Our European adventure started on Wednesday April 24^th with a 6pm flight out of Chicago O’Hare, direct to Munich. Love that we can fly direct to Europe…when we lived in Rochester, we either had to connect somewhere or drive to Toronto to get a direct flight. We were joined at the airport by Connor, who was leaving about 20 minutes after us for a weekend trip to London. He decided to go and see his favorite soccer (or football if you’re not American) team, Liverpool, play. Their manager is leaving at the end of the season, so Connor really wanted to see them play before he departs…plus it wasn’t too hard to get tickets for this game against a not-so-great team with a very large stadium! So we were able to have dinner together at the airport and he could see us off before the long walk to his gate across from ours.

We upgraded our seats to Economy Plus for a little extra room, in the hopes we would get some sleep on the flight…not overly successful – maybe a couple hours for each of us. Oh well, we purposely had a very quiet first day in Germany, knowing we’d be exhausted. And we were! Our flight arrived around 9:40am, the equivalent of 2:40am in Chicago.

Connor visited Munich last year, so he had filled me in on the transit options from the airport, and fortunately, I had purchased our train tickets online, figuring I wouldn’t be coherent enough to do it at the station with all that jet lag and potentially all German-language machines. We found the train and made our way to Munich without issue. Hopped off a couple blocks from our hotel and managed to find our way on foot to the Residence Inn Munich Central. Huge HOORAY that our room was ready and we could check in at 11am. First order of business…a nap to tide us over for a few hours. Then it was off to the nearby Lidl Grocery Store to buy some stuff for an early dinner – we didn’t feel like finding a restaurant and navigating a German menu. It’s incredibly entertaining to shop in a German grocery store when you don’t speak a word of German. We had fun trying to decipher foods from the pictures on the labels, and of course, using Google translate as needed. We bought some small pizzas, cheese, bread, butter, and lots of water. Our hotel room had a kitchen, so we could easily eat there!

After dinner, we went for a short walk near our hotel, and saw their “winter carnival” which was on the same grounds as Oktoberfest. We walked to a park where there was an absolutely massive Bavaria statue, along with the Bavarian royal palace and hall of fame, full of busts of important Bavarians. Munich (Munchen to Germans) is the capital of the German state of Bavaria.

We were in bed early and got a reasonably good night’s sleep. On Friday April 25^th, we had booked a tour of Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, which is located about 30 km NW of Munich. We decided to book with a tour guide to save us from having to figure out transportation there/back, and to ensure we would be able to get a guided tour (you can’t book ahead for the on-site tours – you just show up and take  your chances that you’ll get a spot on one of their two daily tours). We took the subway from our hotel to Marienplatz, which is the central square in Munich, and met up with our guide there. He limits his groups to 15 people, which was a nice size, and our package included the tour, plus both the train and the bus we had to take. It was really nice to just be able to follow him, rather than trying to figure out where to go, what train to take, etc. Plus, he’s been giving this tour for 18 years and he was exceptional. It’s such a difficult place to visit, and he made it a bit easier to digest the information and history.

A few first impressions…

• As we rode the bus through the town of Dachau, I was surprised by how nice and “normal” it was. Our guide said real estate prices there are some of the highest in Bavaria, given its prime location near Munich. I guess I expected it to be gray and dreary.
• I was very aware of the sound of birds chirping while we walked around the memorial site, along with green grass and green leaves on the trees…seemed incongruous with the horrors that occurred there.

Some things that we learned:

• Dachau was the first concentration camp, and was used as a model for all the others. It was also one of the last to be liberated (it will be 80 years next April). It was the only camp to exist for the entire 12 years of Nazi rule.
• The camp primarily imprisoned critical thinkers, societal outcasts, and political prisoners. Some Jews were sent there, but then were moved outside of Germany to extermination camps like Auschwitz.
• Each concentration camp had sub-camps…Dachau had 140 of them.
• School children in Germany are required to visit a concentration camp as part of their curriculum (good!), and there were many school groups there when we visited.

The memorial site includes the outlines of the 34 barracks that existed; none of those original buildings remain, but two of them have been reconstructed. The barracks were housing up to 10 times the prisoners they were intended for. The main administration/maintenance building is original and now houses the museum. The crematoriums are also original.

The site includes a Protestant church, a Catholic chapel, a Russian Orthodox chapel, and a Jewish Memorial.

One of the most compelling things we heard that day was from our guide. He said he visited Auschwitz five years ago (after giving tours of Dachau for 13 years) and was completely unprepared for what he saw there. The sheer size was incomprehensible.

It was an emotional and difficult few hours, but we’re really glad we visited. We’re big believers that we have to learn from the past and we think everyone should visit a site like this or one of the Holocaust museums around the world. This statue near the crematorium is inscribed with words that translate to “To honor the dead and to remind the living”

We returned to Marienplatz and headed to McDonald’s for a quick lunch – we were starving and again, didn’t feel like trying to find a restaurant and translate a menu! Most of the menu was the same as in the US, but there were a few differences…and interestingly, a lot of plant-based options!

We walked around the central part of Munich, checking out all the beautiful architecture…so much of it was unlike anything we’d seen before. Over 70% of the city was destroyed during WWII; it was rebuilt to preserve the original street grid and restore many of the historic buildings. There is outdoor seating at every restaurant and it was really busy on such a nice, sunny Friday. A really vibrant place!

The “new town hall” (neues rathaus), completed in 1874, is an eerie, gothic structure; the highlight is the glockenspiel which re-enacts scenes from Munich’s history.

As we wandered, we stumbled on the Hofbrauhaus which dates back to 1589; we walked through and enjoyed the thoroughly sticky floors and the dedicated safes where regulars keep their beer mugs! Not surprisingly, the beer mugs there are HUGE!

On our way back to our hotel, we made a quick stop at the main train station (Hbf) to figure out where we’d need to be the next morning to head to Zurich, en route to the next part of our adventure. We saw lots of young people heading to the Winter Festival dressed in traditional lederhosen and dirndl (dress) – must be a popular Friday night hangout!