A Bavarian Weekend in Munich

Well, my stay in Europe has come to an end, and I am now on my flight back across the ocean to the U.S. Last week was my last week in Lübeck, so I tried to make the most of it. I started getting up earlier in the morning so that I could get more work done without having to stay late in the evening. After work I spent time with my friends in the guesthouse. I cooked with Jana, the other American in the house a couple times, and had post-sunset dessert and Egyptian tea with Mohammed and Ahmed almost every night. One evening I rode my bike downtown to explore Lübeck some more and take additional photos before leaving.  After walking around a bit, I got to the Northwestern part of the island, where I discovered a Duckstein festival across the river. As I’ve said before, it’s hard to go anywhere in Germany during the summer without stumbling into some sort of festival, usually sponsored by a type of beer. I had heard this festival was happening the previous weekend, when I went to Paris, but I didn’t know the festival would last all week too. I had a (admittedly pricy, by German standards) Duckstein while watching a band perform, and had my last flammkuchen for dinner.

Friday evening I took a night train to München (Munich). Mete had planned a Turkish night and was in the process of cooking Turkish food for everyone in the guesthouse as I was leaving, so unfortunately I missed that. I also missed Egyptian night the weekend before. The guesthouse has recently become much more social, so the only downside of travelling so much is missing events like these. Unlike the weekend before, the night train was not full of international travellers like me. I had a room with a German woman and her two daughters (I assume they were both her daughters, one was probably ~9, and the other probably just a few years younger than me), another older woman who I think was the grandmother of the noisy kids in the next compartment, and a German man who boarded the train later at night, in Hannover. The older woman presumably spoke no English, but the middle-aged woman could, and was the only one to talk to me at all. She told me that her younger daughter had been studying English for 3 years now and spoke better English than her, but neither of the younger girls would say a word to me. Overall, they weren’t the most interesting people to share a room with, and they wanted to sleep early, but I suppose that was good, because I was fairly well rested when I arrived in Munich.

I arrived in Munich just after 7 AM, and had an early start to the day. Unfortunately, the tourist information center did not open until 9 AM, and I had not printed a city map, and additionally I learned that the s-bahn trains east of the station (which go to Marienplatz, the city center) were under renovation and unavailable. I had directions to go to Dachau, which I planned to do first anyway, but the concentration camp memorial did not open until 9 AM either. So after grabbing a pastry for breakfast at the train station, I wasted some time by walking around the area around the hauptbahnhof (train station). I started walking towards Marienplatz (it was only two s-bahn stops away, and seemed simple enough to find even without a map), but by the time I was halfway there, I decided to head back to the station and catch the train to Dachau.

On the train a girl sitting across the aisle asked me if I spoke English (believe it or not, I do speak a little English), and asked if this was the right train to Dachau. I told her I was also going there, and she said she’d follow me. She told me her name was Jen (short for a harder to pronounce Korean name) and she was an economics student from South Korea, doing some tourism in Europe. We talked a bit about Korea and the U.S. They count ages differently in Korea, so she said she “thinks” she is 19. It was convenient meeting a friend so quickly while travelling alone, and when we found out neither of us had concrete plans but were interested in visiting similar places (such as Schloß Nymphenburg, a palace), we decided to stick together for the rest of the day.

At Dachau, we first entered the camp through the gate with the words, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” printed on it, which I later learned translates to “WORK SETS YOU FREE.” As I stepped through the gate into the camp, I immediately felt chills go up my spine. I immediately felt uneasy stepping into the camp, even though there was nothing immediately in sight that served as obvious evidence of the atrocities that occurred there.

As a side note, it looks like I’m now flying over Newfoundland, so I guess I’m officially back in (well, above) North America! Oddly, I think I probably slept more on this flight, which was entirely during daylight, than on my overnight flight to Europe two months ago. Staying up late for beers with my guesthouse friends probably didn’t help though.

Back to Dachau, I first entered the museum and found the theater to watch a short documentary about the camp. After watching the documentary I walked through the museum, which was quite extensive. Despite spending a couple hours there, I felt like I kind of rushed through it too. Of course a lot of the information was quite general, such as the general historical context, which painted a picture of how the Nazis rose to power and were able to commit such atrocities with the general support of the German people. However, there was also plenty of information specific to the camp, as well as many pictures of victims, and some of the victim’s personal belongings were on display. The museum also did not focus solely on Jews as victims, but all victims, including Gypsies, homosexuals, and pretty much anyone who disobeyed and resisted the authority of the Nazis. After walking through the main museum, I entered the bunker, which was the military prison. Here I saw the tiny cells, which used to have extra walls making them even smaller so that special prisoners were not even allowed to sit, and had to stand in darkness. Outside the bunker I saw the poles that were used to hang prisoners sentenced to death.

After making my way through the museum and bunker, I walked around the camp some more. I walked past the barracks, which were mostly demolished, until I eventually found the crematorium. As you might expect, this was the most difficult and uncomfortable part of the experience. I walked into the room with the ovens, which still strongly smelled like death. It is hard to believe that the room still has the same stench as it did in 1945, but there was a pungent, noxious odor in the room, which combined with the sight of the ovens made me feel sick and lightheaded. I had to step back outside for some fresh air and sunlight. I walked back in to see the gas chambers, which were never actually used at Dachau, but of course similar chambers at other camps were used to murder millions of people, and they were built at Dachau with the same intention. The door was labeled “BRAUSEBAD,” meaning “SHOWER ROOM,” to trick victims into entering the room without resistance. While there was enough at the camp to spend several more hours, I already felt quite uncomfortable, and wanted to spend time enjoying more positive things in Munich, so we headed back to the city. My pictures from my visit to Dachau are here.

Jen and I returned to the hauptbahnhof, and I picked up a city map and some lunch. We then headed to Schloß Nymphenburg. We took a u-bahn (subway) instead of the tram that stops near the palace, and I underestimated the length of the walk to the palace, but we got to walk along a canal leading up to the palace. The water was green and not as pretty as I expected, but we saw swans and I had a good view of the palace from a bridge over the canal. The palace was a bit pricy to enter but we were both satisfied just admiring the building from the outside. We saw the large English Garden behind the palace, adorned with statues and fountains.

Next, I decided to head to the Olympic park. This area had a lot of interesting modern architecture. The u-bahn stop was next to the BMW museum (and close to the Munich BMW offices), which both had interesting architecture. The Olympic park itself features strange architecture that looks like glass tents suspended from large poles. I was surprised to find a large carnival at the park. Also, most of the athletic facilities seem to be now available for use by the public. The area was quite active. The park features beautiful scenery too; the pond, large, green hill, and blue skies provided for some excellent photographs. I do not know if there is a memorial for the assassinated Israeli athletes, but if there is I was not able to find it. Rather than turning around, we tried to walk to another u-bahn stop by following signs pointing to a u-bahn station, but either we missed a sign or the signs were very misleading, because the next stop in that direction seemed to be several kilometers away, and we wasted quite a bit of time walking, before finding a tram stop that took us back to the train station. I got in touch with Mike, another RISE student interning in Hamburg who was visiting Munich as well, and we agreed to meet at the Hofbräuhaus after Jen and I checked into our hostels.

When we met up, Mike had met some other people too (some were also on RISE, others weren’t), and we ended up with quite a large group. Of course the Munich Hofbräuhaus is probably the most famous beer hall in the world, and despite it being very large (with multiple floors), we decided it was unlikely we’d find seating for all of us, and checked out some of the other beer halls and restaurants in the vicinity. We ended up at an Augustiner beer hall, which was okay because apparently most Munichers prefer Augustiner to Hofbräuhaus anyway. Here I had my first maß, a liter mug of beer. The Augustiner Helles is a very smooth, light beer, so it was actually quite easy to drink a full liter. Traditional Munich beer (as well as most of the old breweries in Germany) abides by the traditional Bavarian Purity Law, which specified that beer could only include three ingredients: water, barley, and hops. When yeast was discovered, that was added as a fourth ingredient. This simple ingredient list results in very smooth, easy to drink beer. Of course I didn’t just have a liquid dinner, I also had some shweinebraten, a traditional Bavarian pork roast with potato dumplings. After dinner we grabbed ice cream for dessert, and about half of the original group went to another bar, for another half-liter of beer. Our group continued to dwindle in size, until just Mike and I headed to a second bar for a third beer. It was great being in Bavaria, which could be rightfully considered the beer capital of the world, and I had three different types of beer: helles, dunkel, and weißbier. After a night of Bavarian beer drinking, I returned to my hostel for some sleep.

In the morning I had a quick breakfast at the hostel, and caught the free (for tips) tour of Munich (by Sandeman’s, the same company I took a free tour with in Copenhagen). The three hour tour took us all around the downtown area of Munich, and our tour guide was great at explaining the history of Munich, which usually involved beer. We started with the glockenspiel at the rathaus (city hall), which our tour guide loathed, and described as the second most overrated and boring tourist attraction in Europe, after the astronomical clock in Prague. I don’t necessarily agree with him, I found the little puppet show complete with a jousting match between knights from Bavaria and Austria, kind of cute, but the glockenspiel bells were horribly out of tune. The guide explained that the city sent the bells to a company in the Netherlands to be fixed, but they returned in even worse condition. Next we went to Munich Frauenkirche, a church, which according to legend was built with help from the devil, who angrily left his footprint by the entrance after being tricked by the architect. It’s strange how many churches in Europe have legends involving the architects making deals with the devil, including a church in Lübeck and Notre Dame in Paris. This church in Munich featured an icon of a menorah on the roof, as the church allowed Jews to hide in the basement during the Holocaust, and therefore has a strong connection to the Jewish community in Munich. Additionally, the church towers were spared in WWII because the allies used them as a landmark to find the Munich city center, and purposely avoided bombing them.

The tour continued to show us major historical sites in the area, and our tour guide told us crazy stories involving Munich and beer. In one instance the city was actually saved from Swedish invaders by making a deal to surrender several thousand barrels of beer to the invaders. However, beer sometimes caused problems too. A government official once suggested extinguishing a fire with beer (because it was in greater supply than water), but the men preferred to drink the beer or steal the barrels, and failed to put out the fire. Our tour guide also explained the history of the Hofbräuhaus, including why the first floor is referred to as the “wash” (ask me if you’re interested, but I warn you it’s pretty gross). There was also the story of the miraculously unbroken beer stein. After the cross fell off a church tower, it was easy to find a fearless volunteer to climb the tower and replace it at the Hofbräuhaus. This volunteer climbed the tower without even putting down his stein, and after putting the cross on in the wrong direction, dropped his stein. It fell to the street, but did not shatter. The church proclaimed this a miracle. Our tour guide also explained Hitler’s gradual rise to power in Munich, and his failed putsch attempt. Of course, even this involved the Hofbrähaus, and perhaps it wouldn’t have failed if it weren’t for some irresponsible Nazi beer drinkers.

After the tour, I climbed up the Alter Peter church tower, which provided me with an excellent view of Munich. After this I had just a little more time to walk around Munich and see some sights, such as the Siegestor, that I did not see on the tour. I then had to catch my train back to Lübeck. My pictures from my weekend in Munich (not including Dachau) are here.

Monday was my last day of work, and I started working on a final report and said goodbye to my supervisor and colleagues. On Tuesday I got up early to head downtown one last time to close my bank account, as well as to do some touristy things I had not done in Lübeck. I went up the tower in St. Peter’s Church, which provided me with a great view of Lübeck. I also visited the museum in the Holsentor, which had many artifacts from medieval Lübeck, when it was the capital of the Hanseatic League. I also took the tour of the rathaus (city hall), but the tour was only offered in German, and I found it rather slow and boring, especially since I couldn’t understand the tour guide. I biked around the city a bit, and had my last currywurst for lunch. I also finally bought some marzipan from the famous Niederegger store to take home.

After returning to the guesthouse to finish packing, I was invited out to the Paulaner Munich-style restaurant in Lübeck, which I often walked by and wanted to go to. I went out with Bruno (from Brazil), Mete (from Turkey), Rodrigo (from Chile), and Stephan (a German friend of Bruno’s). Since it was my last night, I splurged and spent almost all of my remaining money. I had another maß of beer (this is probably the only place to get the in Lübeck), but I chose the weißbier (Paulaner weißbier is one of my favorite German beers), which is a heavier beer, and I realized is harder to drink in such a large amount, compared to something like a helles. It didn’t help that I ordered both a large schnitzel dish and a soup (it was shwarze beer soup, which sounded way too good to not try, and it was delicious). I left with only about €5 to my name, but the guys insisted on going out for one last drink and agreed to pay. They picked an Irish pub, so my last beer in Germany was actually a Guinness, which is quite silly, but at least I had a maß of German beer too. Finally we returned to the guesthouse, and met up with Mohammed and Ahmed as well (who are always up late during Ramadan). I really wanted to get some sleep before my flight, but I spent a while longer hanging out with my friends before catching a few hours of rest before my morning commute. My remaining pictures in Lübeck have been added to my Lübeck album here.

In the morning I got up very early to catch the 6:30 bus to the train station and started my journey home. Luckily I was able to get some food despite my limited money, I found a cheap cinnamon roll in Hamburg, and was able to use my US currency to get Burger King (a little welcome back to America, I suppose) in Dublin. Now I’m nearly home! I’m flying over Maine, only 198 miles from Boston, and should be arriving in half-an-hour. This trip went by really quick, but it was great have an international work experience and meeting so many friends from all over the world. While I have missed some things from home, it has been great travelling Europe and experiencing different cultures. I hope to return to Europe sometime soon!

P.S. As a final note, I’m looking at the map of our location on the plane, and now that it’s zooming into New England, I’m noticing New England towns named after German cities such as Berlin and Bremen, I never heard of those towns in the U.S. before.