Chapter 15: Bavarian Rhapsody

Switching trains is a pain for us; it usually entails hustling through an unfamiliar train station with 100 lbs. of luggage and an athletically-challenged dog, trying to run up and down unlabeled stairs to make a 6-minute connection. But, hallelujah!, there was a direct train from Ljubljana to Munich. I purchased tickets on Trainline.com and we showed up at the train station early on Saturday morning. Easy, right?

As the age-old saying goes, “If you want to make Trainline.com laugh, tell him your plans.”

Anyway, Munich was awesome. One of our favorite cities so far. The train ride in was gorgeous.

We stayed in an apartment in a suburb north of downtown, and on the first night went out for the bratwurst and fried potatoes and weiss beer that Bavaria is famous for. (I mean, I did. Rachel noshed on salad with grilled salmon.)

Don’t worry, she eventually participated.

We quickly became fans of obatzda, which I just now learned is a mixture of two-thirds aged soft cheese and one-third butter, sprinkled with paprika and other spices. So, um, no wonder it’s good. You can see a dollop on the plate above, ready to be smeared on the giant pretzel and then washed down with thick dark German lager.

The big Oktoberfest in Theresienwiese park is officially cancelled this year, but downtown was hopping with foreigners and locals alike celebrating the world’s largest beer festival. Many of the locals were wearing traditional lederhosen – leder means “leather” and hosen means “pants”, but together they connote the entire ensemble.

Rachel and I wandered into a department store which had a whole floor dedicated to Bavarian dress, and my eyes watered when the tags showed the hand-stitched leather jackets and pants priced at $2,000 and up. Seems to me like a pretty good incentive to never gain (or lose) weight. I thought I had it bad shelling out $30 for a new pair of Wranglers.

Marienplatz Square in the center of the city was busy, busy, busy. We gawked at the town hall and watched its glockenspiel chime, although 5 minutes of that was enough.

The enormous Frauenkirche cathedral is one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

According to legend,

the devil made a deal with the builder to finance construction of the church on the condition that it contain no windows. The clever builder, however, tricked the devil by positioning columns so that the windows were not visible from the spot where the devil stood in the foyer. When the devil discovered that he had been tricked, he could not enter the already consecrated church. The devil could only stand in the foyer and stomp his foot furiously, which left the dark footprint that remains visible in the church’s entrance today.

So, today you learned that the Prince of Darkness is about a size 9.

Dachau was one of the first German concentration camps, opened in 1933 by Heinrich Himmler to hold political prisoners. It eventually grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, and served as a prototype for the other camps that followed. Over 32,000 prisoners died in Dachau.

The memorial site on the grounds of the former camp is extraordinarily well-done, and soberingly comprehensive. Artifacts, letters, buildings, plaques, audio recordings, and photos are carefully arranged for the full impact of understanding the cruel timeline of the camp. Rachel and I spent several hours trying to take everything in.

I don’t know how to describe walking through a brick room into which, two generations ago, human beings were herded and gassed.

Or walking by and smelling the brick ovens where their bodies were then burned, complete with rafters for quick hangings.

It was a humbling experience.

The camp was only built to hold a few thousand people, but more than 30,000 were interned there when it was liberated in 1945. I will always remember my granddad recounting when the USA’s 14th Armored Division liberated the POW camp where he was being held in southern Germany after his plane was shot down on a bombing run.

He said that the sight of the Nazi swastika flag being lowered from the camp flagpole, then the Stars and Stripes being raised, was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. I can’t help but wonder how those 30,000 in Dachau felt. Did they dare believe it?