Our next adventure was to do Rick Steve’s Munich city walk. Today is essentially our only day to discover Munich as the other days we’re here are booked for other excursions.

We started out at Marienplatz, the grand city center, home of the new Town Hall, multiple old churches and landmarks. Right at our arrival it was 5:55pm and all the churches began their bells, loudly and beautifully ringing out across the city. I took a quick video to briefly capture their song, hopefully it works with Journo.

Marienplatz, or Mary’s Square is a snapshot of the glory that is Munich. Grand buildings, outdoor cafes, people bustling to work, or just hanging out. Lining one entire side of the square is the impressive facade of the New Town Hall, with its soaring 280-foot spire. The New Town Hall or Neues Rathaus looks medieval, but was actually built in the late 1800’s. It’s a gorgeous Neo-gothic style with pointed archways over the doorways and a roofline bristling with prickly spires. The Rathaus is famous for its Glockenspiel. A carillon in the tower chimes a tune while colorful little figurines come out on the balcony to spin and dance. This only happens at 11am and 5pm so we unfortunately missed it.

We continued our tour, stopping at one of the worlds oldest and most famous beer halls- The Hofbräuhaus. We walked in for a huge liter beer and some dinner of different sausages, saurkraut, potatoes and mustard. Doesn’t look the most appetizing or appealing, but it was delicious! The sausages and actually the mustard were the best parts and paired perfectly with the beer. This rowdy beer hall, standing since 1583 was one of the first buildings rebuilt after WWII- pretty apropos for this city and their enthusiasm for beer. It’s a sudsy, touristy, comforting atmosphere, filled with sounds of oompah music, rowdy cheerful singing and happiness found at the bottom of a stein. I had a liter of their famous helles (light) lager, Khrystyan had an orange spritz. And yes, I downed it all. Empty stein pic to prove it. Biggest, almost comical looking stein, and we (I) stumbled out to continue our tour through the cool evening air.

Our tour of Munich for the rest of the evening included: the Old Town Hall where in 1938 Hitler called for Germans to rise up and ransack everything Jewish. What became known as Kristallnacht, throughout the land synagogues and shops throughout the land were burned and trashed. We also visited St Peter’s Church where a Holy Mass was in session; we hugged the back and listened to the huge pipe organ, singing of hymns and the traditional Catholic service. It is a solemn and beautiful church, designed to make you feel extremely small with the ornate and grandiose architecture and altars and frescoed ceilings. We visited the Viktualienmarkt, which unfortunately was closed so we’ll definitely need to try and come back; it’s a beautiful farmers market that the city actually supports with rent controls and only charging a small percentage of earnings for rent. The city also outlawed fast food restaurants, and chain stores helping to keep the high standard and local feel of the shops and market. We visited the Jewish synagogue, Assam Church (incredibly beautiful and ornate interior), Sendlinger Strausse, Kaufingerstrausse, the Frauenkirche, Marienhof, Dallmyer Delicatessen. We ended back at Hofbräuhaus again for another beer and glass of Grünr Veltliner.

After a long tiring day, we stumbled home happily. On the walk home, I snapped a pic of this street name. Good luck pronouncing it.

We’ve now arrived at Linderhof Palace.

Leaving the Palace, we drove through a small town called Oberammergau which is known for some of these painted frescoes of fairy tale scenes.

We’ve now arrived at the tiny village of Schloss, home of Hohenschwangau Castle (where Ludwig II was born and raised) and the more famous Neuschwanstein Castle across the meadow.

Back in the bus for a 90-ish min drive back to Munich. We stopped at the restaurant downstairs right outside our stay, where I had a delicious 1/2 Bavarian duck, cranberry apple cabbage, and potato dumpling. This is the first restaurant we went to that actually asked if we’d like an English menu. Really funny what they have listed on the back of the menu listed as “American’s”.

We met our tour guide after walking the market for a while and hopped on the S-bahn train to Dachau. The majority of the day was spent at the Dachau concentration camp. As you might imagine,I have some mixed emotion about what to write here. I’ll say that it was very emotional, very stirring, Khrystyan shed some tears, and I got nauseaus and felt sick. I won’t go into much detail, as we all generally know the story of what happened. So maybe a couple of facts and then a photo dump? Dachau was open for 12 years from 1933-1945, and was the only concentration camp opened the entire time of the third reich. Thousands of Jews were brought here “to work” (what the Nazi propaganda told the world). They were systematically stripped naked, shaved with dull razors, assigned a number and uniform and symbol patch depending on a select few groups (jehovahs witness, Soviet pow, homosexual etc) doused with disinfectant powder and then for their foreseeable future barbarically tortured and brutally beaten and killed. I won’t go into more, but the items, images and film captured at Dachau was enough to make me nauseous and sick. Fuck nazis, and fuck people who trade in hate and work to marginalize and demonize others not like them. Obviously there’s a lot of easy similarities that can be drawn to today’s political and global events. Glad we went, we learned a lot, however sickening it was and made us feel. Would highly recommend going if you’re in Munich. Photo dump below is of the gated entrance to Dachau, the barracks, specific areas of grounds of specific tragedy (walls where hundreds faced the firing squad, or were hung, or the gas chambers, or crematorium, or the mass ash graves of thousands of unknown Jews.)

A couple photos I’m leaving included that might be confusing, are of white maps with a ton of dots. I didn’t know the extent of the network of concentration work camps the Nazis had. We hear of Auschwitz and Dachau most commonly as those were the biggest and most horrible, but I didn’t know the massive vast network of these all around Europe.

Ok, enough with the depressing stuff. It was hard to shake off that somber sadness, so we went to the beautiful English Gardens- which takes up a massive amount of space in the city, and many locals use and enjoy. We sat at a bench and recovered, watching some ducks. Then we went to eat a really nice dinner- best dinner we’ve had in a long time, and the friendliest and nicest service we’ve had in Germany. Not sure if it’s because the world kind of hates us at the moment, but we’ve found the vast majority of interactions with German shopkeepers to be very rude and cold. So this dinner was a complete opposite, with some very kind and warm service that made our night. If you’re in Munich, look up Sanjay’s for fantastic steaks (or tamarind beef bowls or red Bavarian duck.)