Checking out Hitlers old stomping grounds

April 9, 2014

This morning we had our leftover pizza for breakfast and then packed up some snacks and headed to the Hauptbahnhof to find the tour company that we were using to go on the Dachau and Third Reich tours. Our tour group ended up consisting of 15 people and our tour guide was a British guy named Steve who was a WWII expert and very knowledgeable. From Munich, Dachau was about an 11 minute train ride and a 12 minute bus ride. Steve warned us ahead of time that visiting a concentration camp is mandatory in the school curriculum so there were always lots of school children there. We were lucky enough that there were apparently the most school kids he had ever seen there. With that in mind, he took us through the camp in such a way as to avoid the large groups as much as possible.

Apparently Dachau is unique among other camps because most of the buildings, with the exception of the barracks, are still original whereas most other camps that are serving as memorial/museum sites are mostly reconstructed. 

Dachau was also one of the first camps and ran for 12 years; many of the later camps were modeled on Dachau. Most of the prisoners there were political leaders, religious leaders and other groups of people seen as a threat by the SS and the Nazi party; only about 25% were Jewish. Dachau also had a prison within a prison for SS who disobeyed orders and others who needed to be isolated from the other prisoners.

In the 60’s there were several memorials built on the site including Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Russian Orthodox because Dachau was where most of the religious leader prisoners ended up. Being there and knowing how many people died within those walls was horrifying which is why I’m so glad that we went. We had a bit of time to wander on our own before meeting back up with our group and traveling back to Munich.

Once we got back to Munich we had about an hour before our next tour started, so we decided to head back to our hotel to warm up a bit. When we got up this morning we were very optimistic about the temperature because it was bright and sunny with some scattered clouds, so we figured it would warm up nicely by the afternoon, Ben even wore shorts. Of course we were sadly mistaken as it was quite gusty out and the wind was frigid. It was cutting right through my hoodie and so we were both freezing all morning. My hands were so cold I was having trouble adjusting the settings on my camera. So we came back so Ben could put on pants and I could warm up with a cup of coffee. Then just before 3pm we headed back to the train station to meet up with our tour, which was only a group of 6 including us, and our guide was Steve from our morning tour.

Our walking tour took about 2 hours and we covered quite a bit of ground through Munich as Steve pointed out building significant to Hitler’s rise to power. Some of the buildings included an office that Hitler worked out of before he started the Nazi party, 

a Nazi building that still has the eagle and wreath carving (sans swastika),

 the building that housed files on all the Nazi party members and after the war held all the recovered stolen art that the Americans found, 

Hitler’s office,

 Hitler’s favourite restaurants before and after he became Chancellor of Germany,

 the original Nazi party headquarters,

 and the original SS headquarters.

 We also saw an art museum that Hitler had constructed in his preferred austere style and which is still an art museum, but it is full of weird modern art that apparently Hitler would hate.

We were going to go into the Hofbrauhouse to check out the meeting room that Hitler frequently used, but it was a madhouse in the area due to a big Manchester United vs. Bayern Munchen football match.

 There were police everywhere to keep an eye on things and make sure people didn’t get out of hand. It was only about 5pm at this time and everyone was already pretty drunk and rowdy so I’m sure things only got worse as the night wore on.

By this time we were pretty hungry from all our walking so we headed to an authentic Bavarian restaurant that Steve had recommended. As an added bonus, they just so happened to serve Augustiner, my fav German beer; I even convinced Ben to have a taste (he wasn’t a fan but at least he tried).

 We ordered The Bratwurst-Glockl Platter which included: roast pork, oven baked veal knuckle, crispy pork belly, pork sausages, sauerkraut, potato and bread dumplings. Yes, it was a ridiculous amount of pork (Spider would have loved it), but it was all delicious. I didn’t try the pork belly, too much fat but Ben did try the sauerkraut (again he wasn’t a fan).

 After our porky dinner we wandered around Marienplatz and checked out a couple touristy stores that had cuckoo clocks. I really want to bring home a clock but we will wait until we are in the Black Forest since that is where they are all made and should be a bit cheaper.

It was getting late and we were getting cold again, so we scoped out where we would be picking up our car rental tomorrow before heading back to our hotel. Ben is already asleep, he said he was tired from all the walking he did today; I told him if anyone should be tired it’s me since I walked twice the distance he did and I did it at a faster pace. But he does need his sleep because tomorrow marks the beginning of our European driving adventure.