Germany

The next weekend trip was to Germany. The first stop was Salzburg, Austria. Some of the girls and I wanted to go to the Sound of Music Tour. It was a three or four hour tour. After the tour we were going to catch a train to Munich, Germany.

The reason I had picked Germany that weekend right after the Fall Break was because there was so much I wanted to see. I wanted to see the Sound of Music Tour and I knew that if I took a trip longer away that weekend, that it wouldn’t be possible to do both. I also wanted to have a chance to go to tour a concentration camp, because I felt like it was a great opportunity and it was a big part of the history and culture experience. I choose Munich because Dachau was only an hour out of the city, Neuschwanstein castle was a couple hours away, and I could also squeeze in the Sound of Music Tour. As a result I didn’t get a chance to spend too much time in Munich itself. I personally did not care for Munich at all from what I saw. The city seems unsafe and dirty, where I was staying at least. In all the cities I had already seen, if I didn’t absolutely love it I could still find things that I liked or thought was pretty. Munich was a different experience though. The first night in Munich, Friday, after the Sound of Music Tour, the girls and I went to the subway to see where we could go to find something to do for the entertainment of the night. As we were talking about our oppositions, a man walked up and asked if we were Americans. Apparently, he and his friends were in the military and had come to Munich for a hockey game. I asked what game was so important. They told us that the US team was here playing Germany’s team. After the men walked away, we talked about grabbing food and going. We decided that we could at least check it out. The subway was packed. I was like everyone in Munich new a bug game was about to start but us. When we got to the stadium I went up and asked about tickets. They were only 20 euros for student tickets. We flashed our student traveler ids and were in. the game wasn’t packed but I had horrible seats. After about ten minutes we realized that seats right behind the US team were open. During a break, so it was obvious, we snuck down to the closest seats that we could see. The US team won, but the game was very close. They went into overtime and also into a sudden shot out. We went nuts when our country won and the national anthem started playing with our flag being dropped down above the ice. It was beautiful.

The next day we got up early to eat and head out to Dachau. We bought another subway pass and were on our way. Dachau was the first concentration camp set up by the Nazis. They used it as a model for the others. I learned at it was a work camp while some others were used for just killing. The Nazis were killed the prisoners in Dachau also, but only for certain reasons. If prisoners could no longer work or obey, the rest died from starvation, malnutrition, and diseases. I could not make myself take photos. It was sickening just to be there. They had tons of information and I had paid for a head set that told me info while I walked the camp. It was about 20 degrees out and I could just imagine how the prisoners must have frozen without proper clothes and shelter. The camp was set up to show you the housing, work places and torturing. The camp was probably the saddest thing I saw during the whole three months.

The last day in Munich we took a train out into the country and went to see the Neuschwanstein castle and the beautiful mountains around it. We spent the whole entire day there. We hiked up to the mountain and took a tour. Later that night we ate at a little shop on the side of the mountain. The next morning we caught a train but to Vienna. It was a five hour train ride and we all had a German test the next day. We had a way for pushing off studying till the every end of the weekend. We all managed to always learn almost all of the 200 hundred words.