Quickly after arriving in Munich I realized that this city would be a lot different than Zurich. Building after building. Concrete, concrete, and more concrete. It was quite dirty looking and lacking in green space. I didn't let this intial reaction deter me from having a good time, though. Our hostel, Wombat's, was situated very close to the train station; which was a very nice bonus. Unlike our previous hostel, it had bathrooms within our rooms and free wi-fi. The lockers here were also very nice and tech savvy. All you had to do was hold your key card up to them and they locked and unlocked!
On our first day in Munich we decided to participate in a "free" walking tour (the tour guide ends up getting paid through tips at the end). It was a very good tour though-- I learned a lot. Here are a few new facts I learned:
- Only 4 buildings in Munich survived from WW2 bombings; all of the rest are under 60 years old even though they look a lot older. Many of the buildings have been carefully rebuilt to look exactly like they did before the bombings.
- Munich (Bavaria) wanted to separate themselves from the rest of Germany but the meeting was interrupted by Hitler, forever changing history.
- Oktoberfest started in 1810 as a celebration in marriage of the king and queen. Today, a server at Oktoberfest can make their whole year's salary plus vacation and spending money in the 16 days of the event.
- The Hofbrahaus (one of the six main breweries in Munich) has a mural painted on their ceiling which display the Bavarian flag (white and blue). These flags are actually covering up swastikas that were placed there by the Nazi party. The Hofbrahaus is also the location of where Hitler interrupted that very important meeting of separating Bavaria from Germany.
It was very exciting to be able to see and learn a lot of history about WW2/Hitler-- walking the path of the Beer Hall Putsch was quite surreal.
In the evening we went and toured the Oktoberfest grounds. The beer gardens that they build are huge! 6.5 million servings of beer are handed out at Oktoberfest. Ironically, that's less than one beer per person in attendance (7 million people visit the festival annually).
On our second day we went to Dachau concentration camp. I was very excited for this trip and thought I'd be a little emotional about it since my Baba dealt with the camps before coming over to America. Surprisingly, I didn't really end up being so; could be, in part, due to our tour guide and that we were always on the move at the camp. He wanted to give us the perspective that Dachau is only one camp of the whole thing. A small part fo the big picture. There were actually about 2500 different camps and some people who joined the Nazi party sincerely thought they were doing the right thing. It's unfortunate that so many people lost their lives-- whatever their background is-- and that should be honored. Here are some fun facts about Dachau:
- Hugo Boss (a fashion designer) made the Nazi uniforms.
- Dachau was used as the training/role model camp for the other camps.
- The barracks went from holding 50 people to 100 people and then finally to 500 people by the war's end.
- Dachau's capacity was 6100 prisoners, but by the end there were 75,000 prisoners.
For our third and last day in Munich we went to the Olympic grounds in Munich and visited the BMW Museum and Welt. The olympics were held there back in 1972; sadly 19 Israelis were killed during it. All of the buildings were created to look like massive translucent tents. It was nice to walk around the grounds; I couldn't even begin to imagine the chaos that was there during the Olympics.
Going to the BMW Museum and Welt was the surprising highlight of my time in Munich. I wasn't aware of how much I'd actually enjoy looking at an endless number of cars and motorcycles. Every guy's fantasy right? I highly recommend visitng both if you're ever in Munich. Touring and discovering the Welt on your own is actually free, but there is a tour that they offer. Katie and I took part in the tour, which cost us 5 Euros each. The tour explained what they did in different parts of the building and wasn't really living up to its 5 Euros cost until we went "behind the scenes". There they revealed how they manage to distribute 150 cars daily to their new owners (how they're inspected, where they are held, etc.). They have this large area where they stack cars in different ports next to each other and on top of one another. It reminded me of how the doors are stored and carried around in Monsters Inc., the movie. The rest of the Welt building is meant to show off to customers the different parts BMW is making for their cars in fun interactive ways. There are arcade-like games to play, cars to sit in, materials to touch, etc-- all for free!
The museum was AMAZING! It cost us only 4 Euros to tour (student price). There are a lot of fun high-tech gadgets to play with and the rooms are very nicely dispayed. Did you know that BMW actually started by making airplane engines? It then went on to do motorcycles before it finally added cars into the mix.
In the evening on our last day we had one last thing to check-off on our Munich to-do list. That was to find the English Gardens and drink at a beer garden. Finding the English Gardens wasn't a problem because it's huge (larger than Central Park) but finding the English Wave in it was a little harder. This wave is a surf wave that surfers ride on. I don't know the logistics of it, but it was cool to see. There were about 8 surfers at the time and a lot of spectators watching them. We found a beer garden next to the Chinese Tower to have a drink at. I was going to have a 1/2 liter glass of beer but decided to splurge and get the 1 liter mug as a nice souvenir for my brother, Ryan (Sorry Kevin-- Ryan called dibs.). I managed to drink all of it in a minimal amount of time-- shocked that I was able to manage both. In the end, it was a great way to end our time in Munich!
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