Europe and UK Holiday: 2008

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Dachau

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Today we went to Dachau. It was an easy trip, first on the S-Bahn and then a 726 bus from Dachau station to KZ-Gedenkstatte. Another perfectly clear day, but cold, -8 Celsius most of the day! Dachau, to the locals, is a small village on the S2 line about 15km out of Munich, but to the rest of the world its synonymous with Concentration Camp. Dachau concentration camp was the first and served as a model for the many more built throughout Nazi Europe in the early 1940s. Only a portion of what was the camp is now a memorial site. You enter the site through the same gates that the prisoners entered, iron gates with the words "Work sets you free" cast in to the gate. You then enter the same building where the prisoners were registered, stripped of clothes and belongings, and showered. Some were hung from the ceiling beams by their arms which were bound behind their backs. These rooms, now known as the museum, are full of displays. The first display gives some political, social and economic background to the rise of the NSDAP after WWI. It was informative and I now understand more about the environment that lead to the installation of such a regime. We watched a 30 minute film on Dachau which was extremely powerful, there was absolute silence as c. 200 people watched. There were very many displays and a lot of information to read throughout the rest of the museum.

We left the museum buildings and entered the central courtyard which is were prisoners assembled for roll call may times a day. There is now a large multifaceted monument which has gradually been installed as a memorial, I will post an image of the central feature. Another memorial was made of a large iron chain emblazoned with the various coloured triangles that the SS used to mark prisoners as Jew, priest, politician.... it was upsetting to realise that the pink triangle was not part of this memorial.

One of the barracks has been restored and we could walk through this. The other barracks are no longer there but you can walk down the central area to the religious memorials at the other end of the camp. There are three, a Jewish memorial to the estimated 6 million Jews killed by the Nazi regime, a Catholic memorial and a Protestant memorial. From this end of the camp we walked to the two crematoria. Here you can follow the path prisoners walked, as they walked to their death. When the camp was liberated these rooms were piled full with bodies as the had been to little coal to run the crematorium.

Visiting Dachau Concentration Camp was a good thing to have done and I have a greater understanding of how these things happened. At its fullest, there were 60,000 prisoners held there.

We were supposed to go to the Munich Philharmonic's New Year's Eve concert in the evening. I had assumed the concert would be 7 or 8pm, but it was 5pm! I had booked it such a long time ago that I had forgotten. Another uniquely German thing, who would have thought that it would start at 5pm. We didn't get home from Dachau until 6pm. We had dinner at home and watched the public fireworks display from our window. The display was at the Friedensengel (peace angel) which we can see from where we are staying.

Spot the castle, no winter sun!

The walk down the hill from the castle enabled D to test his new shoes

Unsuspecting, they proceed in

This is wear the tourists are sorted by language, prior to going inside

Thats the Olympic Tower, the 'double-cone' is part of BMW Welt

After the war, motorbikes didn't sell well, they used the engines to make a woman's motorbike

The famous '4 cylinder' tower

This one had no suspension (BMW's first bike)

This one looks better

This one is too big

The undergound in Munich, Beethoven 6 from the speakers

This is where we are living, the the third floor

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Bavarian Staaples

This morning we went to BMW Welt which is near Olympia park in Munich. It is a huge complex, manufacturing plant, museum and show rooms all on one site. The architecture is impressive. The current exhibition is of their 3 series. As part of this, you can take a 4 hour drive of the 3 series of your choice. They programme a scenic drive into the navigation system and give you a voucher for lunch in the country, all for 50 euro. This seemed a great idea. Unfortunately, we had been given the wrong information and it didn't run on a Tuesday. We will go back on Friday and try again. They did give us free entry to the museum as an apology. The museum was good fun. BMW's first engine was for an aeroplane. Their first road vehicle was a motorbike. We spent quite a bit of time there and then went into town on the U-Bahn for a late lunch at one of the beer gardens. The one we went to was a sit down beer hall on the first floor and restaurant on the second floor. Damian had roast pork with sauerkraut and potato fritters. I had pork liver. We had a dark wheat beer known as bock beer (Aventinus Eisbock). It was very good, 12% alcohol, quite a different experience. Dessert was huge. A few peculiar things about the restaurants we have been to, you just sit down in an empty seat, even if there are other people sitting at the table, all the food is preprepared and arrives very quickly, you can have beer with everything, the waiters might seem as if they can speak English, but its usually doesn't extend beyond ordering.

We headed home for a postprandial snooze. Tonight we have been to the opera, La Traviata at Bayerische Staatsoper. The nationaltheatre was impressive. It was sold out months ago so we were lucky I booked in advance. The singing was of a high standard. Damian found it hard to follow the singing in Italian and the surtitles in German, but I think he got the gist of it.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Munich - Schloss Neuschwanstein

Today we went to Schloss Neuschwanstein. We got the train along with every other tourist currently in Munich to Fussen (that's u with 2 little dots above it - can't do that on our pc (if you don't have a u with 2 little dots on it it's very hard to find out how to get there using the online raliway site - the answer is to find a u with 2 little dots on it and cut and paste it into the website but Mark digresses) Once you get to the station it's important to be very pushy because that's how it's done here - it's seems OK to queue jump and to muscle your way in. Also note that a bag can count as a person if it's sitting on the seat next to you particularly if you look semi-comatose and unable to engage in conversation - but we digress again. Anyway using the above-mentioned technique we found a seat. Halfway through our journey we had to change trains and once again our new found skills got us into first class (the only empty seats on the train). Interestingly the first class seats were filled by Australians and Americans who like us were unable to decipher the sign written in English that said 40 euro fine for occupying first class seats without a ticket. As we travelled out of Munich the landscape became more bleak. The ground was covered in frost and snow and many of the streams were frozen over. No vegetables were growing in anyone's gardens and no animals were to be seen. The trip to Fussen (imagine the umlaut) took approximately 2 hours. Once in Fussen we followed the masses to where the buses were to depart. Our guidebook states that the Tourism industry is an important part of the economy in Bavaria however there is a remarkable lack of signage. This meant that we just part of a gaggle of tourists all standing in the cold looking at 100s of copies of the Lonely Planet and trying to decide which way to go. We all thought we were catching the no. 78 to Schwangau but in fact the bus that finally came had a sign that said it was going to Garmisch-Partenkirchen (see yesterday's blog) Fortunately this was a mistake and the bus driver indicated that we should get on. Mark, now an expert at the forementioned public transport techniques, found us a great seat at the front.

After 15 minutes we got off the bus at Hohenschwangau. It now became a race up the hill to the ticket office to get a ticket for the castle tour. Many families were separated and small children left crying the the gutters. Slippery ice meant there were many casualties. The effort was rewarded by another big long queue at the ticket office where we purchased a ticket for the 2:45 pm tour of Neuschwanstein (in English). As an aside, we also met an Australian family on holiday from Melbourne. The husband was a Respiratory physician in Melbourne. Luckily he had managed to find his family after the ticket rush.

With time to spare we found a little cafe/restaurant for lunch. I had Paar Weisswurst mit Brezen (Sausage and Pretzel) and Mark had sausage, sauerkraut and potatoes. Of course he had beer as well since in Germany beer can accompany any meal of the day. We then began a steep trek through the snow and ice to Schloss Neuschwanstein which took approximately 20 minutes.

Schloss Neuschwainstein is a castle modelled on a medievil design built by King Ludwig II of Bavarian in the late 1800s. He was a nutter who had a penchant for building castles even through he bankrupted his country in doing so. The castle is famously known as the Disney castle which was modelled after it. It's setting is strilking, being set amongst the snow-clad bavarian alps and near Lake Forggensee. People say that Ludwig was ahead of his time and this must be true because he managed to find a spot located only 100 metres up the road from a Hoffbrau, takeaway pizza restaurant and many tourism shops. He wouldn't have had to walk far for his junk food. Unfortunately he died before his time at the age of 40 under suspicious circumstances (drowned in Lake Stamberg). It is believed he committed suicide.

He also had foresight to install electronic ticketing gates. A number was printed on our pass and when the number came up you were allowed to pass through the gate into queues segregated into English, German, and everyone else Our tour was led by a french woman whose pronunciation was very poor. We visited King Ludwig's throne room where a huge candelabra was hung. We think that either he had a wench to hoist it up or a witch according to our tour guide. There were a number of people with English as a 2nd language in our tour. I have no idea how they would have coped. One of Ludwig's best mates was Richard Wagner, t he composer. Ludwig was influenced by many of his operas. The finished rooms of Neuschwanstein (of which there are only 17 of nearly 200) are decorated with painted walls many of which depict scenes from Wagnerian operas. The finished rooms were all lavishingly decorated with hand painted walls, velvet curtains, mosaic flooring and some beautiful carving. Ludwig's gothic-style bedroom was particularly impressive. Schwan by the way is german for swan hence Neuschwanstein is the new castle of the Schwan. The Swan was a motif used throughout the castle. The tour lasted 35 minutes after which we wandered around some of the unfinished room by ourselves before heading back to Hohenschwangau.

We returned to Fussen on the bus, grabbed a quick coffee and then hopped on the next train home. Unfortunately Mark lost his gloves probably on the bus when he was frantically looking for our ticket. Never mind - we only have a few more days of 0 degree temperatures. Tommorow we're off to do our BMW tour. We have decided to do the BMW experience which is a 4 hour car hire with a programmed scenic tour in a BMW 3 series car. Mark's very excited. I can't wait to see the motorcycles.