Just like yesterday, we woke up at 8:30. Today we had a significantly smaller breakfast consisting of Nutella on some buttermilk biscuits and the last of our Crusti Croc chips. I must mention that Crusti Crocs are the off-brand CrunChips with which we became familiar in France!

A little about last night first! One of our roommates was escorted by security back to our room. I can only hazard a guess that he was drinking by himself at the bar downstairs and got kicked out. When he came in he mumbled a lot, something about him being Korean and our other roommates Taiwanese, and other random garble-gook. I was surprised he could even speak English while that wasted. Whenever he laid down on the bed he would moan a lot, which got to be really annoying. Every two minutes he would then get up, fumble around with something (and managing to knock a lot of stuff around). He’d lost his room key, so whenever he left the room we had to let him back in. He eventually passed out after a lot more moaning and stumbling around.

Then in the middle of the night, he woke us up with his violent vomiting. Luckily there was a sink in the room or else it could have been quite awful. He did this 3 or 4 times. Really gross. He was either a total light weight, or stupid, or (my guess) both. This morning he woke up, apparently still quite drunk. He fumbled around some more, moaned a lot more (so annoying), and even offered to buy my apple juice off me. I should have taken the money, and could have probably gotten 5 Euro out of him for it but I really wanted the juice and didn’t quite feel like messing with a drunk guy. So yeah, that was the worst experience we’ve had with roommates. I guess it could have been a lot worse. Still, the moaning and vomiting were pretty gross. Now, on to the rest of the day!

We again met downstairs with a tour guide, this time to do the Dachau concentration camp tour. As I heard someone say, we were very fortunate to have the choice to go. It was 15 euro, which included the tour and all transportation to and from. It is about 30 minutes train and 10 minutes bus to get to the memorial site.

We had the same guide, Adam, today as we did yesterday, actually. We started off in a visitor center where we checked out the restrooms before the 3 hour long tour began. Once we made sure everyone was accounted for, Adam gave us a rundown of some simple rules and how it would all go.

We began with an overview of the start of the Dachau camp. This was the first concentration camp to open its gates. It began even before Hitler became Fuhrer. We also saw where the first prisoners arrived and the famous “Arbeit macht frei” (”Work will set you free”) gate. We also saw where the camp commandant (who was literally insane, how appropriate) lived. Then we walked to the roll call area. It was a huge, empty, gravel-filled area. On the right were the buildings where they processed new arrivals. Processing included stripping them of all possessions, shaving their heads, and removing all human rights. On the left we saw the remains of the barracks. There were a total of 30 barracks areas but only two buildings are left standing. One we didn’t really mention, but the other was a reconstruction (or so I think).

Along with the barracks we saw torture devices, areas where prisoners were locked up for months at a time (some in complete darkness for 4 solid months), and the work areas. Surprisingly, there were actually hundreds of work, concentration, and death camps all across the Reich. I’ve really only heard of the large ones like Auschwitz, but there were many many smaller ones. And actually the graphic only showed one where 200 registered prisoners were kept. After some time people like Jews and Gypsies were kept in the camps but not recorded officially. Anything could, and likely did, happen to them.

The entire experience was very surreal and somber. Especially when we saw the memorials built by the different faith communities who had members in the camp. After that we saw the crematoriums and gas chambers. It was a nice, sunny day today and very hard to imagine that not so many years ago, on a day very like today, the air would have been filled with the soot of human corpses who had first been processed, worked ragged, gassed in the chambers, and then burnt. The guide did a very good job of presenting facts. Understandably, some personal lean showed, but this is still a very moving, harrowing topic. I find it amazing that our guide does this tour every 2 days.

I am very glad we did the tour with a human guide. There were people there listening to audio guides, but we had our questions answered and got much more in depth than I think any audio device could. I took pictures throughout the tour, and when I have some time, I will upload them so you can see some of what we toured. But you really have to see it yourself to experience it. And then, I only experienced a fraction of what it was really like. This tour really makes me want to research more into concentration camps and WWII in general. History only repeats itself unless we educate ourselves and for something like the Holocaust to repeat itself would be absolutely insane.

Well, after the tour ended we walked toward the bus which would take us to the train station but the bus driver was a douche and wouldn’t let our group on because we were “too large” even though there was plenty of room on the bus. We ended up hoofing it back to the train terminal. We missed the original train we were supposed to take, so we had to take another, slower one. We did make it back though.

We again went to the Lidl to get some food for tomorrow. After that we went to the Augustiner-Braustuberl beer hall for dinner. Chuck got a Maß Bier (full liter of beer) with the meal. The mug was enormous! We both got the Brew master’s special which was a fantastic eclectic meal of great Bavarian dishes! For desert we got some Apfelstrudel (if you can’t guess this, I’m not telling!) which was equally fantastic! I really just wanted to eat another one.

Now we’re checking internet. Turns out the place we stay in Berlin doesn’t have free wifi, or so it looks from the internet descriptions. So we might not have wifi for the next several days. We’re getting ready to head to the train station because we have an overnight train to Berlin. We are doing the super-cheap option of reclining chairs. I don’t even think that Chuck and I get to sit together, which sucks. We’ll see though!

How that I’ve given you an update on what we were up to, I want a report on how you faithful readers are doing! What’s up?! I’ll post again as soon as I have some internet!

Guess what we did first! We woke up. That’s right. We aroused from slumber, first off. Then we showered and put on our clothes. After those mundane daily rituals we ate our NUTELLA! We had bought some little rolls which we turned into Nutella hotdogs. It was a very healthy breakfast. They are part of this complete breakfast! We also included the Crusti Crocs paprika chips we got. Don’t worry: Crusti Crocs is a brand, not related to the abominable shoes,  and paprika is just BBQ flavor.

Then we hustled down stairs to meet for the free walking tour of Munich. It looked pretty good from the brochure, so we decided to do it. Free tours are pretty much always worth it! It ended up not being the same route they advertised, but was still pretty good. We saw the over-rated, under-whelming Glockenspiel, some churches, the old and new town halls, the overpriced Viktualienmarkt, and the US embassy. The embassy was a joke by the guide as a reference to Starbucks… and Chuck definitely didn’t get it. He asked, “Where’s the Embassy, I want to see it!” I then explained to him that it was just a joke. Silly Charles! We also saw the new Jewish Synagogue and museums, a Biergarten, Hofbrauhaus, and the Residenz.

Afterward we followed the guide to a little restaurant where you got bottomless stew for 7 Euro. I ate 4 bowls. It was really good, Bavarian stew! Afterward I was extremely full… almost to the point of explosion. Luckily, I didn’t puke like after I ate the Mucho Macho Burrito in Columbus! The record was 7 bowls. I have no idea how that is possible. Perhaps if I had prepared I could have done it.

While still crazy full, Charles and I walked to the Deutches Museum. It was a science and technology museum. We learned about muscle, water and steam power. Also saw tons of steam and internal combustion engines. They also had helicopters, airplanes, jets, turbines and ramjet engines. We didn’t have much time there before it closed, but it was definitely cool. Wish we had more a chance to check it out. Once we were let out by the last few people in the place we walked to the Englishen Garten.

The Englishen Garten is actually bigger than Central Park in New York! It was enormous. We walked for quite a while and actually saw only a small fraction of the entire place. We did walk to one of the Biergartens there. It was pretty neat. It’s really different to see places with no open-container laws and younger drinking ages than America. It’s not quite as big a deal to drink beer, and while you do see some people drunk and stumbling around, they aren’t as common as in America. I think America needs to follow suit.

After the Biergarten, we made our way back through downtown Munich and back to our hostel. I ended up uploading some photos to Facebook, since I hadn’t done so in quite a while. Chuck read more of Steven King’s “The Stand.” I am rather impressed because it’s a 1100+ page book and he’s a good deal through it since starting it at the beginning of our trip!

Facebook allows you to upload up to 200 images per album, but actually sucks when uploading that many pictures at once. Although it could be a byproduct of low wifi strength as well, I’m going to blame Facebook. The java applet could definitely be improved to avoid failing the loading of all the images. Oh well, that’s a programmer’s rant and I’ll spare you any more! Then we slept.

The rooms in Hostel Ruthensteiner are quite large. They have a good number of outlets (which you’re lucky to find in any room, actually) and even reading lights on each of the bed. The downsides: poor wifi reception from the access point across the street and the single shower/bathroom for 8 people. We’ve not run into the issue before, but here we had to wait for the shower. 4 people needing to use one shower is quite inconvenient. I wish they would have had at least two showers. Chuck had to wait at least 30 minutes for this girl to shower before he could take his. As soon as he opened the door, I shot in there because not only did we have to check out at 10am, but we had to catch a train at 10:20. Time was of the essence, so the others could suck it up and wait. At least the floors didn’t get as gross as they did at the Alessandro Downtown hostel in Rome. That was seriously nasty. I’m not quite sure what my most/least favorite hostels have been but we’ll wait until the end of the trip before I make that decision.

We headed to the Westbahnhof to catch our train to München (Munich) and it arrived a little bit late, but all was well. We got on and took seats right off the bat. We were a bit worried because there were a ton of people on the platform and even with our Eurail pass, seats aren’t guaranteed on non-reserved trains. The next train to München from Wien wouldn’t be for another 4 hours. The sights on the train were actually quite nice! We got to see some fields, mountains and wind-powered generators. I am actually writing this first part on the train right now! The rest of the day will certainly be included later. I just wanted to make sure I used the 4 hours on the train for a good use.  There’s no wifi, but I can write the posts in a text file and post them later. Turns out there are power plugs on the train, but I didn’t notice it until we were almost to Munich. The Asus EeePC 1000HE that I have has been awesome on this journey. It is nice and compact and has spectacular battery power. I’ve been using it for 2 hours or so and it still has 64% battery left. That’s including me copying photos from Chuck’s camera memory card, perusing my photos to rejog my memory and writing all this text. It’s not so great for watching video on YouTube because the processor is not high-performing, but it serves the purpose of portable internet machine quite well!

Don’t forget, Railjet has Premium, First-class and Economy sections as well as delicious snacks in the center car. We hear such similar propaganda after every stop… It’s quite annoying!

We’re riding a Railjet train again. This is the one I mentioned the other day coming from Innsbruck to Vienna. These are our favorite trains! It’s got comfortable seats, nice mesh storage, and several screens in each car which display the speed, location and stop information. The cars are very modern, have AC, and good amount of space for backpacks. Booking it through the countryside at 200km/h is impressive! I really wish America had a rail system like Europe. Granted America far exceeds all of Europe in size… still, it would make sense in terms of fossil fuel consumption. Although we’d still have to spend all the energy to build and maintain it… whatever, I’m stopping now! Going to read some for the rest of the train ride. I’ll complete this post later!

Rest of the day:

The first part of this post ended in first person, because I was writing it at the time. Well, two days have elapsed and I am only now just writing the ending. I’ve been busy and tired… that’s my excuse.

We got in to Munich around 2pm. By the time we found the Euro Youth Hotel (where we stayed), checked in and got settled, it was pushing 3pm. After looking at our travel books, we found most things in Munich close at 5pm… so we didn’t really have time to go do anything, sadly. We instead went to the Lidl store, which is basically an ALDI. We picked up some Nutella, chips, bread and I also got some apple juice. For some reason, peanut butter is incredibly difficult to find around Europe. And when you do find it, it’s insanely expensive! Nutella was the next best thing, I suppose.

After we dropped this stuff off in our room, we headed out for a little bit. We walked south a bit and then past a university. We ended up seeing a church spire and headed toward it. It turned out to be St. Paul’s church. We snapped some pictures but quickly ventured back to the hostel because bad weather moved in. It started to rain and we didn’t want a repeat of our first day in Vienna!

The hostel has a bar on the first floor, so we checked out the happy hour. We had some drinks while trying to figure out cricket. That sport is so utterly cryptic that even after watching it for some hours over various occasions, I cannot figure out what is going on, what’s the point of anything is. Oh well, I guess I’ll just look it up on Wikipedia soon.

We also met some people. Talked to a few guys from Denmark, a girl from Canada, a girl from the Czech Republic, and a few others. We later got a kebab from around the corner, and it was delicious! It seems that turkish restaurants are all over the place. They’re sort of like taco shops in Ohio.  After the Kebab, we talked with Romana (the girl from Czech) for quite a while before heading to bed. And that was our first day in Munich! Pretty good for not being able to see any sights.