Days Five & Six in Munich and Dachau

I just realized that by the time I was on the train to Berlin on Friday, 7/28 I was so exhausted that I didn't even record what we did in Munich so I will try to write what I remember and then I'll write what's in my travel journal.

Day Five was 7/27 we arrived in Munich from Heidelberg in the early afternoon. We got to our hotel and it was super nice. It was a traditional hotel room and more modern than our room in Frankfurt. The only down side was the spotty/weak Wi-Fi. Other than that it was lovely and they sold drinks, including wine, at the main desk.

I love the German tradition of leaving a thick quilt at the foot of the bed. 

We checked into our room and we set off to see the sites. I can't remember what we saw in Munich that first day but I can tell you that we walked a lot. I felt like we walked more than we had in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, but maybe I was just getting tired. I don't know why we didn't take the subway there more often but like Miranda said, she preferred to walk the streets and see the city, which is very true.

One thing we noticed both in Frankfurt and in Munich was the very large Arab/Muslim population. In one of the cities we walked down an entire street that was filled with shops with Arabic writing. We saw so many women in hijabs and burkas. It was very interesting.

So we walked around Munich and we saw different interesting sites and then we went to the Hard Rock Cafe to get Rey a shot glass for his collection. I'm not going to lie, even though Hard Rock is originally a British company it's now American, it was nice to have a very American feel for a bit and to see American foods on the menu. The whole vibe inside of there is American. So we ate there and I had buffalo wings since I'd realized by then that I don't really like German food, except for sausage that we also eat a lot in Texas.

Day 6 was the VERY long day! We did the Hitler tour in the morning. OMG, we had the best tour guide, Florian, who obviously has a PhD in Hitler and the Third Reich.

Feldherrnhalle, a monument in Munich where the Nazi's had their first failed coup attempt.

The tour was almost 3 hours long and extremely interesting. We saw the site where Hitler gave his first speech when he came to the attention of his future supporters. History! We saw the site where he had his first failed coup attempt that actually worked in his favor. Even though he went to prison it was more of a writer's retreat where he wrote his book, "My Struggle."

After lunch we set out on a train to Dachau, the first concentration camp in Europe. It was the model for all the other camps. What really got me was how they didn't establish this camp and say, "What the heck are we doing?" Why didn't people stop them there?? No, instead they modeled all the other camps after this one. Unbelievable. The experience was really chilling and I'm glad Miranda got to see it first hand to really understand history and to make it real.

Dachau

After Dachau we went back to Munich and had dinner. I had some passable German food. Note, German dumplings are nothing like American or even Chinese dumplings.

We went back to our hotel, where they had had graciously been holding our bags for us all day, and set out for the train station. We had reserved a compartment because we were taking the overnight train to Berlin to save time. They didn't have any sleeper cars/cochettes so had a compartment with 6 seats and just prayed nobody wanted to sit with us so we could stretch out across the seats. Yes it was exhausting for me at 47, but I'm glad Miranda got to have that great experience of taking a train over-night. She said it was horrible. Ha ha!