We slept in this morning, fighting some of the after effects of our single Oktoberfest celebration day yesterday. We went to the buffet breakfast at about 10:00 AM, and of course, we were not the only ones who had slept in. Unfortunately, once again it was a cloudy, cold day, with some rain showers.
Unfortunately, both of us now have slight head colds, although Stephanie’s seems to be on the mend. I had started to get hoarse yesterday, and then had a stuffy nose when I woke up this morning. We are sure that part of the congestion is due the weather change, it seems like a lot of the people here are coughing. It does not help that we are constantly around crowds, in relatively close proximity to people on the trains, underground, crowds in the streets, and of course, crowded beer establishments. Plus, we were very confident that yesterdays Oktoberfest experience had no impact on our health!
Gardens at the Residenz
We did not really have a plan for today, so we just headed back over to the Marionplatz area and walked around. We headed over to the area of Munich located near the Residenz, which was the former palace of the Wittlesbachs, who were ruling family of Bavaria for about 700 years.
We did not go inside any of the buildings, but there was a nice garden area behind the main building and we walked around that for a while, and then, the sun began to peek through the clouds.
We discussed going over to the Dachau Concentration Camp today since the weather seemed to be getting better, and decided that was a good plan. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at a sandwich shop, bought our special daily transportation ticket for two persons for a day, and headed over to Dachau. It was about 30 minutes riding the S-Bahn train, then about a 10 minute bus ride to the entrance of the Dachau memorial.
Area Where the Old Barracks Were Located at Dachau
We arrived at Dachau about 2:30 PM, and started the self guided tour. We really needed more time and energy to thoroughly read all of the information they had in the exhibits, but we were just not up to that today.
We looked at most of the exhibits, and really enjoyed looking at the restored barracks and some of the other buildings. It was very moving to read about the horrible conditions there, and how they got progressively worse over time, about the executions, and other terrible things that were done to the people imprisoned there.
Memorial Where the Cremated Ashed Were Burred
We looked at the three religious facilities built on the sight, one for Jews, one for Catholics, and one for Protestants. Then we went to the areas where they had the crematoriums and gas chambers.
There were several areas there that were set aside as mass memorials to the people who were cremated, and had their ashes buried en mass in large areas around the crematoriums.
We headed back to the bus stop, then back to the Dachau train station where we caught the train back into Munich. We went ahead and got off at the same stop we had started on Marienplatz, so we could try and visit the church there, St. Peter’s, and to get a bite to eat.
Dachau Crematoriums
The church visiting times were a little funny, they had mass there at 9:00, 10:00, and 11:00 AM in the morning, so we had been unable to visit there earlier this morning when all of the masses were being held. We had waited until after the 11:00 AM mass, but then the church was closed until 4:30 PM for cleaning. When we got back this afternoon, we discovered there was a 6:00 PM Mass just getting ready to start, so we took a quick look, took one photograph, and left before the mass started to go and get a bite to eat and wait for the mass to be over. We were not really sure when the visiting times were for the church, but there obviously limited time slots.
We started our walk back to the hotel, but first stopped of to look into a large department store which had six floors. We looked at some of the traditional clothing they had in the men’s department to see what the cost was for some Lederhosen. They had quite a selection, but they were pretty expensive, about 200 Euro for a pair, plus additional cost for the shirts, socks and shoes. It certainly could get quite expensive to purchase an entire outfit. We were not sure if, like most everything else, the prices were increased since it was Oktoberfest. It would have been fun to try some on, but we were both tired, and feeling a little run down from our colds. We headed back to the hotel to pack a little and turn in early. We get to “sleep in” tomorrow since our train does not leave for Wurzburg until 9:55 AM.