Another day another outing into Munich.
It’s still good to wake up in a proper bed and not to cook breakfast.
We had a leisurely brecky and then headed out for Dachau. We’d asked about how to get to the memorial at the front desk but we still ended up at a tram station instead of the tube. Munich has a pretty comprehensive tube system, augmented by trams and busses.
We found out about the MVV app from the tram station signage, downloaded the app, registered an account, added a credit card and bought a group ticket all within minutes. We then also found that we needed to be at the Richard Straus Straße underground station, so we had a 5 minute walk to there.
Incidentally, nobody checked our €19, day, group ticket all day. There wasn’t a hint of a ticket inspector anywhere. The physical ticket checkin machines didn’t seem to be used by anyone, so we assumed we’d be ok if we were asked for our digital tickets at some point, but we weren’t.
Once into the network it was an easy trip into the Zentrum, a tram to Dachau station and then a 10 minute bus to the Concentration Camp Memorial.
I’m only going to post the one image of the camp here. It was an extremely moving experience at the memorial.
As we arrived we booked onto the 2.5hr 1PM tour. The tour guide was very good and took a group of around 30 for the 2.5hours. It was raining when we started the tour but had stopped within about half an hour.
The Dachau camp had been opened in 1933, long before the war had started, and the Nazi party had been keeping its political enemies there for a long time before war broke out, we were told this was preempting the war. Dachau wasn’t an extermination camp and held only political enemies, though most were ordinary people who may have said little against the party. Even so, conditions were harsh and clearly the political nature of the camp and the fact the SS training facility were next door, was probably no coincidence.
200,000 people went to Dachau and 1 in 5 died there. Towards the end there were 40,000 people being held in a camp meant to only hold 5,000.
It was a very moving experience.
After leaving the camp we headed back to Munich centre and decided we’d head over to the site of the 1972 Olympic Park.
On the tram, We got talking to a couple from Melbourne who were on a 2 month cycling, cruising trip around a bunch of European countries.
We took a slightly wrong tube to the Olympic Shopping Center but soon fixed the problem with another Tube to the right place.
The BMW World museum is at the park entrance so we popped our noses into the building.
It’s also the home of BMW’s headquarters…
If I were still in corporate world I’d probably be looking at one of these…
But in reality, this one was probably more interesting these days…
After BMW world we headed into the Olympic Park, past the beach volleyball, the fairground and the Harry Potter Exhibition!
We weren’t interested in any of those, but did want to look around the Olympic Stadium.
It cost €7 for the two of us and they were clearly packing up from a concert, that we later realized was Coldplay.
Then it was back to the tube for the ride into town and then back out to Arabella Park station (much closer than the one we went from in the morning).
Arriving at Arabellapark Oark dropped right outside the REWE we’d been using for tea each night, so into the shop for more salad pick-and-mix.
We also checked in on Ollie parked on the road…
We’re off to Berchtesgaden tomorrow for 3 nights and hopefully a trip up to the Eagle’s Nest.
Harry has defeated Tom Riddle from the diary and I’m now into The Prisoner of Azkaban.
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