Sunday, May 8, 2016

Flashback to München

So flashback to Munich; I got a little behind in writing these blogs, woops. But anyways…

So this weekend was an awkward weekend in terms of travel, to me it seemed like I had ran out of places to travel to, which was completely false but this was how I felt. This weekend was the weekend others did blind booking and other things, and I didn’t really want to blind book (the weekend of March 5th). Since no one was really doing anything I really wanted to, so I decided to go to Munich by myself! I had found some really cheap train tickets there so I was content on going by myself. People thought I was crazy, and after a while I figured I would’ve enjoyed some company but I was still content with going alone. Then I found out Kyle had nothing to do that weekend, so I was set on convincing him to come with me via attractive ticket prices! After a day of persuasion, he had decided to come and it was going to be a bros trip!

The main reason I wanted to go to Munich was Dachau; I told myself that I wasn’t leaving Germany without first seeing a concentration camp. I felt that was so important for someone to see, especially while you’re in Germany. So we both agreed on this, and didn’t really plan out anything else, it would be a spontaneous trip indeed.

So we went out together with everyone to a bar, then caught the night train to Munich! We arrived rather early in the morning and went straight to Dachau. It was a very surreal experience honestly. Dachau was the first concentration camp built by the Nazis from 1933-1945. What shocked me was how large it was; there was a massive open field between the barracks and the headquarters. The massive gravel gray field really grabbed a hold on your heart, you could picture the thousands of prisoners standing there suffering. The absence of things in this courtyard was terrifying. This is just something I cannot describe, something you have to see with your own eyes. Kyle and I walked through the museum but skimmed through most of it. We focused primarily on the medical experiments conducted at Dachau, since we learned about them in our History of Medicine class. These horrible atrocities included hypothermia experiments, malaria resistance, and altitude tests; all of these experiments lead to prisoner torture and death. We walked through and saw the barracks where they performed these experiments, stood where the prisoners stood, and even looked at the crematoriums where thousands and thousands of bodies were burned. This was beyond solemn and eye opening, its shocking how mankind could do this to themselves..

After Dachau we went back to Munich and ate a delicious German lunch at the Augustiner Bier Halle, of course ordering the schnitzel. It was great, I really like German food and I know Kyle agrees. We then checked into our hostel and I fell asleep a little bit while Kyle and I were showering/getting ready for the night. He gave me a hard time for the rest of the weekend for that hahah. We had planned for that evening to go to a pub and watch the Munich v Dortmund football game, since this was a very big game! We walked around town for a little bit, saw the famous cookoo clock in the city center, ordered a massive pizza, ate it, and went to a bar to watch the game. This bar was backed so I practically sat on the stair steps to watch! After the game was over, it only tied 1-1 and honestly a pretty anti-climactic game, Kyle and I stayed longer to enjoy some more bier. We happened to sit down at a table with 4 guys from London, and stayed for a couple hours just talking with them and we had a blast doing so! It was really fun with them, gave each other trash talk and had a great time. Afterwards we took a train home and went to bed.

We had nothing planned the next morning but to check out and walk to the English Garten. So we walked all the way to the English Garten, and I was really hangry because we couldn’t decide on a place to stop and eat, I still feel pretty bad about that hahah. But we arrived to the English Garten, which is massive and was beautiful, even in the winter. We found a pond and watched a literal swarm of ducks, geese and birds combat each other for bread, and this cheered me up quite a bit.


After this we still had several hours of things to do before our night train at midnight, so we decided to go to the Olympic Park, which was really cool. Munich hosted the summer Olympics in 1972 I believe. So when we arrived to the Olympic Park, we found the BMW Welt was right next to us. We got to walk through and see all the cool cars and motorcycles they had up for display, and we even got some yogurt as a snack. Then we walked to the Park which was beautiful. The landscape was really unique and the layout seemed fluidic and without structure: really cool area. We got to enter the main stadium and walk around, and then we walked up a giant hill which was the highest point in the area. The view from up there was spectacular! One view was the view of the entire Olympic park, while the other was the city of Munich. We enjoyed the view for a while but after a while we got too chilly and had to go back down. At this point we still had a couple hours left till our train, but we had no idea what else to do. So we made our way back to the hauptbahnhof and relaxed for a couple hours waiting on our train. We had a good nights rest and then went to class that next morning!

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