52 Things: #12, #16, and #28… (and Some Other Unrelated Stuff, Too)

I knocked three things off of the list this weekend. Unintentionally, too. Thursday night, during one of our Skype video chats, Brenna and I decided that, since we were both off for most of the day on Friday, that we would go to the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. I’d already been but Brenna had yet to go and I was happy to go again because one, it’s free, and two, it’s really interesting and always worth a visit. We met at the fish fountain (Standard!) at noon and then argued about whether or not we should be honorable and get an S Bahn ticket. I convinced her that we did, in fact, need to get a ticket (we’re honorable residents!) and assured her that I’d read all of the ticket options and that I knew exactly which one was the one that we needed.

Turns out I was wrong. Which brings me to #12 on my list of things to do in Munich:

Be stymied by Munich’s public transport pricing system.

This happens all the time. I don’t know WHY it’s so confusing it just is. There are rings and zones and inner districts and outer districts, partner tickets and single tickets, day trips, single trips, stripe cards. Yada, yada. It’s ridiculous. Most of Munich lies within rings 1-4 and on the map, ther area is coded in white and green. Weird shades of green, mind you! Dachau is on the edge of the fourth ring in the green… I think. Oh shit, I don’t know! I thought we needed the outer district ticket (Außenraum: green, yellow and red zone) because Dachau was in the green zone. So we bought the outer ticket, only to discover later, as our ticket is being checked (Brenna, you’re WELCOME!) that the Außenraum ticket covers rings 5-16. What? Who even goes out that far? Haha. Seriously. So not only did we have the wrong ticket but I was missing rings 3-4… the only rings that I needed to get from point A to point B. And we were definitely inside of ring 3 when he checked us. But the guy didn’t get me for it. It probably happens a lot. Haha. But I did have my MONTHLY TRAIN PASS (which is #16 – “Buy a monthly public transport ticket”) so I had rings 1-2 and rings 5-16. I was officially stymied.

Halfway through the journey, we met some fellow Americans who had taken the seats near us and we quickly befriended them. How could we not with Brenna and I being the only two people in the entire train car that were speaking? They heard us and sat down next to us, comforted by our shared home language. The four of us were all headed to the same place and since I’d been to Dachau once already, I kind of became the unofficial tour guide. And Brenna became the unofficial comic relief. Although at times it felt a tad bit inappropriate, the girl kept us laughing throughout the two or so hours that we spent walking around the historical site. I’ve been there before so I won’t get into it but the place is just depressing. As it has every right to be. Horrible things happened there. But either way, it was nice to have Brenna there to keep things jovial. Haha.

We spent the rest of the weekend showing our new friends around Munich (Schloss Nymphenburg and the inside of not one but two McDonald’s, haha). Also, #28 (tell someone off for standing on the wrong side on the escalator) comes in to play because I got to yell at one of the girls to move to the right side of the escalator. Haha. Sorry, Tyler!

On Friday night, Brenna and I joined some friends at Mike’s house for dinner and wine and then we all went out and stayed in the city, bar hopping until 4 am. We went from Sausalitos to Ned Kelly’s to Kilian’s, to a cheap kebap shop where the owner tried to take advantage of us. We picked up some interesting characters throughout the night the best being an Italian cocaine dealer who thought we were the cops after Brenna told him to ‘Leave us the f%$k alone and go away!’ Haha. On Saturday night I was home with the girls so it was macaroni and cheese and a few streaming episodes of Desperate Housewives for me.

Me and Brenna. I ADORE this picture mostly because I adore this girl!

On Sunday morning, I met Laura, Andrzej, Mike, and Ana at Hauptbahnhof where we bought a Bayern ticket and caught a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. We spent an incredible day in the little city, braving the cold and ski crowds. It was the last day of the Alpine Ski World Championships but the crowds weren’t too bad. We did a pretty easy hike to the partnachklamm and it was so worth it. The ice was INCREDIBLE through there - I’d never seen anything like it before.

After our hike, we hung out at Kathe’s house for a few hours and were fed chips, hummus, and animal crackers that belonged to some other kid. We’re still not sure what she was talking about on that one. Haha. Dustin was there for one more day so we spent some time with him, too, and after Kathe entertained us and warmed us up, we all walked to the Bahnhof and had drinks in Sausalitos. Then we went home… where Laura, Andrzej, and I had drinks at Jaeger’s happy hour.

Then I came home and now it’s 1 am and I’m posting this blog. Life is good, isn’t it? I have absolutely NO complaints.

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial

Last weekend I visited the Dachau concentration camp memorial. I promised that I would blog about this trip and now I’m finally delivering. Between my busy social life, hanging out with die kinder, and catching up on Dexter season 4 (I love streaming internet video!), I haven’t really been thinking much about blogging. But finally I’m getting around to it.

My trip to Dachau deserves it’s own post (and the zoo, as well, but I’ll do that later) – it’s an incredible historical location.  It was the first official concentration camp built in Germany during World War II and was originally meant for political prisoners. After the Nuremburg Laws and Heinrich Himmler and measures of war, Dachau contained much more than just political prisoners. No one is a stranger to the purpose of a concentration camp. To be honest, all that I knew about Germany before I arrived here had to do with Hitler and World War II, mainly the Holocaust. Seeing Dachau was very surreal. You don’t realize how powerful history can be until you’re staring it in the face.

The memorial site is about 30 or so minutes outside of Munich and you can get there just by taking the S-Bahn. Eric, Catherine, Harry, and I journeyed out to Dachau around 2:30 or so and then had two hours to explore the memorial before it closed at 5. The first thing that you notice is how somber and melancholy every thing and everyone is. Nobody is smiling, no one is really talking. We had a quick lunch at the cafe in the visitor’s center and then journeyed out to the actual site.

 

Visitors to Dachau have the choice of touring it alone or with an audio guide but we decided to go at it alone. We had Eric there who knows his stuff so he told us a lot about everything that we were seeing, plus every area includes signs written in German and English. I wish that I’d paid more attention or learned more about the history of each area. I think I just wanted to see it all in the short time that we were going to be there so I was rushing through most of it. Eventually I’ll go back for a proper tour but for now all I have is my own interpretation of and reaction to what I saw. And a lot of pictures.

The prisoner’s personal accounts of their time in Dachau were heartbreaking to read.

View of the barracks foundations

At the back of the memorial site, behind and to the left of the barracks, you come to the incinerator building where the soldiers would burn the bodies of prisoners who had died. Also in this building was the gas chamber – where they could murder up to 150 people at one time. This building was horrific – I remember walking into this plain, unadorned, empty room and not really knowing what it was for until I looked up at a sign and read that it was the room where they would keep piles and piles of corpses. I couldn’t stand in that room anymore and I had to step away – it was overwhelming. Even being there it’s hard to imagine what happened in this building but being that much closer to it was so surreal. I can’t believe such horrible things happened to these people.

  The ovens where dead bodies were burned.

The gas chamber where the prisoners were told they would be taking ‘showers.’
This was, by far, the most disturbing and heartbreaking room in the entire site.

 
After we visited this building we went to the museum – which is located in the maintenance building that the prisoners built as a part of their labor work in the camp. The museum is incredible and has accounts of everything from the back history of Germany and the Nazi party during World War I up until the end, when the American soldiers liberated the prisoners at Dachau and killed some fifty SS soldiers in the Dachau Massacre. The museum itself is very, very cool. Again, I didn’t retain much of what I was looking at it but I enjoyed browsing through all of the old artifacts and information.

Old film propaganda

Neus Rathaus during the 30’s with a Nazi flag displayed

Memorial to the prisoners who committed suicide by throwing themselves
onto the electric fence that surrounded the camp

Overall, I thought Dachau was amazing. It’s incredible to be able to see this history up close and personal and I am so blessed to be able to visit places like this, to really understand and feel how history unfolded. I really want to go to Dachau again and get a proper tour. I want to really understand the full history of this place. Learning about World War II and Hitler’s reign in Germany was one of the most interesting parts about my history classes when I was in school and I look forward to being able to learn about it from the source – the country where most of it took place.