Spin the Sky: München

If Berlin and Munich were bars, I would spend more of my time at Munich. It is cozy and laid-back. The parks are big and green. The city centre is very walk-able. The beer halls are plenty and full of (mostly) nice people, delicious smells and big beers. The buildings are beautiful even though many of them had to be rebuilt due to World War II bombing. As with Berlin, the city is full of history, which the city faces head-on. Plus they are a candidate city for the 2018 Winter Games, and the Olympic Park looked pretty cool to me (though Olympic Parks always give me a thrill).

I met some Canadian girls my first evening thanks to our unmistakable, famous red mittens. We had all joined in the fun on a “beer tour” of Munich where the guide takes you out to a couple different beer halls and teaches you a thing or two. As it turns out, a “small beer” in Munich is half a litre. And at certain beer halls – such as the famous Hofbrauhaus – “small beers” do not exist. You can order a litre beer or a litre beer. There is even a special grip with which to hold your litre beer stein. The pretzels are as thick as my arm, the men in the band on stage wear traditional lederhosen and take breaks to refresh their beer, and the whole hall bursts out in song at least every half an hour. It was a pretty fun place.

New Town Hall

Baby steps at Augustiner...

Full litre at Hofbrauhaus.

And this was one of the skinnier pretzels!

My second day in Munich, I went on a tour of Dachau concentration camp – now a memorial site. That visit was something that I was very interested in doing, but I knew from the offset that it was not going to be an enjoyable experience. I felt that it was an important experience; that I wanted to be made more aware of what went on during that period in history (the camp operated from 1933 – 1945). I wanted to see it with my own eyes. The tour was very good. We saw the bunker (prison within the prison), we saw the barracks, we saw the gas chamber and we saw the crematorium. The guide explained the methods of torture – psychological and physical, the deplorable conditions, and the progression – or rather regression of the camp between 1933 and 1945. Spending three hours at Dachau provided me with a much broader grasp of the Nazi regime than I’d ever attained from a class or from a book, and it was more due to the feelings I experienced rather than the knowledge I gained. It was a hard day, an upsetting and sombering day, but I am still glad that I made the visit. The entrance gate to the grounds reads “Arbeit Macht Frei”, or “Work Will Set You Free”, and it is now permanently left open.

The unnamed survivor ~ "To honour the dead. To warn the living."

My last couple of days I visited the Olympic Park and the vast Englischer Garten, I drank more beer out of more large steins, I browsed my way through the Viktualienmarkt and I resisted the outstanding aromas of the Dallmayr luxury food store. Well, I all but resisted save one luscious, champagne cream-filled donut – I may never glean the same satisfaction from a donut again after that one. And I tried schnitzel, which was pretty darn tasty.