Once we got settled in, we went across the street to a brewery called the Augustiner to grab lunch and sample the beer, of course. It was very good! I had schnitzel.
Next we ventured onto the tram system and made our way to the Englischer Garten - a large public park in the center of the city. With an area of 3.7 km2, the Englischer Garten is one of the world's largest urban public parks, larger than New York's Central Park but smaller than London's Richmond Park. It was gorgeous landscape and views and I really enjoyed just walking around for a little bit.
Eventually it began to rain, so we sheltered in a beer garden where I had a giant pretzel and a Radler – half beer and half lemonade. After that we walked back to hostel to get cleaned up and go to bed early after a long day of traveling.
Saturday morning we woke up, ate breakfast at the hostel, and made our way to the Deutsches Museum. The Deutsches Museum (German Museum) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. It is the most visited museum in Germany – and for good reason! The museum was huge and there was a lot of cool things to look at. We spent two hours in there and didn’t see even close to everything. My favorite part (please remember, I am a pre-med engineer) was the bio- and nano-technology exhibit. There was also a huge section on space, including the physiological effects of zero gravity and ways that the astronauts deal with it.
Next we walked around the Viktualienmarkt – a daily food market in the center square of Munich where you can find the freshest foods and delicacies. It was so cute. I wish we had a farmers market like that close to home. We ended up shopping around a while and I may have bought some souvenirs! We also grabbed lunch there – I had potatoes and weissworst, which is the white sausage that Bavaria is famous for. It ended up raining so we took shelter in a Starbucks.
For dinner we ate at the Hofbräuhaus, where I had potato soup and a beer.
Sunday morning we slept in a little. After breakfast, we chose to visit the Dauchau memorial. Dachau concentration camp was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau. Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to these camps. The entrance gate to this concentration camp carries the words "Arbeit macht frei", meaning "through work one will be free". Over its twelve years as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and 31,951 deaths. Crematoria were constructed to dispose of the deceased. We walked around the camp for over four hours. I spent a lot of time reading about the history of the camp before, during, and after the war, but I also visited the chapel erected after the camp’s liberation, the prisoner’s quarters, the gas chambers, and the crematorium. I saw hundreds of terrifying pictures and read several personal testimonies. I don’t feel like there is a whole lot that I can explain about how I felt without you having experienced this yourself. All I can say is that I was moved to tears and I felt sick to my stomach the entire time. I feel like this is an important piece of every American’s history and it is a place that everyone should visit in their lifetime.
After we made it back to Munich, we decided to splurge a little and eat at the Hardrock Café for dinner. I had fajitas and it was amazing. Gringo’s will be the first place I eat at when I get home!
We went back to the hostel pretty early because our train leaves tomorrow for Vienna!
No comments:
Post a Comment