We arrived into Munich at about 11:30pm, the driver had put his foot down and travelling through Austria was nothing but a blur, a quick short cut through the train station and we were on the door step of our hostel, which happened to be located down what could be pretty much renamed Hostel Street, there were at least four or five right next door to each other. The Munich Hostel (Jaegers) was to be the first large dorm we had stayed in since Verona, it was mixed and had 40 beds, it was also in a basement, the stair well to which stank or regurgitated beer, other than that though the first impressions of the hostel was that it was pretty nice.
Feeling the drain from the travel we decided to hit the hay pretty much straight away but not before sussing out our exact location with the use of the abundance of tourist maps that the hostel had available, we also decided that as Munich was pretty big and had a lot of history we would try and plan a little as we were only there for 2 and a half days (we were guessing it would be easy to travel out of Munich, it being such a major city and all), so we decided that the following morning we wake up early enough to get to the main square (Marienplatz) to catch a tour which took in notable sites with connections to the rising of the third Reich. The following morning we got up slightly later than planned but knew we could get the S - Bahn to the walks meeting point, what we didn't know was that the S-Bahns staff were taking industrial action causing a significant reduction in the amount of services available (for once there were no signs of that famous German efficiency), in the end we were about 5 minutes late for the walk but managed to catch up with them just around the corner from the Glockenspiel.
The tour itself took about 3 hours and was well worth the money we paid for it (around 12 euros I think), we had a really knowledgeable guide (Franz) and the group was small enough for us all to be able to hear him properly above the hustle and bustle of Munich. As well as showing us the site where Hitler started life in Germany as a street artist, sites where he first infiltrated political parties, sites where he made his first party speeches, marches etc, Franz also gave good info on what was happening else where in Germany and the world to allow us to fully understand how someone who came from such a meagre background could become chancellor in such a short amount of time and ultimately lead a nation into a battle against pretty much everyone else. We learnt that he was pretty cleaver but that his luck seemed to carry him along way. We also learnt that it took Germany along time to face there history but they do it now in an apologetic but understanding way, they do not see themselves as a country defeated in a war but more a nation liberated by the allied forces, they do not forget the atrocities committed but they do separate the German people from these and highlight the damage that a dictator can do, the war came at a time when the German people needed a strong leader and they certainly got one, he just led them in a very wrong direction.
After the Third Reich tour we planned to grad a bite to eat before catching a second tour which would take us to the Dachau concentration camp, this was set up in 1933 as soon as Hitler came to power, the main reason was because the increase in political enemies that were being incarcerated were causing the regular prisons to overflow, the camp was originally built to hold 6000 inmates, by the end of the war it held over 30,000. This concentration camp was the first of so many set up by Hitler and the Nazi and was said to be the one that all others were based on. However our guide did not show up, we waited with a Canadian couple for a good half an hour before admitting defeat and heading of to find something else to amuse us. We ended up staying in the square to watch the Glockenspiel as it chimed, there are a number of characters that pop out on the hour along with a cock that crows, it draws quite a crowed and was pretty cool to see. We then indulged in hot chocolate and tea in a nearby cafe before deciding to tackle the nearby Tower of St Peters Church, all 302 steps of it. From the top the view was impressive but not really for its beauty but more because it gave a fuller idea of just how big Munich actually is, from above we saw a nearby market area and decided to head there to see what the local tradesman were selling, unsurprisingly the stalls were made up of left over Oktoberfest souvenirs and lots and lots of German Sausage, although there were quite a few cool little wood calving stools too.
We wondered around the market and the nearby vicinity for some time before deciding to grab a beer before going for some food, getting food was a bit of a mission at first as I wanted something traditionally German and Nina needed vegetarian food, not that easy to find. In the end though we did find a quaint little restaurant close by and decided to give it a try, I ended up with a selection of sausages and pork (including belly pork, urgh) and Nina ended up with melted cheese over Gnocchi, we getting tucked in in the rather rammed restaurant when we were joined by 4 Germans from Dortmund, after a little while and a few beers the conversation got going and we had an hilarious few hours. The main highlight was the German guy telling us in very drunk, slurred broken English of his recent trip to the Scottish highlands stag hunting in the rain (the worse rain ever apparently), the story seemed to go on for ever and involved many disappointments but safe to say it ended with him getting his stag and it being a particularly rare one with antlers with 10 or 12 branches (or something), sadly he did not have the trophy with him to show us but he has promised Nina a job in Oktoberfest next year and also cheap accommodation in Dortmund should we ever be passing, eventually it got to the stage where his drunken speech was just impossible to understand and rather than smiling, knodding and laughing in all the wrong places we decided to head back to the hostel to chill out, it was getting late and we wanted to be up relatively early the next day so that we could give the Dachau tour guide another chance.
We had decided to catch the tour from a different guide in the morning, for two reasons, one the first guide had let us down and two this guide left from opposite our hostel which meant and extra ten minutes in bed, however once again we were let down and the guide did not show, we checked with a guide who was going else where and they too were unsure where this person was, in the end we decided that we would ditch the guide idea and go it alone. Dachau is about 40 minutes by public transport from the centre of Munich, you need to get the S Bahn and then a bus, the signage is really good all the way so it was really easy to find. The other thing worthy of a mention is the brilliant way in which the Munich Travel system allows you to by a single ticket that will cover the whole day for up to 5 people over the age of 14 (people under 14 only count as half a person) this meant for 11 euros me and Nina could travel all around Munich all day if we so wished, this along with the fact that we new entry to Dachau was free of charge meant that as the day went on we were getting more and more chuffed with the fact that the guide had not turned up as they would have charged 20 euros per person.
When we got to Dachau we also found that for 3 euros each we could hire an audio guide, the content of which was brilliant, you got given a map of the camp and at certain points were numbers which you entered into your guide to get information on that particular site. The guide was divided into bold and italic numbers, the bold numbers gave basic information and the italics gave more detailed information including translated prisoner recollections of the camp, this meant you could freely choose how much you learnt and how quickly you made you way around the camp, we ended up being there for around 4 hours and both agreed that the trip could easily be split over tow days to prevent mental burn out. The camp is pretty much divided in two, there is the camp itself which you can walk around and see various memorials, prison house, punishment chambers etc and then there is the museum which is held in one of the main buildings, we found it a bit heavy going doing both in quick succession and the film that forms part of the memorial was truly horrifying although we agreed that for some reason the fact it was in black and white somehow seemed to thankfully take away some of the cutting edge, maybe we were subconsciously able to separate it from reality slightly (later in the museum I saw the same clips in colour and then they became people not just images, Nina couldn't bare to watch).
Dachau was just a fraction of the size of the two Auschwitz camps but every bit as horrifying and the way its history from start to present day has been documented is truly amazing, we found it particularly disturbing that some of the buildings that were used for the administrative duties of the concentration camp staff are still used today by the riot police, prior to that they were used by the Americans up until the late 70's, it just seemed strange that anyone could work there knowing the tragic and grotesque part the buildings played in history. If anyone goes to Munich Dachau is a must much like I said for Auschwitz.
That afternoon we decided to relax and watch the football on T.V but missed all the goals, we then dived out for a quick bite to eat before returning to watch England sneak past the French in the rugby whilst drinking beer by the litre, turns out us English still aren't that well likes as there were hardly any french in the hostel but the whole bar seemed to be supporting France, in the end though me, Nina and one other solitary English guy had the last laugh, it was all good natured though, that night we regretted sleeping in a 40 person dorm, it is just impossible to sleep, you have 10 people snoring, one person coughing and sneezing (Nina) people leaving at all hours of the night and slamming the doors to their metal lockers and the dorm and people arriving in various states of drunkenness, still in the end sleep did come and we ended up making our 10 o'clock check out by about a minute.
The previous day we had found out that Munich didn't really have much in the way of a international bus station and the only bus that did happen to go to Prague in the next 3 days was leaving at 23:45 on Sunday evening, due to budget constraints this was to be the bus for us, there were trains but these took longer and were much more expensive. I felt sure that there would be more buses than just the one so I suggested we took our bags with us and headed straight to the bus stop, this was located right out of town by the Allianz Stadium, we got there to find 28 separate bus stops and only one office which did not open until 4pm and absolutely no reference to and bus departing for Prague whatsoever. Luckily however they did have left luggage lockers which were just the right level for people to pee on, still we decided to risk it, we dumped our bags and headed off to the nearby arena.
Nina decided it looked like a Jelly fish I just thought it looked awesome, they did do guided tours but we opted against this instead taking a sneak peak from the hot dog stand from where you can see the whole pitch and most of the seating area, we then took a stroll round the two club shops before heading off to Olympicpark (1972), we got on a train and immediately saw how popular Olympicpark was as the train was absolutely rammed, however upon alighting we found out that the Munich Marathon was being run on that day and we had decided to go just as the hobby runners were predicted to arrive in there masses at the finish line. We decided to take refuge in the sea life centre, turns out German fish look just the same as English fish but still it killed a couple of hours. We took a stroll around the lakes before heading back towards the station, we passed a big map of the grounds and I expected to see a memorial for the Israel Team members that were murder during the Olympics but strangely I could not see any reference whatsoever to the event. Arriving back at the bus stop we saw that there was a bus to Prague at 5pm and as it was 4:30 we though we might be able to get on that and get on our way to save hanging around the station at 11pm, unfortunately though the ticket guy would not sell us a ticket for that bus so we had to go for the 11:45 which would arrive a 5:30am.
Still having a good 6 hours to kill we decided to do our classic time waster of heading to an Internet cafe for a few hours, before grabbing a bite to eat at a nearby Pizzeria, we got back to the bus station at around 10:30 and were relieved to see that our bags were still there and did not smell of urine, we also met an Australian girl who was heading the same way with us, we had a good chat but I lost interest when she said she was aiming to living in Liverpool for 3 months. Eventually the time came for our bus to arrive and pretty promptly we were on our way, for once I managed to get some good sleep on the bus and was delighted to wake up a 4:45 just as we were entering Prague, at 5 am the bus stopped in a station and after a bit of confusion found that we were in Prague Florenc, this was the correct station for us. We left just as the Australian Girl was kicking off because she didn't believe the driver when he said we were at Prague Florenc as it was only 5 am, our arrival obviously interrupted a nice dream because she was acting like a complete Muppet, not feeling ready to find out hostel straight away we decided to dive into a nearby bar and top up our caffeine levels before drawing out a battle plan and laughing at the sheer stupidity of the Aussie.
TTFN
Daz
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The plan ... well really there is no plan, but there is a good reason ...
Watch out Europe here we come. After working in travel it's time to put in action what I've learnt!
I can't take you all with me but here's the next best thing - share our travel highlights and fun experiences as we check out as much of Europe as possible over the next 10 weeks.
