Dachau Concentration Camp

We woke up early to say our last goodbyes to the Garmisch-Partenkirchen area by doing a morning hike to Lake Lautersee and saying goodbye to seeing the impressive mountains that flanked the village of Mittenwald.

I felt guilty that I was essentially making T wake up early because I wanted to go and just kind of bask under the shadow of the mountain by Lake Lautersee….but then the hike was beautiful enough with waterfalls to boot, so I didn’t end up feeling all that guilty.

We couldn’t stay long though because we still had a train to catch to Munich. Our objective was to make it to Dachau, the memorial of the first concentration camp that was built, and eventually used as the model for all other concentration camp.

Since the last English tour was at 1pm, we were rushed to get ourselves together (pack, eat, shower, return empty bottles at the grocery store, check out) for the 2 hour train ride to Munich.

When we had almost arrived at the main Munich train station though, our train was delayed because of fire on the tracks further ahead.
Thankfully we were already within city limits and the transportation network of this city was so amazing that we were able to jump on a local S train instead of continuing on our long distance RB train. With some running, we were able to store our luggage in the lockers at the train station for a small fee, and run to catch the S2 train to Dachau.

Bus 726 then took us from the town of Dachau to the site, which was full of visitors. Apparently they receive about 800,000 visitors a year.

The site itself was large, since at one point it fit maybe 60,000 people – the size of a town. Most of it was a reconstruction since the buildings were repurposed for a leather factory in the 1950s before the memorial was created, and a lot of it was torn down.

The iconic front gate which separated prisoners from the normal world, inscribed with the phrase Arbeit Macht Frei or Work sets you free

What was the most moving part for me was the crematorium, the building where the dead bodies were burned in an oven. When they started running low on coal though, late in WWII, they fell back on mass graves.

It was difficult to believe at times, as we were walking over the lawn or in these buildings that these were sites of mass murder, torture, and injustice.

We did the tour but probably could have done without it since there was so much information available on panels in German and English. So much that it was a bit overwhelming. Like cramming for years of WWI and WWII history.

We were there until we were kicked out because the site was closing for 5pm.

Back in Munich, we hit up our favourite cafe, Vits, – where the waitress actually remembered us! -ordered some kind of raspberry dessert and made plans for supper.

After supper, we went to a nearby jazz bar and enjoyed about an hours worth of jazz piano and vocals before dashing off to find our train.

We took a City Night Line  train to Berlin which featured sleeping compartments so that you could leave one city, and wake up in another city the next morning.

We shared a room with two girls travelling from Taiwan and quickly fell asleep to the train’s rocking motion.