Once we got to Munich, we checked in at our hostel and took the metro to the Dachau Concentration Camp, located 16km (about 10 miles) outside of Munich. This camp was the only camp open during the full twelve years of the Nazi Regime (1933-1945) and served as a prototype that the rest of the concentration camps were modeled after.
"Work shall set you free."
The main area where the camp's orchestra played while roll was being taken.
The camp's headquarters.
The shower room. The wooden table was used to strap down prisoners while they were beaten with the stick lying on top of the table.
The barracks.
The sorting room.
The wash room.
The guard tower and camp walls.
I wasn't sure what to expect when we visited Dachau, but I knew that I had to. It was surreal to walk around a place infamous for so much pain and suffering and death. It's hard to read and to learn about people being so cruel to other people. And it would be easier if we could somehow erase that dark period of world history altogether and never think about it again. But we can't. Not simply because that's impossible, but because we
really can't. As citizens of the free world we owe it to the victims of the Holocaust to remember. By remembering and teaching their story we are saying that it matters. That their horrific experiences and their agonizing deaths matter. For my European studies class this past semester we had to read
If This is a Man the memoirs of Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz. In his book he writes...
"For survivors, remembering is a duty. They do not want to forget, and above all they do not want to world to forget, because they understand that their experiences were not meaningless, that the camps were not an accident, an unforseen historical happening."
As the generation that witnessed the Holocaust and all the atrocities of World War II fades away, the torch will be passed to us. It will be our responsibility to ensure that their stories are told to future generations and fight to rpevent such wide spread genoicide from happening again.
After we got back into Munich, we took a trip to the Hofbrauhaus, Munich's most famous beer hall and beer garden.
Kelly, Rachel, and me while we were wating for our food and ice water. ;-)
The next day we took the train two hours north of Munich to Fussen, the cutest little tourist town at the foot of the Alps. We were there of course on official matters of critical importance. Our posse was investigating the likeliness of the Neuschwanstein Castle to its more famous Disney impersonator , Cinderella's Castle.
See the resemblance?
Neuschwanstein was built by Ludwig II as a private retreat in 1868. Photography of the castle's interior is not permitted which is a darn shame because the inside is
gorgeous! Ludwig had the entire castle's decoration dedicated to his favorite musician/composer, Wagner. So the throughout the castle different scenes from Wagner's famous opera's are portrayed in tapestries, wood carvings, even the floors. The castle was never fully completed however and Ludwig himself only spent just over 100 days in the castle. "Mad King Ludwig," as he was sometimes called, was declared unfit for rule in 1886 and mysteriously died two days after his removal from the thone.
A picture of the Alps and Neuschwanstein's neighboring castle, Hohenschwangau. (Go ahead, if you're not Libby and your mother country isn't Germany, I double dog dare you to try and pronounce Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. It'll be fun. You won't sound dumb at all. Promise).
Walking up to the castle gates...
One last look.
A shot of the Alps taken during our train ride back to Munich.
The next day we stopped by the Deutches Museum! I think it is probably the equivalent to the Arizona Science center as most of the museum's displays were more mechanical and engineering based.
A couple pictures of some Nazi fighter jets...
I'm not going to lie most of the museum was a little boring, especially since not all of the information plaques has English translations. BUT the display pictured below made me freeze in my tracks and took me back to elementary school.
My grandfather loved model trains and devoted half of his bedroom to a replica that looked vey much like the one above. I remember all of the cousins crowded around his set watching his toy trains chug along the tracks as my grandfather wore his conductor's hat. It was something that I hadn't thought about in a long time, and made my entire trip to the museum worth while.
After the museum we walked around the central part of Munich on our way to the metro station. Here is a picture of the Newtown Hall in Marienplatz, the city's central square.
Once we made it to station, we took the metro to Olypmic Park, the site of the 1972 Olympics.
The swimming hall, definitely
a lot smaller than the water cube in Beijing.
That night we made one last visit to the Hofbrauhaus before heading home to Ireland the next morning. I still can't believe everything we managed to cram into just two weeks. It was definitely a very memorable spring break and I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to travel to places I had only read about or seen in movies. I'm going to conclude the last of my spring break blogs with a simple but true quote from Mr. Mark Twain that I have always loved...
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
