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Published: August 6th 2007
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So I arrived in Munich at the main train station and hauled my bag along to one of the hostels I had written down. I thought that I was going to be staying in a 30 bed dorm, so was relieved to find that there was an 8 bed dorm for only 2 euro more. I dropped my bag off and went to get some food as apart from a couple of snacks I hadn´t had lunch yet and it was about 6pm so I was pretty hungry! After eating I headed back to the hostel and up to my room where I started talking to three Canadian guys. They suggested going to the nearby beer garden so we headed off. The place was surprisingly busy, especially considering the rain that had only just stopped. We each bought a 1 litre glass of beer, which was really nice, but halfway through the bartender rang the last call bell and the other guys wanted to buy another one, so we did. They were much faster drinkers than me so I was drinking much faster than I normally would in order to keep up (I think it comes with experience - about 80%
of the people that I mention on this blog are between 5 and 10 years older than me. In fact I´ve only met a few people younger than me and Claudia from the Split trip was only a couple of days older than me, but everyone else is generally around 25 plus). It started to rain after a little while, and we moved under shelter (although we weren´t as inventive as the people who built a pyramid out of the benches to keep dry!). They were still powering ahead and so I kept drinking faster and faster, and then when the rain eased we decided to make a break for the hostel. One of the other guys stole a mug, and I just kinda walked out with mine without thinking about it as I hadn´t finished yet (i know, clearly I´d had enough). I´d meant to have another dinner but had forgotten about it, and so after 2 litres of beer I definately felt drunk but we all headed to bed anyway. Sorry to those who were hoping for a Trent-style drinking story.
The next day I took my bag and moved it to a better hostel in the centre
of town. I´d considered keeping the mug from the night before but I felt a bit guilty about stealing it, so on the way past the beer garden I slipped in and left it on one of the benches. I dropped my bag off and then spent a while dodging the rain in an internet cafe. I then spent the remainder of the afternoon looking around the centre of Munich with my new umbrella (which broke within 2 hours!!! - but was still useable). The architecture was pretty amazing, although I didn´t spend too long looking at each building as the weather was foul, it was freezing (less than 10 degrees - what happened to my nice Berlin weather?!?), and I was only wearing thongs.
The thongs were part of my new strategy to beat my blisters. I tried the blister patches you gave me Barbara but they didn´t work. Actually I think I must´ve done it wrong (if thats even possible). You see I had four blisters, one on each side of each foot - however the outer blisters were the worst. So I put a blister patch on one side, and didn´t do anything to the other side
(you can tell I´m a Psych student with my stupid experimental design!). But the side that I put the blister patch on had more than doubled in size about 5 days later, and the other three had practically disappeared! So my new strategy was to give my feet a break from my shoes, which has appeared to work and my blister has decreased in mass! After that I headed back to the hostel where I attempted to mix with people but found it really hard as everybody seemed to be travelling in groups, so I headed up to my room and listened to some music for a while.
I got up at 8 the next morning and headed to the train station to work out my trip the next day out of Munich. After that I waited for a tour guide at the bus station for a tour around the first and iconic concentration camp at Dachau. We had a fairly big group, which really surprised the tour leader who I don´t think expected anybody on such a foul day. The tour leader really knew what he was talking about, and was really interesting. The camp was pretty quiet that
day so we mostly had the place to ourselves. He started with some general background stuff to Hitler´s rise which I mostly already knew but was great to be reminded of, and then we walked through the place looking at the various horrors of being in a concentration camp, and he told us lots of stories about individual prisoners and the horrific punishments imposed on people. We had a look at the fences, and he told us stories about the various inventive ways the prisoners had managed to commit suicide by getting guards to shoot them and when that stopped working they used the electric fence and finally when the guards dug a ditch between the fence and the prison, the prisoners still managed to reach the fence. So as you can imagine the tour was not the most light-hearted moment of my trip. We then looked at the crematorium and the gas chamber (which wasn´t used at Dachau very often comparably to other places). He finished by telling us the story about the guy that managed to detonate a bomb under a platform where Adolf Hitler was supposed to be giving a speech but Hitler had unexpectedly been called
away. The guy was then put in Dachau where he was relatively well cared for in comparison to other prisoners so that when the Germans won the war he could be executed in the celebrations. But obviously they never won the war and Hitler gave the order for him to shot only days before the people held in Dachau were liberated. All very interesting, all very difficult to listen to.
After that I had about an hour with nothing to do so I quickly rushed along to the Englischer Garten, simply because Patrice had recommended it so well. Of course with the weather like it was there was no naked people, but I was very disappointed to discover the surfers were also too wimpy to be out there as the wave was huge from the weather! At this point my umbrella broke further so on the way back I bought another one (I really hadn´t factored all these umbrellas into my budget. I had decided to go on a food and beer tour but when I arrived at the meeting point I discovered it had been cancelled. I thought about going on a pub crawl instead but decided I really
didn´t want lots of drinking and had wanted to go on the other tour more for the food than the beer. So I went to the train station which has a few cafe shops and bought a few different German sausages which were actually really nice although I´m sure they are much nicer in a restaurant! Then I came to the internet cafe, which takes longer each time as my list of people to reply to e-mails has greatly expanded. I´m now on facebook and check it fairly regularly so feel free to add me as a friend (Anthony, there was too many people called Anthony Tran on there and I don´t think you had a picture or any details up so I couldn´t find you).
I´d normally post this up when I left the city as I did on the last few blogs, however I´m not sure when I´ll next have a chance to go on the internet so I decided to put this up now rather than wait (also i´m leaving at 7am tomorrow morning so unless something good happens tonight than there is little chance of my having much to add). It also means i´ll be a
little bit slower responding to e-mails, but as always I will eventually get back to you if you write to me!
Alex
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Patrice
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My condolences
Hey Alex, Sorry that the Germans didnt man up and face the elements. Ooooo it's too cold to swim...ooooh....the creek wave is far too hight...MAN UP GERMANY. What a poor show. No wonder they lost the war....Too soon? But it is a beeautiful city. One of my favourites. And if it gets colder, just eat more pretzels...and drink more beer. The way Homer would want it to be. Enjoy Germany! Patsy