Global Connections: Day 4 in Germany

Today started off on a sad and somber note....for today was our visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp. We spent a few hours roaming the place were thousands of innocent people lost their lives for simply being different. Our guide, Michael, is a German and he described in detail how hard it is to deal with this issue. He also said that they keep it alive in the form of memorials so that it will never happen again. We visited the crematorium and gas chamber located there. The gas chamber was never used, which made it a little easier to step inside. The crematorium, however, was used. In fact a small one was replaced by the big one we walked through because it couldn't keep up with the dead. Upon liberation of the Dachau prisoners by the US army, the neighbors of the camp, who tried to pretend this wasn't happening were brought into the camp and shown the stacks of bodies and other evidence so that they would believe. We left the camp at noon and observed a moments silence in remembrance of that time.

After Dachau, we went back to Munich and walked the main square in search of lunch. It was fun looking at all of the ethnic food and deciding what to try. If someone didn't like something or was too full to finish, we just passed it on to Trevor. I'm pretty sure he is very well fed on this trip. After lunch, we hopped on the bus for a guided tour that gave us even more history on Munich. We stopped at a second castle, much smaller than the one we were at yesterday, Schloss Nymplenburg is the name. We didn't go inside, just took pictures of it and the swans. From there we went to dinner and then saw the surf spot of Munich, which is actually on a river next to a bridge.

Tomorrow we move on to Venice by way of Austria. We will actually drive through three countries tomorrow. Imagine trying to do that in the US? We will be in Venice for two days and we are unsure if we have Internet access there. We tried to find out but the hotel we are staying at does not have a website...which is why we question the whole access thing. So, if you don't hear anything from us for two days it's because we can't get online.