Dachau

"Work will set you free"

Dachau

Sunday morning I packed up my things and prepared to leave Munich. There is a well-known concentration camp twenty minutes away by train in the town Dachau.  I consider myself a pop culture expert of sorts and when we arrived at the train station to grab coffee before our tour I could not believe my eyes when I saw Heidi Klum and Seal all over newspapers. If the most adorable couple that pops out babies every nine months and gets married every year to a different theme cannot make their relationship work then there is a little less hope for the rest of us. Overall it was going to be a sad day. When we arrived at Dachau we paid for the audio tour and began our dissent into the camp. The whole experience really felt surreal. I have seen a million pictures of concentration camps in school, I have read Night, but when you reach the actual gates that read, "work will set you free" it is unreal. I cannot say that I "imagined the people walking through the gates" because it is not imaginary what happened there. It is completely true and real and horrible. The vastness of the camp yard was the most breath taking to me. There is no real way to describe it, but to me the ground tells so many more stories than the replicas of their living quarters or the gas chambers. In the Dachau camp they actually did not use the gas chambers frequently. There were a small percentage of people who were killed that way, but most were hanged and burned in the infirmaries. I personally didn't take any pictures of those areas. It really didn't feel right at the time, but the pictures I have were taken from fellow classmates of mine to feature here. After a tour of the grounds we walked through the museum and watched a 20-minute video about the camp.

The yard

Monument

Gas chambers

Gas chambers

Bunks

After we left Dachau we took the train back to my beloved Munich to grab our bags and head to the train station. After my last kabob and pretzel diet I was dying for some fresh food. Surprisingly, I found some delicious sushi at the Munich train station and the most divine pastries I have ever eaten. Munich sure knows how to treat a lady.

On Another Note:

I am leaving on Saturday for a 10-day trip to Edinburgh, Dublin, Stockholm, and Amsterdam. I will be freezing my ass off in all of these countries and do not have a sufficient pair of waterproof rain/snow boots. You can check the weather there is a 100% chance that I will catch pneumonia. Please feel free to email my mother or leave her a comment here to add a small sum of money to my account so I do not have buy a crappy pair and miss out on the sights (see I love Munich- walking tour.) Also, I know absolutely nothing about these places I am planning on visiting in next week, so if you happen to have any sight seeing suggestions or off the beaten path "must-dos" I would LOVE any advice I can get!