Weekend 5: München (Munich)

After school on Friday, I rushed to the Hauptbahnhof (HBF – main train station) on my bike and grabbed a train to Munich. I got in to the city early that night and found my hostel. I planned my Saturday over a pizza in my hostel bar. My room had 6 beds, and as I’m used to rooms with 30-60 beds, I found it a little foreign.

I woke up early on Saturday and caught a bus to the Munich HBF, where I joined a Dachau Concentration Camp tour. It was 20 minutes away by train. The train station that we traveled to was the same building that many prisoners arrived in. The original building is still there, and very representative of Nazi architecture. Dachau was… I can’t describe it. The tour was very interesting, but it’s hard to say that I had a good time. I’m glad I saw it. I walked in a gas chamber (it is disputed as to whether this one was ever used), which says “shower” in German above the door. I saw the ovens, crematorium, and the wall where most of the prisoners were murdered if they didn’t die of starvation or disease. Needless to say, my weekend wasn’t one of cupcakes and puppy dogs and smiles.

Something you maybe wouldn’t know unless you visited the site: the surrounding areas are residential. Some houses even overlook the camp from their top floors. Many of the houses in the town were built for camp refugees after the war.

After that, I walked another tour of downtown Munich, one called the Hitler and the Third Reich Tour. We saw the first headquarters of the Nazi Party, which now has an Apple store in the ground floor. We walked in the beer hall where Hitler had the first meeting of the Nazi Party (it has huge chandeliers and flags hanging from poles off the walls; see pictures). I walked by Hitler’s offices (now a very prestigious music school), and I saw a lot of rally points made famous by photographs and newsreels. My guide also pointed out the café where Hitler drank coffee or tea or something and plotted his rise to power every afternoon.

After the tours, I got dinner at an Italian joint. Met up with Beth who was also in town and we had drinks at a place I learned about on the tour – an old after-work pub for Nazi Bureaucrats. I went back to my hostel. Woke up on Sunday late and made my way to the Nymphenburg Schloß (castle), in front of which was a large pond with some very greedy swans. They thought the trash I had was food and barked at me for a while. They almost bit someone. Located in the castle was the Museum of Nature and Men, which was very interesting.

Munich General Pictures
Dachau Pictures
Museum of Nature and Men Pictures