Munchen on Munich
(remember to click on the photos to see them bigger and to see any comments :-) )
Got to the airport on time (apparently the Brussels airport has won awards for its design, and it IS beautiful), but not enough time to eat first (flight was at 645am), so I felt a bit queasy, which made it difficult to eat anything to make it better (anyone else ever had that happen?). Bought a can of Pringles thinking I could at least get those down one at a time. Felt a bit better after the plane touched down in Munich, Germany. As soon as I got to the city, I got on a train to Dachau.
A side note...it didn't occur to me that it was now October, and Bavaria was in the throes of Oktoberfest. Men and women walking around without shame in lederhosen and dirndls--I'm guessing a solid 25% of the folks I saw while out and about were dressed in traditional garb. This isn't something that happened later when I got to Berlin, so I guess it is a bigger deal here.
Once you get to the Dachau train station, you have to take a bus (or a long walk) to get to the actual site.
It is ENORMOUS. You begin by walking through the original gate with the German for "Work Makes You Free" in the iron. This is not the original door--that is featured inside the museum. THIS, Alanis Morrissette, is what IRONY is.
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Once inside, you get a sense of the magnitude of the place--the sheer size of it. It is simply massive, but very difficult to capture in photos.
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The guard towers are still up, and they have replaced most of the fence, the "moat" and the 2nd fence. It was between these fences that so many were shot (many times, because they wanted to be).
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One thing I noticed: the natural surroundings of this site are BEAUTIFUL. The beauty of the grounds covers the ugliness that occurred here.
The crematorium was a bit of a surprise. It was very small. There are actually two of them. A very small one that you can't walk through, and the larger one that was built later when they needed a bigger one. Dachau wasn't one of the major gas chamber killing camps...they mainly killed by firing squad and hanging, and then needed a place to deal with all the dead bodies. However, there is a gas chamber in this crematorium--marked by a the sign reading "showers." One of the more disturbing sites was the gas outlets in that room.
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The area behind the crematorium is like a nature path through the trees...except there are memorial plaques and statues commemorating what happened here.
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Next, I checked out the building where they have re-created a typical barracks. They would sometimes house up to thousands at a time in one barracks.
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There are several memorials around the grounds, religious (Jewish, Christian, Protestant, Russian Orthodox--there is even a convent on site) and otherwise.
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Then I headed into the museum. The amount of information there is overwhelming, and certainly not something you can really take in in just one day. One thing that really made it real for me was a sign they uncovered under the numerous layers of paint: Smoking Forbidden--in that font you associate with Nazis.
There is a cafeteria onsite, and I had lunch there (yes, the irony is not lost on me. This was one big day of irony) that was delicious--currywurst.
I took the bus/train back into Munich, and headed to Marienplatz, one of the largest plazas in the city. There is a huge, beautiful City Hall building there, with the famous glockenspiel...I wasn't there at a time to see it moving, unfortunately, but the crowds were so huge here, I didn't want to stay too long.
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Then I headed to the airbnb. It is kind of a downtrodden apartment (yet, strangely, they employ a maid to come by and clean for them--uh, this place is small and 2 people live here and you can't keep it clean???). The owner wasn't there, so a neighbor had to let me in--she didn't leave me any keys, so I had to check with the neighbor whenever I wanted to leave to make sure I could get back in. The bed was SO hard! But there were two grey kitties (like mine!) who were adorable and kept me company. They even slept with me that night :-) I found a grocery nearby that had some Greek food so I had that for dinner and went to bed.
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The next day, I thought about going to a street art wall...but instead, I slept in. It felt great! It was raining again, so probably better that I didn't go out in it. Around 11 I headed to the train station to catch my train to Salzburg :-)
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