Munich (Ragan named this blog)

We arrived in Munich after a lovely train ride from Verona, Italy. Not sure what the expect of Munich, we were 100%  up for anything. Our GPS for Europe has not been much of a friend and oh how we needed her on this one! Not because the hotel was hard to find, but the street names are RIDIUCLOUS!! You stare at your reservation trying to somewhat put the letters together and start looking for it on the map, but then when you go to look at the map you get utterly confused by all the crazy words and you no longer know what you started looking for in the first place. It's like you've suddenly lost the ability to read and retain information. Let me give you an example. Take a left off of GewurzmuhlstraBe,  right on WagmullerstraBe and then right on PrizregentenstraBe and then you will have arrived at Glockenbachviertel. These are real words people!! I told Ragan we could never live there because we would never be able to communicate or read anything. We found the Germans to be extremely efficient people with the MOST ineffiecent language on the planet. As seen the examples below. Those poor kids in first grade with their spelling tests!

The Germans have some staples to their diet and we learned that they are truly a "meat and potatoes" society. The most important of the staples would obviously be beer, which in the 1500's was declared as basic to a household and equivalent with bread. OK? Potatoes, choose from: warm salad, mashed, baseball sized dumplings, or the good 'ole fried form. And anything that can be considered meat. This could come as the pork knuckle, knuckle included. Lots of options that come on bones actually. Forty five options of  weiners, saugages, brats and then there's the sub catergory of brats. Then there is my favorite, veal lung, which was actually in the liquid form of soup. Oh how my boy was tempted. Luckily, I never experienced watching Ragan sip a room temperature bowl of veal lung soup. Our last day in Munich was chilly and drizzly and Ragan saw meatloaf on the menu and it just sounded like comfort food straight from Momma's kitchen...until this showed up.

We think their "meatloaf" is what we refer to as SPAM. Not the homemade meatloaf we had in mind.

Ragan and I saw that Dachau Concentration Camp was only 30 minutes away on the subway and decided to make a day of it. We knew it wouldn't be an uplifting day, but knowing it's historical importance and the way it changed the world, we knew it had to be added to the agenda. You read about this camp in history books or catch bits of a documentary on TV, but walking the roads these men walked everyday to roll call and to see the only walls they saw was chilling. The entire experience if hard to wrap your brain around. One thing that was strinking was how close the town of Dachau was to the camp. We think of it as a place in histroy, but it's a living, breathing town of people who turned their heads the other way. How can they not know this was going on right down the street? How just ould they turn their heads the other direction at the sound of gunfire or the smell and smoke coming continously from a crematory? It just didn't sit well with me.

Quick review, shortly after Hitler was appointed at Reich Chancellor, Dachau was opened as a concentration camp for political prisoners. It was designed to hold 6,000 men, but on April 29, 1945, the day of liberation by the US Troops, they had over 32,000 men there. This camp was the prototype for all the other camps through Europe and was a "school of violence." Experiments, forms of torture and regimens of total control were all started and perfected here before being used in all other locations. It was the only camp that was open during the entire run of Hitlers regime.

Entrance Gates at Dachau Concentration Camp

The famous iron gates with "Work Will Set You Free." It was heartbreaking to know that there were thousands of men who walked through that same gate that would never see the other side again. They have 41,500 recorded deaths at this camp, but the reason it wasn't higher was because most prisoners were sent to extermination camps if they were near death.

It felt great to stand and read these memorials they have posted next to the famous iron gates. The US Troops came that April day in 1945, took over the camp and set these men free. The pictures that were taken by the troops of these men would bring tears to anyones eyes. These prisoners knew they had been set free. And although they were shells of the men they were the day they entered that camp, they had something they hadn't had in a long time. Hope. Hope they were going to see the outside of those camp walls, hope they were going to see the families they had left behind, and hope they were going to live. Death has become so much a apart of their everyday lives, it was their life. Freedom had come to them in the shape of the US Troops. Made you feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that the sacrafices made during that time weren't in vain. Good had come from it.

Ragan in front of the "Never Again" memorial and in the low profile box to his side is a memorial in honor and holding ashes of the unknown concentration camp prisoner

This is an iron sculpture in memorial area front of the main building on the grounds. It was to represent all of the men who had run into the electrical fences to end their suffering.

This is part of the iron and stain glass memorial. Cloth triangles were sewn on to the uniforms of the prisoners as their identification within the groups. (i.e Jewish, Gypsies, Disabled, Political Prisoners, etc.) There are some triangles that are superimposed with another color because they were of two "offenses." 

Something I found to be ironic about the setting was walking over this serene stream that runs parallel to the camp. It was idealic really. It runs all along the camp right outside the walls.

Back to Munich....

In th middle of Munich is the English Garden. It's amazing!! You had no idea you were in even a major city. Complete peace and quiet. One of the largest in the world, it beats Hyde and Central Park in land mass. It probably beats them in a lot of ways! It was awesome.

Good 'ole Germany with their window boxes. Is everyone in a green thumb in this part of the world!?!? They grow the most amazing gardens.

It's a short trip to Germany, but we'll be back in a week or so to take a spin through Heidelburg. Until then,we have two more countries to hit before then!