... and discovering an interesting poster on the main drag:
Monday:
We packed up our stuff in Mittenwald, got everything into the car, and headed for Garmish-Partenkirchen. Overcast and raining the whole way, so it was a good thing that we'd gotten all of our outdoor activities in beforehand.
In the car we listened to our current book on tape, "I am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak -- an entertaining story. We returned our rental car with no hassles to speak of and got our stuff over to the train station to wait for our ride to Munich. Train arrived in plenty of time to get all of our luggage on board, etc, so we had nice seats. Spirited card game en route ("Oh Hell") mixed in with reading the international edition of the New York Times (the Int'l Herald Tribune no longer exists, it's been replaced with this new NYT thing).
Ethan and Lydia also for some reason decided to strike up a spirited conversation partway through the ride on matters related to sexuality and sexual orientation -- it was interesting to hear them debate. Meanwhile, I could tell that the young German guy in the seat across the aisle from us was trying very hard to listen in on the conversation (he was fascinated, it was pretty obvious).
Got in to the main station around noon, unpacked at the hotel (Eden Hotel Wolff), which seems to be nice. I made us reservations at a vegetarian restaurant called "Prinz Myzhkin" (sp?) that is a few blocks south of Marienplatz. We were all pretty eager to be eating something with a lot of green vegetables that didn't taste especially German, so this seemed like a good choice. I had Massaman curry with peanuts, potato, and carrots; Lydia had spinach crepes, Ethan had a japanese noodle dish, and Amy had Samosas. It was a pleasaant meal, very laid-back.
[Ethan's drink is not beer, despite the mug and the appearance...]
Curry, yum:
... and noodles:
After that we had an extended shopping expedition: Ethan looked for a couple of new pairs of pants, Lydia searched for shoes, and Amy wanted to look at loden-coats.
Lydia finally settled on a pair of brown oxford-like shoes, very elegant and a bit formal, from a smallish shoe store called Bagat. I'm actually kind of amazed that it actually happened, since she had a very specific idea of what she wanted and had turned down numerous other possibilities.
Amy (also concluding a lengthy shopping odyssey) found a coat that she liked at Lodenfrey, a department store here. She also had specific things in mind -- she wanted a coat with a hood (not easy to find) with a specific length.
For Ethan we visited (among other places): Superdry, Gant, Tretter, even the following place (the picture does not lie- this really is the name of a retail establishment):
Finally at H & M, Ethan was able to find something that he liked, however we also managed to get separated from Amy and Lydia. Ethan and I were in the men's changing room when Amy stopped in to try to find us -- she yelled out "Ethan, are you there?" and Ethan yelled back "yes", but apparently his reply was drowned out (Amy never heard it, there was too much other stuff going on). Eventually after a certain amount of searching around we decided to head back to the hotel, where we reunited.
Dinner at Broeding (sp?) a fancy place that Amy had picked out a while back. Smallish dining area but extremely gourmet: smoked salmon with braised leeks, arugula, and horseradish cream, then beef shoulder with chanterelles and roast potatoes, and finally a hazlenut mousse/partfait thing with cherries and pineapple. Very tasty (the wines were quite good as well).
We had taken a cab to get to dinner, then decided to walk back. The stroll was interesting in two respects. First, the time it took on foot was just about the same as the time in the cab (traffic was very heavy). Second, the route back took us by a big youth hostel, which was swarming with young people -- we fell in with a group of youngsters from the USA and UK and listen in on what they were talking about.
We had taken a cab to get to dinner, then decided to walk back. The stroll was interesting in two respects. First, the time it took on foot was just about the same as the time in the cab (traffic was very heavy). Second, the route back took us by a big youth hostel, which was swarming with young people -- we fell in with a group of youngsters from the USA and UK and listen in on what they were talking about.
Tuesday:
Last day on vacation here in Munich. It is fun to relax and explore, but I think all of us are starting to think about returning home to sleep in our own beds and get back to our usual routines.
After breakfast we headed out to the Hauptbahnhof and got on a train to visit the museum and memorial at Dachau, the former concentration camp. Dachau is ridiculously easy to get to -- from the Munich Hauptbahnhof you take a train for about 20 mins, then hop off at the town train station (Dachau is a town as well) and then take a bus for another 10 minutes to reach the site.
We arrived a little after the 9am opening; it was already starting to get crowded even at that hour (our bus was packed). A good eighty to ninety percent of the visitors to Dachau are German school groups, which leads to a a rather odd sort of cognitive dissonnance -- somber visitors from abroad (mostly Americans, mostly older people, but a few families) alongside Germans teenagers doing the things that teenagers do together in big groups (laughing, chatting, taking selfies, goofing around, etc).
We spent about three hours there, although I think we probably could have stayed the entire day if we wanted to take in every last bit. The museum and the short film were the most interesting parts, the grounds and the buildings didn't really do all that much, given that so much of the original construction there had been torn down and then reconstructed later.
I feel as though I learned a fair amount about the Dachau camp itself -- I hadn't realized how many different categories of "undesirable" types were there: in addition to Jewish people there were also Poles, Russian prisoners, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, etc. There was even a group of men who had been fighters in the Spanish civil war (against Franco) -- they had wound up imprisoned in France and had then been transferred to Dachau later during the war.
A very grim/sad/chilling/creepy place, but in an odd way, also somehow sort of "ordinary" in a sense, tucked in and among the leafy Munich suburbs. In the film they had footage of Dachau residents coming to view what was actually going on inside the camp that they'd been living beside (taken at the time that the camp was liberated by the Americans).
We had a quick noodle lunch after getting back to Munich at an Asian place that Amy had spotted on one of our travels to/from the city center. I was glad to have a meal with a relatively short duration (with the more established restaurants it can be difficult to get in and out without spending 60, 90, 120 mins).
We split up for the afternoon -- Amy and Lydia headed off to an art museum, while Ethan and I hit the hotel gym (rode the exercise bike for an hour, then lifted weights). I think we will shoot for a quiet evening tonight, nothing special planned.
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