Munich

We have spent the last two days in Munich. Yesterday, upon arrival we decided to go to the Deutches Museum, the German equivalent to the Smithsonian. It is over ten miles of science and technology exhibits, much different than the museums we saw in Italy. We only had a couple of hours so we followed Rick Steves´book and set out to explore the mining, navigation, areonatics, and space sections. There was much more to see, but seeing how the museum closes at 5 p.m. we ran out of time. It was a great way to spend our first rainy day in Munich.

Today, we started our day with a great Bavarian breakfast and set out to see Dachau Concentration Camp. We spent about four hours listening to the audiotour and reading about the horrific things that were done there. The camp was a model for all the other German concentration camps used by the SS (Nazis). There really isn´t much left of the original, but you did get a feel for how large and crowded the camp was during its time. When the allies came for liberation there were 30,000 prisoners at the camp and the SS went running. Once the Americans had come through, they made the Dachau citizens look at the piles of dead malnourished bodies.



When we got back to Munich this afternoon we set out to see Marienplatz (the main square of Munich) and the English Garden. It ended up being a great end to our time in Munich as we walked through the massive green garden with somewhat clear skies. It allowed us to end our day in a romantic paddle boat that we rented for a half hour.

We are off to see castles tomorrow and then up to go on the Rhine for a tour of more castles. We also lost our Rick Steves book, sucks because it has been such a help in our planning.