing, since we as a society have apparently not learned anything from past experiences.
Northward, now, on an efficiently run (but shockingly 10-minute late) German train, to Berlin. Stay tuned...