Population: 1.3 million
Munchen starts with a nap at our amazingly comfy new hostel beds. Breakfast downstairs and out into the dead city on Christmas day. Walk down through the old medieval town gates on to the main shopping street Sendlinger Strasse. Make it to the city's heart Marienplatz with the Rathaus (parliament building) in the center and a big column dedicated to the Virgin Mary, got a fre tour of Munich by our friend Tom from Australia. Tom first showed us the famous Muncih glockespiel, a bellower that at 11 and 12 plays the bells and it has its figures dance around, firsta t the mariage of Wilhelm and his wife and there's a joust between Lorraine and France and Lorraine (at the time German territory) wins. The bottom scene was a cooper's dance, coopers being those who make barrels, when the plague routinely came through munich they would lose all their busienss so they started doing this dance outside to show the people the sickness was past and they could come out and buy more barrels of beer, the king liked it so much he decreed that once every seven years the coopers should do their dance across Germany and they still do, next time in 2012. Onwards, we got a little history of Munich (became a kingdom from a duchy in 1806 thanks to Napoleon, the german gave him 36,000 troops to fight Russia and married his daughter to nap's stepson, it has always been one of if not the richest part of Germany, fused in 170 with thes rest of the country, named Munich from Municha which means monk and that's their symbol of the city, there used to be lots of monateries in the area brewing beer. Walked around the Frauenkirche, the largest church with two towers and copper bulbs on top built in the 1400s in only twenty years, story of a deal with the devil not to build any more windows and the devilw ould help build it in twenty years because from the front the inner main columns block all the large windows, you can't tell it has huge stained glass windows. We went in during mass, heard the organ, went out, walked around the old city saw Altepeter church which is another old brick church with a cannon ball stuck in the side form the Swedish invasion during the 30 years way (1618-1648). Used to be a cemetery on the premises and the tombstones of the rich which were put up on the church wall are still there, those who were not rich enough had theirs ground up to be part of the square's cement. Walked and saw a little memorial to Kristillnact at the largest department store that was owned by Jewish proprietors, saw the Hofbrauhaus (made 1589) the largest beer house in Munich, famous for many reasons one of which it being the seat of Nazi power, all of Munich really, had these big tables and ditches or drains underneath so you could just undo the flap on your lederhosen and pee sitting and drinking, no bathrooms, had walking sticks guide the bee to avoid backlash (yeah gross I know) buy ingenious, in the bathrooms have vomitorium to flush vomit down just the right height. Went down the fancy shopping street Maximilienstrasse, but today it looked like any other street, did find my Frey Wille jewelry store that I like (we saw it in Venice as well) learned that 85-90% of the city was destroyed by allied bombing so basically all the old stuff is new, even those first two churches were completely rebuilt after the way so they're not really ancient anymore but have history nonetheless, the people of Munich when they knew they were going to be bombed took pictures of everything, the tiles on the ground, the little statues, everything, so it was all replaced to the tee. In one church nothing was left and the people had taken pictures but the pics were in black and white so they couldn't replicate the portraits on the wall exactly so they jsut made them all black and while and now its the Black and White church. We didn't see it but it sounds cool. Saw the opera house, largest in Germany, in front of which is a square with a statue to that first Bavarian king, learned it was his son Ludwig who in 1819 gave his wife Theresa a field for her wedding and what to do with a field? They threw a party and invited all of munich (theresaviese) and had lots of wine and games and fun, so much that the next year they did it again and after the first seven years they said why import all this Italian wine we should just be using our own beer, so they brewed higher alcohol content beer to match the wine so everyone still got drunk and that's how Oktoberfest was born. Went down the street where Hitler's Munich beer hall putsch was put down and stood on the very spot where his bodyguardtook 11 rounds of bullets for him (he didn't even die) and saved his life. Apparently in the melee 15 nazis died and 4 policemen and 1 waiter, and during the Nazi regime there was a plaque up there across from the main government building saying all 20 were Nazis and the 4 policemen were shot in the back tring to join the opposing ranks and same with the waiter..the plaque was taken down but it also had two wreaths up that were changed daily and had guards in front to make sure passersby said the nazi salute in passing and lots just went down a side street to avoid this (though of course plainclothespolicemen were there too) and now there's a golden stripe in the bricks on the path as a small memorial to the silent resistance that walked down that street. Walked up to the statue area with two big lions where Hitler gave lots of speeches, etc etc...lots of history here. Rubbed the crests of three of the four lions flanking the entrances to the m ain state buildings for life, love, and luck in business (you can't touch all four or you'll get no luck at all). Next part of the day = Dachau. Dachau is really not out of the city, there were apartment buildings set up literally within fifty feet of the complex (ps- one of our maps had easy german sayings which aren't easy at all because there's not phonetic pronounciation, but we'll just spice it up and add these: ich habe nur meine Lederhosen vergessen (I just forgot my leather pants is the translation)...and mein Freund ist besoffen (my friend is drunk) :) excellent saying. Ich mag dich! (I like you) Logisch! (sure) okay great. Continuing. Dachau. So it started snowing at the end and got freezing and the whole foresty area around partrs of it rustled and you defnitely got the feel it was not a fun place to be at night. Or in the daytime but it was sincerely creepy t night. There was a ton of information to learn and a documentary about the camp and the Nazis in general and you walked through the main command center for the SS and there were 2 of the 34 reconstructed barracks in the back there were memorials to all the different groups taht were in the camp- jews and catholics and Russian orthodox and carmalite and protestant...and the crematorium and one of 3 still remaining gas chambers from the third reich, though the one here was never officially put into use and nobody knows why. Dachau was the "model" camp, in use for all 12 years of the third reich, had 200,000 people pass through and 34,000 deaths had 37 subsidary camps all around Munich (which aren't there anymore but imagine there are people living on that earth right now) and the first couple years it really was just a hard work camp but no uniforms and people ate "enough" albeit not nutritional, it changed in 1937-38 with an influx of jews and they built new barracks and new campgrounds and rules got stricter and stricter, but the whole camp was evacuated in 39-40 for ss training because all the ss had to come here to get trained before being sent to other camps. It was known to the community that a camp was here advertised for rehabilitation and reeducation, people coul dhave packages sent etc etc but life was hard all around, standard concentration camp conditions, the crematorium at the end didn't have enough coal to run so they built two mass graves and the stench the people around could see so they then knew how bad conditions at the camp were, there were small resistance groups around that tried to help and the last day before the allies came (americans liberated the camp) they tried to stage a coup on the town hall with escaped camp mates but since a lot of the town was SS friendly and a lot of ss lived in munich, it being home of naziism and all, it was bloodily put down. There were death marches sent out from dachau in the final months, dachau had a lot of medical experiments done at it, not under mengele but others- low air pressure, freezing temperatures, sulfanide pus bulbs and blood infections injected in and people had to take a pill every five minutes to see what it would do...always jews subjected to those conditions, lots of dissections of sick and dead prisoners..there was a brothel here where women from ravensbruck were made to be prostitutes in 43 and 44 for the prisoners to help their work morale, because the Nazis needed the munitions coming form this camp, the camp had a medicinal herb garden, rabbit hutches, an infirmary which really did nothing, it had the capo system, it shot russian prisoners of war (those statistics on how many deaths were not kept) its door said arbeit mach frei in smaller iron letters, the trains came right in and deposited the dead and dying, the camp was mainly for men no women and children and lots of transport from here to other camps, especially in the east were common, the camp had barbed wire fences and then a trench and more barbed wire and after the war the US army used it as a base for a long time and then it was set up as remembrance but some government functionaries still use parts of the land, it took up 1.5 square kilometers which is a lot, so we only saw the part for prisoners and all the comandant centers are still buildings for one of the Bavarian guards. Its very hard to describe the conditions and the actual facilities and do it justice, I have pictures. I was very glad I got to come and see this place and glad to see how many others, even on Christmas day there were there. Fastforward to train station, we got pretzels and glunwein and apple strudel and ate, went back to the hostel and literally chilled on our comfy beds (although there was again a lack of heat in the room) until bed, now we're up early again on a train to BERLIN!!!
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