A visit to the original SS "School of Violence"

We got a late start today. Didn't get out of the hostel until around 1130. We got on the S2 train and headed north-east today to the town of Dachau.

The town was made famous for the concentration camp that was built there in 1933. It was a fitting day to visit, very cold and gray.

We arrived in the town of Dachau about 1230 and went for a short walk. Found a little cafe to eat lunch and then set out down main street to do some shopping. Looked in a toy store but nothing special...you can only see so much Playmobil and Lego.

About a block or two later we came to a luggage store. Heather found a few things. She may or may not have bought a few Christmas presents.

Took the bus to the main entrance of the camp. There is no fee to visit the concentration camp and we only paid €3 for the audio tour.

First, we watched a 20 minute movie about the camp. The majority of the footage was shot by WWII soldiers who liberated the prisoners in 1945. The footage was b&w and no sound, but very moving. Lots of bad things happened there...

We walked out into the large court yard where the prisoners all had roll call every day. There's now a large sculpture and memorials set up all over. We went down the middle of the camp past the area where the barracks used to be. At the end was the crematorium. Really eerie stuff. I'm sort of glad Nick and Tom are still a little too young to understand the incredibly terrible things that happened there.

Ahmadinejad's comments are an all to scary reminder of the very recent history. The things that happened in Dachau were only 63 years ago. Ahmadinejad believes it his his calling to bring about the end of Israel and the United States thus fulfilling Islamic prophecy. Let's pray the President-Elect Obama has learned from the past. The last thing you want to do with a mad-man is try to reason with him.

So we left the camp and took a bus back to the train and took a train to Munich city center (Mareinplatz) and walked a few blocks to the Hofenbraus brewery. It's a large beer hall where t the lady's carry 5 to 10 steins full of beer all at once! Kind of like the Augustiner we went to last night, only much larger and much more popular.

We had sausage, meatloaf, potatoes, pretzels and beer. We haven't tried schnitzel, yet, but the apple strudel was very good. It didn't stand a chance...it was gone about 30 seconds after it hit the table.

Caught the train back to the hostel, the boys took a shower and we finished watching "Atlantis" on the portable DVD player....

Bud