Hallo
So today we did two tours. It was nice to have someone kinda be a bit in control of the directions. We left from Munich hbf at 915am for a 5hour round trip tour of Dachau concentration camp. We had a wonderful British tour guide who was a history major and researcher with emphasis on WWII.
We walked all throughout the camp and were able to go through the building all the prisoners went to when they were first processed and also the barracks for the more special prisoners. The other 28 buildings of rooms had been torn down. Only an outline of their foundation remained. We were able to walk through all of the rooms of the gas chamber and crematorium. It is unknown for sure If the gas chamber there was ever used. Then we took a walk through the woods and there were several cement markers for the giant ash graves that were there... And the large perimeter wall where prisoners were also killed.
It was really kind of surreal..it's hard to imagine everything that happened there. We watched a 20min video with real videos and photos but it is just so hard to wrap your mind around it.
There are houses now in the neighborhood that literally back right up to the camp...the people just try and ignore it.
Then we had 45 min in the train station before we left for our next tour which was the three hour walking tour of the footsteps of Hitler and the third Reich in Munich . It was so crazy, our guide took us all around the city to the building where Hitler lived in an apartment
To the building where the Nazi party was essentially formed, the beer house where they had meetings and Hitler gave speeches.
Hofbrauhaus
To The house where a family helped teach Hitler proper manners for proper society. We walked past a huge modern bank that had been a building where all the Nazi SS offices were but it had survived the war but they tore it down afterwards to build a modern building on top of it.
Cafe where Hitler used to have lunch
All of the places we went to were completely inconspicuous, it wasnt like home where we would have a plaque on everything someone touched and charge someone five bucks to see it, they really want to look past everything here, they don't want to talk about it, see it, or being reminded of it.
I guess I can understand that but at the same time, it is history...so shouldn't we always be reminded of it so that we don't ever repeat it? I don't know. We saw his favorite cafe, the front looked the exact same, even though the name was different. Our guide had all sorts of pictures from 1930-945 and he showed us a lot of pictures from thosenexact spots in the 1930s so we could see how they were the same or different.
I'm sure you, like we, are wondering how anything survived with all the bombing we did back then. Well, only about 10% or less of the building survived...and a lot of them were nazi buildings or ones important to hitler...ironic since you would think those would have been the first to go. Well, luckily for my tour, they were not. Our guide was really incredible, like a living history book, so much more interesting than a brochure or sign posted, it really made a difference. We had no idea where in the city we were, we saw so many awesome buildings and places we may not have found if we were on our own and we certainly would have never known the history behind them
For dinner we went to the Hofbrauhaus which I'd a brewery/biergarten/Bavarian hall type restaurant. I think when the nazis went there it must have been a fun place but today it seemed like a tourist trap type place. Lots of underage Americans with liters of beer acting like idiots of course. Yay America.
Our waiter didn't understand gluten intolerant and I think he thought I was allergic to everything because the only thing he said I could have on the menu was a baked potato and small salad no drawing and proceeded to order that for me. The potato was completely plain, nothing on it, he had said I couldn't have sour cream and I was like what?? So he got another waiter who at least kind of understood and who told our waiter I could have sour cream. Our waiter the proceeded to take at least 10 min if not more to get me sour cream. Awesome. So by then I was tired and hungry and frustrated which led to me being cranky with the whole thing. We went out on the street and I saw a small fast food type sushi window so I grabbed a smoked salmon and avocado roll for 3.50euros. You can't say I didn't eat local food, it was a local side street restaurant and there were people grabbing food to go on their way home.
Then we got gelato. Yum. I had one scoop dark chocolate and one scoop plain yoghurt. Small scoops mind you but just what I needed to make up for the sad meal. Unfortunately we were in such a hurry to get out of there that I didn't remember we had left dads jacket until we were back at the train station. That sucked. I hope the weather stays nice and he won't need it!
