Advertisement
Published: November 2nd 2005
Arbeit Macht Frei
Works make you free.Crossing many European countries for the past couple months, I came into a conclusion that German is one of the hardest languages to speak and to hear, let alone to learn. A couple years ago in high school, I was interested in learning the language, but unfortunately it didn’t take more than one semester before I had it enough.
Trying not to act as a rude tourist, I usually approach locals with a polite ‘
Sprechen Sie englisch?’, or ‘Do you speak English’ question, hoping to hear a ‘
Ja’ then proceeding into an English conversation to ask a question. In some occasions, they would look at me in a puzzled look, and say more like, ‘
Kein Deutch?’, which a good indication for me to just smile and nod, while stepping back and away from the conversation.
Looking back to my high school years when I was interested in learning some German, I wish I didn’t quit, and that obviously would help us tremendously in communicating with some locals in our trip in the heart of Bavaria region.
City of Munich, or
München in German, is a very efficient and a modern
Marienplatz
Jason and I at the Marienplatz. architectural city, even though its heritage root is almost as old as the Bavarian region itself. This indicates that most of the city’s older, original structures were bombed out during the Second World War, which destroyed many of German’s heritage landmarks throughout the nation.
Unfortunately it is one month away from one of the biggest drinking celebration on earth: the Oktoberfest festival, which I picture, would dominate the city culture and life.
We started this morning with a laundry function at our hostel
Jurgenherberge München, at the
Thalkirchen U-Bahn. The laundry room is tucked in the basement’s corner, and with only two washers and two dryers, it left us about two and a half hours to finalize our reminder Euro trip.
With a late starting for Munich sightseeing, we headed directly to
Marienplatz in cultural center of Munich where our Dachau trip would start. We found out about the excursion from ‘Munich Walking Tour in English’ pamphlet from our hostel and it costs us €16. After signing up for the 1:15pm tour, we had roughly twenty minutes to walk around the gorgeous
Glockenspiel and decided to grab something to eat from a nearby street vendor. Never crossed
Bratwurst
The best bratwurst I've ever tasted! in my mind that I would chow on the best bratwurst and sauerkraut I’ve ever came across here in
Marienplatz; talking about the ‘authentic’ Bavarian cuisine.
Our Dachau excursion group consisted of fourteen eager travelers, which surprisingly everybody is about our age. With the exception of two Spanish gals, everybody else was from the North America. Jason was mistakenly thought to be a Canuck, as he was wearing his Canadian shirt he’s bought from Winnipeg during our Savanna studio in 2001. We gave Jason a hard time, questioning his patriotism.
Unfortunately this is an occurring event, as nowadays Americans are not within world’s favorite travelers due to our recent invasion to Iraq. Many American tourists would disguise themselves as Canucks, and even eBay sold ‘Canadian tourist’ kit, which consists of several Canadian patch, pins and shirts, and perhaps with a couple thousands of ‘eh’.
Dachau crowns as a ‘dark place’, with the deep stigma of ‘Nazi’ and ‘concentration camp’. As neither Ryan nor Jason have heard about the place, I had plenty times to relay the information on what I’ve read and learned about Dachau’s history during our rides to the camp. Plenty times, since we had
Dachau roll call
Roll call field and some offices. to catch a bus ride from
Marienplatz to
Hophtbahnhof S2 train station, then a hop of train ride to Dachau, and finished it with another bus ride to the concentration camp once we were in town.
An automatic woman’s voice from the bus’ overhead speaker, which reminds me of James Bond’s Z3 gadget, greeted us at our final destination in front of the Dachau concentration camp, which now serves as a museum. I imagine that would not be the case for millions of Nazi prisoners that arrived at the very spot, some sixty five years ago in an overloaded, caged train cart. That gave me a shudder, thinking of Steven Spielberg’s
Schindler’s List vivid narrative of what was happening in Auschwitz, a similar Nazi concentration camp in modern Poland.
Despite of the nice sunny day we had during our visit, the eerie aura of Dachau’s dark past lingered throughout the camp was inevitable. Daunting with restored barb wire fence, semi-rotten wooden structures and barracks, guard towers and white-washed Gestapo offices, this was not an excursion I enjoyed in a standard visit, as it is supposed to be, according to our tour guide. The notorious iron gate bearing lettering
Green ditch
An unsafe area for prisoners; at this point, the SS guards would shot prisoners. of
Achbeit macht frei, or ‘works make you free’ is a cruel reminder for hundred of thousands prisoners who were working to their deaths during their imprisonment in this very complex.
Wooden structures, used to be hundreds of them surrounding an open field, served as sleeping barracks filled with bed bunks from floor to roof. It is hard to imagine how hundreds of prisoners had to sleep in such filthy and packed environment. Standing here by just with our tour group, I felt claustrophobic, and I couldn’t imagine how it would feel like having some other 300 men around in a small room.
The SS guards would ridicule prisoners during daily roll call at the open field where prisoners would line up based on their barracks, to be counted (or perhaps to be executed). Surrounding the whole complex were offices of these SS officers, now served as museums that consist of several gas chambers or ‘bath house’ and crematoriums. Many of the prisoners were told to take a ‘shower’, which turned out to be a gas chamber. If they were ‘lucky’, they would go straight from the train carts to the bath house. If not, they would have
Hundreds of bunkbeds
This is where prisoners spent their lives. to work literally until they have to take the ‘final shower’. Crematoriums were built in nearby vicinity that some prisoners were forced to collect the dead and brought them to dispose the corpses.
Very disturbing.
The concentration camp was surrounded by barb-wired fence, complete with guard towers with SS officers guarding the whole time. Ironically, the only green ‘landscape’ area within the camp is a ten foot grassy strip in between the circumference road and barb-wired fence, and this was a non-safe area for prisoners, as the SS officers would shoot anyone within crossing this area. Many of the rotten corpses were left out for a couple of days as a reminder for prisoners to obey the strict rules, before finally ended up in a nearby crematorium.
Some misconceptions we all had prior to our visit to the camp was that the ‘prisoners’ consisted of Jews. In fact, there were many others non-Jewish prisoners perished within Nazi concentration camps: prisoners of war, Catholic priests, gay/lesbian community, and minority ethnic groups, of whom all were color coded accordingly to their ‘faults’. Majority of them were sent out to the camp for who they were, not what they did.
Brausebad
A gas chamber. It was a mentally exhausting tour, and we were dispersed after gathering around a memorial sculpture to celebrate and to remind us that such thing would ‘never again’ happen in the face of the earth.
Some revitalization plans were proposed after the war to cleanse off many concentration camps into more civilized functions, but in Dachau’s case, many chose to leave the concentration camp ‘as is’, as a memorial of what was going on in the past. The effort of ‘covering up’ the dark past was rejected, in order to remind us a history of human kind.
Never again, I pledge myself today, right here.
Olympiazentrum signifies Munich’s role in the sporting world when world’s eyes was turned at this very spot during the 1972 Summer Olympics. Mind those Israeli hostages event, but as soon as we emerged from the U3 Bahn at Olympic Park stop, the Olympic Village futuristic design was a warm welcoming, and even in 2003, the curvilinear metal design seems to be ‘outside the box’. Dr. Thomas Hill, Iowa State’s Dean of Student Affairs, won his bronze medal in track/field here, so I’ve always heard about this particular park. Sitting down admiring the
Olympic Village Park’s landscape design while listening to performers singing some harsh German songs on-stage for a
Musicsommer festival, I was confirmed that designing such cool landscape is something I would love to do as a profession.
Munich happens to be the head quarters for the mighty BMW, and we have seen and lost count on those luxury cars. The HQ is located nearby the Olympic Park along A8 Highway, with four distinctive metal round towers around a sturdy base. Now, since almost everybody drives a BMW here, I’m wondering how much those cars cost, perhaps it would be the same as if you’re buying a bicycle. NOT.
We decided to stroll along the English Garden’s
Universität road after dinner, where a festivity happened throughout the weekend. As our new ritual during the Euro Trip, we looked up at the stars, trying to spot the Big Dipper in the Munich sky. It is an interesting concept introduced by the Hardy boys, and it is a comforting idea that no matter where you are on the face of the earth, you’re still ‘home’ and seeing same stars configuration.
We’re heading east to the Czech Republic tomorrow, something that
A liberation plaque
Dedicated in 1955, ten years after the prisoners liberation. I’ve been looking forward to.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0326s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
halefg
halefg
Thanks for the clarification.