Where to start, where to start. The first night in Munich we headed to the Hofbräuhaus, where we were imediately exposed to men in Lederhosen with large liter sized beers having a grand old time. It almost felt like we walked into a movie set or something. For those of you who don't know, Munich is the city where Oktoberfest takes place, and the Hofbräuhaus is one of the big breweries that people go to to celebrate and drink beer, when they aren't at the designated park where Oktoberfest takes place. We sat down, ordered our liter sized beers and German Bratwurst (duh you're in Germany!) and had a good old time hanging out and occasionally hearing drunk German guys break out into song (they love to do that when they're drinking and I love it!). The next day in Munich we wandered around the city, visited the immense churches that were scattered through the town, saw a few historic places, visited the local H&M (well only one of the three H&M's that were on the street) and then headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit. After drinking out liter beers the night before, I didn't feel like round two sounded like a great idea but the boys found a supposed "Beer Tour" where we could pay for guides to take us to around the town to various Bavarian bars and teach us Bavarian drinking traditions. It sounded like a lot of fun so we all tagged along on this tour. It was a complete bust! We learned one song at the beginning of the tour, we were given one beer at the beginning of the tour (which i handed off to the boys to enjoy) and then we had to pay for the rest of the beers for the rest of the tour. After about the third or fourth place we visited, we were annoyed with the fact that our tour guides (none of which were actually from Bavaria, much less Germany) hadn't taught us about any of the Bavarian ways. We sat at the bar annoyed with what we had gotten into, when these two German guys started talking to us and eventually convinced us to ditch the tour and they would go out and show us around. Unfortunately it was only like 9:00 and nothing was really open yet, and the fact that I was exhausted from the night before, Ben and I headed back to the hostel, while the other boys went out on the town and had a good time with the Germans.
The last day we were in Munich, had to have been the most serious and thought provoking day. We decided to go see Dachau. Dachau was one of the concentration camps during WWII, but unlike Aushwitz, it wasn't a death camp. I can't even explain the emotions that I felt while going through the camp and listening to what people went through. Bunks that were only supposed to fit like 300 people, were filled with about 3000, guards got bonuses if one of their prisoners got shot because they were lagging too far behind the group, and after about 5 years, the crematoriums couldn't keep up with the amount of people dying they had to build a new and bigger one to keep up with the rate of people dying. The whole walk through of the camp was just so devastating, and the whole time I just kept thinking "How did this all go on for so long?" It is one thing to learn about it in school, but seeing it first hand is a whole different experience.
My camera died after the first night in Munich so I only have a few pictures of my own that I will post now, but I will be stealing some from the others that went if anyone wants to see more pictures of the city and such. I miss you all back home! Hope everyone is doing well :)
No comments:
Post a Comment