Munich, Germany

We arrived in Munich Germany at about 11:45 pm on Friday night after an 8 hour train ride. We had our first German beer, an Augistiner, in our hostel bar and had a low-key night so that we could get up early and make the most out of our only full day.

On Saturday morning we had a tour of Munich from 10:45-1:45. We saw all the main parts of Munich and learned a lot about its history. It’s funny how much of its history is about beer! The citizens tried to put out a fire in the opera with beer (failed), and they drove out the Swedish army by giving them beer because they didn’t have enough money to pay them off. I learned a lot about the different wars and plagues, Dukes, the Holocaust, etc. It is such a beautiful city and there’s so much culture. It makes the history so much more interesting standing in the exact spots that historical events happened. For example I walked down the street where Hitler was almost killed. He was linked arms with another guy and that guy was shot and killed and then his body guards jumped on top of him and took multiple bullets for him and Hitler made it out alive.  I saw the spot where Hitler had hung a plaque to honor all of those in his army that had died that day. The citizens were forced to hail him there and if they didn’t they were sent to Dachau concentration camp. The citizens that didn’t want to hail him started talking a different street to get to the same spot while avoiding the plaque. This street became known as “Dodgers Street” and I walked down it. The Nazis started figuring out what the citizens were doing so they had some soldiers post up and hide on that street and find the people who were avoiding the plaque and would send them to Dachau as well. I also learned that Neo-Nazis still exist and are legal because the German government wants to know what they are up to, they don’t want them to keep it secret. However, it is illegal to publicly hail Hitler. If you hail him, you are fined $2500, kicked out of Germany for 7-8 years, and permanently named a Neo-Nazi on your passport. It’s a pretty severe punishment, and rightfully so.

                 Juliet (Romeo & Juliet)- touching her boob brings good luck in your love life!

"Dodgers Street"

                        

                      The "Womanizer" Duke Ludwig I.

After the tour, I asked my tour guide for good places to eat lunch and she showed us a good place with authentic German food. I got schnitzel and potatoes and got a white wheat beer that they brewed at the restaurant. It was all so good!

 
After lunch, we walked around and shopped a bit before heading back to the hostel to get ready for the rest of the evening. Around 6:30 pm we headed to the most famous beer hall, the Hofbrauhaus. There I got a liter of the Hofbrauhaus Original beer, it was delicious. The beer there is so much better than the States (from what I hear at least ;) ). I also got a German soft pretzel which was really good as well. 

Waitress struggling carrying all our beer out

Our German pretzel!

     
After drinking, hanging out, and listening to the live music, we headed to some of our friends’s hostel to hang out at their bar. It was a nice change to hang out with a lot of English speaking people. We met a bunch of other people staying in the hostel that were from America, England, and Australia so we could actually have full conversations with them! We appreciate any English we can speak.

            On Sunday morning we woke up at 8 am to go to Dachau concentration camp. We asked the lady at the front desk of our hostel how to get there and she told us to take the green line on the metro. One thing I’ve learned about Europe is that a lot of stuff is on the honor code. We have bought multiple bus and metro tickets that have never gotten checked. At least we’re being honest people and not cheating the system! So we got on the green line and I asked my friends if it was the right line and they were confident because it was green. I had a feeling that something wasn’t right, but I was dumb and decided not to look into it until we had been on the train for about 25 minutes. I got up and looked at a map and realized that we had gotten on the wrong green line… Apparently out of all the different lines, there are two green lines. The receptionist forgot to specify the shade of green! Haha, we died when we realized what we had done. As soon as we realized we were going the complete opposite direction, we got off in Starnburg, Germany. At least now we can say we went to three cities in Germany that weekend! So instead of getting to Dachau in 30 minutes, we got there in about an hour and a half… It ended up working out fine though since thankfully we had given ourselves extra time by getting up early.

            Going to Dachau was a really powerful experience. Walking through the campsite where people struggled and died for years was crazy. The site was originally built for 6,000 people and they ended up fitting 35,000 people into it. Disgusting. All the buildings where the people lived weren’t there any more but the frames of everything was still. They recreated one of the buildings that we could walk in and see what their living corridors looked like. We walked around it for a couple hours, watched a movie on it, and walked through the museum.

Dachau Entrance "Work Will Set You Free"

Dachau and Catholic Memorials

The crematorium

The "showers"/gas chambers

            After Dachau, we headed to the train station and got there a little early so decided to look for somewhere to eat lunch. We didn’t find anything that really stood out to us, and then we stumbled upon a Pizza Hut Restaurant. It was like a nice restaurant! It had pizza, pasta, and more. So of course we decided we had to eat there. It was pretty good at the time because I was starving, but afterwards we all weren’t really sure why we ate there. Does that ever happen to anyone else? It happens to me quite a bit. Its so good at the time and then right after I’m like, wait that really wasn’t good why did I just eat all of that? I would never order lasagna bites from Pizza Hut in the States, so why did I think it was a good idea to order it in Munich? Haha wooops. Overall, it was a great weekend in Munich. Is my favorite city so far! Loved how pretty it was, all of the history that was there, and of course the food and beer!