Hello from Munich!
We have been very busy since I last wrote, making our way through the Bavarian countryside and stopping along the way at Wurzberg and Rothenberg op der Tauber, two beautiful old medieval towns on the "Romantic road".
Larna and I actually camped two nights alongside the river in Wurzberg in the rain and cold (I even made french toast in the rain!). The next day we stayed in a heated room in Rothenberg and felt a renewed appreciation just to be able to stand upright!
Needless to say we loved both towns. Wurzberg is an architectural masterpiece (mainly rebuilt since the town was bombed to bits in the war) an Rothenberg is like stepping into a fairytale. Indeed a plaque on the medieval wall says that MGM filmed the "Brothers Grimm" movie here in 1961. They would hardly have had to change a thing!
It actually feels like spring today! Very sunny, about 20 or so degrees celsius (I am estimating here) and we have taken advantage of the good weather by spending most of the day in the "English garden" an enormous park in the northern part of the city. Its some thing like the fourth biggest city park in Europe and goes on for miles. The locals were also out enjoying the sun, few to its fullest, by that I mean nude sunbathing! It is quite the tradition over here on a good day, but Larna and I did not partake of the ritual and remained fully clothed. We were meant to go on a walking tour today, but the main square - Marianplatz - was jammed with thousands of Bayern Munich soccer fans cheering their team who won the Bundesliga title yesterday that we could not even get close to the meeting point.
We spent most of yesterday at the Dachau Concentration camp. It is on the outskirts of Munich. It was the first concentration camp built by the Nazis and was the model for other camps. It is hard to grasp among the trees, sounds of birds and flowing stream the horror of what went on here 70 years ago. A lot still remains standing - the administrative centre where inmates were stripped of everything, the gas chambers and crematorium (a few barracks were reconstructed) - but it was the everyday things, a desk used to register inmates, an original sign saying "no smoking" uncovered from the layers of plaster that I found quite horrible. The museum has so much information - stories, videos, charts, articles from prisoners etc - it is quite overwhelming. A silent video in colour taken by one of the American soldiers who liberated the camp in 1945 is difficult to watch with emaciated figures staring back at the camera with looks of utter relief, but also torment.
Dachau concentration camp
Our tent on the Main River in Wurzberg
Looking out over Wurzberg
A few pics of Rothenberg op der Tauber - hard to do it justice in photos
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