Sunday, June 1. Powerful, overwhelming, grief, sad, hope, awesome, amazing, breathtaking, sombering, unbelievable. . . just a few words that I heard our group use to describe Dachau and none of them do it justice. I wish I had the pictures to put up, but alas, no USB. We got up in Barcelona after FINALLY finding the rooms Saturday night at midnight and went to the train station to meet a group to tour Dachau. We ended up going with Radius tours. Our guide Robert was Excellent!! We all agreed it was worth the money to have a guided tour. While waiting on the tour, I got to tlking to 5 guys that I had seen at our hostel earlier. Turns out that 4 f them are hockey players and one is a friend about to go into the marines, so they were traveling for like 6 weeks I think? They were really nice and we ended up seeing them later that night. Funny how you meet people all hte time when traveling. But I digress. . . Dachau. We took the subway to the city of Dachau and then a bus to the memorial. It was very moving for all of us. I wish I could begin to put into words how it was and how it affected us, but I wuld still be here at the end our my hour I have paid for and then I would not have told you anyting else! Needless to say, it was one of the highlights of our trip.
At the end of our tour, I talked to the group and we all agreed to forge on that day and go ahead and see the BMW museum and Olymic Park, where there was a monument to the olympians killed by terriosts in the 1972 Olympics. So, we all agreed to go to the train station where the tour left from and get food, while I tried to figure out train schedules and then on to our next 2 stops in Munich. Well, GErmany is a tough place to get around. To make a very long story short, I went to 4 counters and everyone told me that the trains from Zurich to Barcelona overnight were booked and the train from Milan to Barcelona overnight were booked and the train from Barcelona to Paris was booked. So, we got a suggestion to go to the Eurail office, which was conviently closed, but would be open tomorrow at 7Ñ30 am. So, we all talked and decided nothing would get resolved right then, so we would go ahead and see our sights and deal with this the next day.
So, off to the BMW place and Olympic park. It was amazing. I am sure Turner can tell you tons of stuff about the BMW place, so feel free to ask him. I knwo I saw a lot of cars and it was very chic with cool flower arrangements. :) Then we checked out Olympic Park. The tower there is 185 meters high and we went up to get the bird´s eye view of Munich. We all enjoyed talking about how the SkyTower in Auckland is higher than were we were and who would have jumped off of it with me if we had been in Auckland. . . but we were in Munich. So we just checked out the city and a cool Rock n Roll Museum at the top. We then headed back towards the hotel and went to a biergarten.
Unfortunatley, it was not the main one, we had had a long day and figured it was best to check out the one by our hostel. Lane was going to buy dinner for his birthday, but it was this cafeteria type line so we all paid our own, got a beer and had a seat among what we decided must be thousands of people in the beirgarten. It was a beautiful night and we had a FABULOUS time celebrating Lane´s birthday. He got to the top of the tower for free because it was his birthday! We all agreed, none could think what could rival Dachau, BMW Museum, Olymic Park topped off with dinner and a beer in the authentic German beirgarten. Pretty good day!! Also, we ran into our hockey player friends at the garten and enjoyed visiting with them one last time.
So, we all agreed, Munich was great. And we had a great time talking about what other cities we might encounter if Barcelona didn´t work out. We were talking Cinque Terra in Italy, French Rivera, who knows?? As long as we were in Paris by Thursday. So, Munich was a fabulous retreat from the original plan and a fantastic site for Part 1 of Lane´s Birthday!!!
