Weekend 3

I got up at 5 and barely made it to the train to Munich thanks to a bus that decided not to come! Luckily my host dad gladly gave me a ride to the Hauptbahnhof and I got to say bye to him and his wife, such a sweet family. We made it to our hostel in Munich and it was soo much nicer than the one I stayed at in Amsterdam! The first thing I noticed about Munich is a bread yeast smell pretty much omnipresent throughout the city. I later found out it’s the smell of hops from all of the breweries here! In fact right across the street from our hostel was a brewery and we went there for dinner and it was so adorable, everyone was dressed in lederhosen and traditional southern German dress. People there order beer my the mass, a.k.a. by the liter! Later we went to the English Gardens which was basically a large park with a lot of trees and winding paths to stroll along. It was really pretty and in the center of the park was a Biergarten that we chilled at for a while and got some Bayern Brezte’s, the HUGE baked pretzels that were so delicious. That night we met some of our roommates in the hostel, a very enthusiastic guy about our age who had a complete lederhosen and whatnot costume he kept showing off to us but he was really nice and then a really old guy who was kind of persnickety when it came to noise and having the light on.. somewhat strange for a hostel especially when we found out he had been living there for two months.. but oh well to each their own! Saturday the 8 20/21 year olds in my group got up at 8am with a game plan.. impressive or what? We went to the Deutsches Museum, supposedly the most visited museum in Germany contained a load of exhibits of different things invented in Germany and how they have evolved and progressed into what they are today. It was pretty much a maze which was really fitting because it allowed us to just get lost in all of the history there was to see there. There were so many cool things I had never heard of, especially in my favorite exhibit which was about the new advancements in nanotechnology and computers. It was really interactive and I saw a C-leg! Afterward we went to the Viktualien Markt, and outdoor market that is open every day in Munich with fresh goods from fruit, vegetables and spices to honey, mean and flowers. That was probably one of my favorite places on the entire trip because everything was so natural and locally grown and it just went on forever! I bought these bread-dipping spices, some unique flavored honey spreads and a bag of sweet cherries! We ate at a local Biergarten and got weisswurst, a Bayern specialty sausage made of veal and it was really good. We shopped for souvenirs, everyone wanted to buy a Bier stein which is a big ceramic cup special for drinking beer. Later one we went to the Hofbrauhaus, the main brewery of Munich and we sat in the Biergarten in the back like everyone had told us to do to avoid the mad tourist crowds and it was true! It was much more chill back there and we had fun catching up with some of the other students from our group who were also in Munich. Sunday we got up and took the train to the Dachau concentration camp. We spent four or five hours there walking through the exhibit, around the memorials and ultimately through what remained of the camp. It was an incredibly morbid and eery place, and we all kind of split up for the most part to go through it on our own. It was just so terrible and emotional to read about, there really were no words and it made it easier to just go through and process it by ourselves. One of the things I realized this time that I never had before is that the liberation of the concentration camps wasn’t all cheering and celebration by the German people and life never returned to normal for the victims. Many of the Germans were still racist and anti-Semitic and the victims were usually the only one of their family who had survived and had nowhere to go because their home had been destroyed and they had nothing. I had always pictured that the liberations of the camps meant that the sun came out and started shining again and everyone went home to their warm houses with their family and hot food sitting on the table. I guess that was pretty disillusioned. We got back pretty late from Dachau without having eaten all day so we splurged and went to the American haven of Hard Rock Café! It was the perfect end to an emotionally taking day and we all enjoying being able to actually order off the drink menu for once!