8/17/00 Heidelberg

This town has the oldest university in Germany, established in 1386, and Schloss Heidelberg, the large ruined castle that dominates the cityscape. The castle is probably the main attraction and rightfully so. I was here 30 years ago and I can't believe it, but I do not remember the thing. It is impossible to miss, perched in the hills above the Aldtstadt (old town) and covering half the length of the old town. Even in it's state of ruin this castle is formidable, with various architectural styles (like I would recognize them!) that create an awesome whole. It sits in the hills overlooking the Neckar river with forest encroaching on it giving one the thought that only the preservationists hold that forest at bay. Germans famous in the arts have written poems about it, painted pictures of it and composed melodies for it. At night it is lit up, giving the city another lovely look. The city has several notable buildings and a fabulous brick bridge with nine arches. In the last days of WWII in 1945 the bridge was blown up and a year later it was recovered from the river stone for stone and rebuilt. It has statues in niches and lookout points too.The city is lovely, cobblestone streets and alleyways take you to several plazas amidst three and four storied buildings with gabled roofs and intricate cornices and balconies, all facing the river. I can't for the life of me understand why I don't remember it better. Meanwhile, back at camp; a family of swans lives on the river at the campground. The father, who was born here, has a spouse and 5 babies. Did you know swans keep each brood of babies with them for 2 years? They also usually have just 2 babies - this couple had six, they lost one (possibly to a BBQ, according to our source). Our source's daughter used to ride on the back of papa swan when she was 2 years old. Can you imagine!! I am still enthralled with swans and this is a real treat. I came back from dishwashing (or some such) our first night here and found Bruce feeding the family crackers trying to keep them around til I returned. The papa swan will take food right from my hand AND hiss at me if I am not fast enough! In fact, he is a little domineering and not very polite, but boy, he is beautiful! The babies are almost as large as he and the missus but they still "peep peep". I feel sorry for the adults having to feed five kids for two years, although papa has the right idea - get the tourists to buy bread to feed them all! Today, Thursday, is rest day and tomorrow we continue our trail along the Romantic Road. Yesterday we found an internet cafe but it did not let us access the floppy drive, so we could read letters but not send anything out. Hoping to post this at a different place in Heidelberg today, if not we will just keep adding to it and post when we can.

8/20/00 Rothenburg

Hold it! Everything I have said about fairytale castles and towns is null and void! We have been to Rothenburg and all perspectives have changed. But I get ahead of myself...On Thursday morning, after once again being unsuccessful in interneting, we left Heidelburg around noon, heading east towards the Romantic Road. The Romantic Road is a successful German tourism gambit to get tourists out of the big cities and into the countryside. It is a route through Bavaria that takes in about 7-8 villages and castles culminating in "Mad King Ludwig's" Nueschwanstein Castle, probably the most famous castle in the world, seen on jigsaw puzzles everywhere and the one Disney modeled his Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland on.We followed the Neckar river east driving past little villages, almost everyone having it's own castle resting upon a hill overlooking the village. They became so expected, we found ourselves thinking, "another freaking castle", forgoing the "look! there's a castle!", we started this stretch of the road with. A short distance out of Heidelberg we actually came across a town that could claim four castles, the result of a family dispute. Four brothers each built his own castle and the descendants of two brothers still lived in their castle! The countryside was rolling hills with lots of farmland cut out of forests. We followed the Neckar to the Main river and the Main to the Tauber, each new river smaller the the previous one. The Neckar and the Main, still working rivers, had barges laden with everything from asphalt to scrap metal to oil to rock and sand. Big, long barges lumbering up and down river and through locks, accompanied by smaller pleasure boats. These barges had living quarters on them, often we would see cars neatly parked on the flat roof, or a child's swimming pool in use on the top of the living quarters. After about a 2-3 hour drive we stopped at Bad Mergentheim (or as we
pronounced it: Bad Margarine) a small town about 30K from Rothenburg on the Tauber, our true destination. We found a campground and made friends with a darling young Italian couple, Allesandro and Arianna, 27 and 22 yrs old and a Holland couple (whose names I won't dare to try and spell). We traded street and email addresses and the next morning we continued towards Rothenburg, the crown jewel in the treasury of the Romantic Road. We arrived around noon, camping at Detwang, a small village at the base of the hill, 2km from Rothenburg, but decided to wait til that evening to go to the city. In the meantime we visited Detwang's Peter und Paul church, consecrated in 987, with a gorgeous Riemenschneider wood alter. Riemenschneider was the Michelangelo of wood carving. At eight nightly there is an hour-long city tour put on by the "Night Watchman". He gives a good interpretation of the last 1000 years of Rothenburg's history and we wanted to catch it. It cost 6 DM/person ($3US) and was a great value. He dresses in a traditional costume and entertained us with anecdotes and facts about the town that we would not have learned about on our own. The town, once the second largest city in Germany with a whopping population of 6,000 people was once fabulously rich due to wool and being a trade route from Nurmberg to Wurzburg. I won't go into the whole history - you will just have to visit it yourself - but due to the Thirty Years War in the 1600's and the Black Plague the city lost all it's wealth and, in the words of the Night Watchman, "went to sleep for 250 years", the result being a magnificently preserved medieval town. It is a walled town, with 8 or 9 towers, each with it's own distinctive turret and personality. It is perched on the top of a hill overlooking the Tauber river. The buildings within the "Aldstadt" are half-timbered, and dated 15-1600's, the churches possess magnificent wood-carved alters by master carvers, the squares are spacious with plentiful water fountains and if Cinderella didn't live here, she should have. Perhaps the appeal here is that the whole town - and it covers some space - looks fairytale, rather than just a small portion of the town. The distressing thing is, we are already hearing about similar towns that are even better! We are having trouble with this - everything seems to get better and better. We took in the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum with an incredible array of torture instruments, saw many interesting things from shame masks, chastity belts (in real life just as uncomfortable as imagined), Iron Maidens, racks, drunk tanks and stocks, mouth pears (expanders), spiked chairs and lots more, but we never did find a gift shop!We found the most extensive Christmas shop we have ever seen, the Kathe Wolfahrt store, never have we seen a more complete Christmas store, you could decorate your home completely with the most charming stuff - but it had a price tag to match. Of course this is a tourist town, and you could buy anything here pertaining to Germany that you could possibly want: Cuckoo clocks, beer steins, designer nutcrackers, lederhosen, hats, magnets, pins, t-shirts, and on and on. We ended our day at an internet cafe and were able to send off the Heidelberg portion of the diary (painfully slow, didn't even try to read our mail!). Tomorrow we head for Dinkelsbuhl, another town along the Romantic Road, the Lonely Planet(guide book) says this one has a museum dedicated to simulating acid trips. We can't wait!!

8/23/00

Rick Steves, the travel book guy, says (to paraphrase him) when in search of the perfect medieval German town, go to the best, go to Rothenburg. We have to agree with him. We followed the Romantic Road from Rothenburg to Augsburg (near Munich), visiting a total of 3 medieval walled towns; Rothenburg, Dinkelsbuhl and Nordlingen. Dinkelsbuhl, 40K south of Rothenburg, has a magnificent church, St. Georg Munster, recently renovated and drop-dead gorgeous with soaring ceilings, magnificent alters and shrines and even a bejewelled martyr - St Aurelius who was beheaded by Nero in AD64. He was pretty emaciated looking!! Dinkelsbuhl, itself, was attractive but compared to Rothenburg was a distant second, and Nordlingen had nice towers with it's walls, but came in third, we thought. Dinkelsbuhl had that acid trip museum, remember? Well, we went, and we had a ball! Actually it is called the Museum of the 3rd Dimension and it has lots of interactive 3-D displays, showing how the brain works when confronted with 3-D. Very trippy!!! Dinkelsbuhl should be visited for it's church and it's museum, but to really get off on fairytale towns go to Rothenburg, tourists and all, it's Number One. We have laid over in Augsburg for two days, taking a vacation from our vacation. Friday we will head for Munchen (Munich) to spend some time, then on to Mad Ludwig's castles.

8/28/00 Munich

Bruce and I stayed in Augsburg for 3 days total, doing nothing more than sitting in the sun and relaxing. My back started to give me trouble and since I can't get to the chiropractor (sp?) easily, I pretty much limited my activity to some short walks and lots of stretching exercises and Advil. It seemed to work. Then we had company in our bed and for a couple of nights I was served up as dinner for some very hungry critter. I came out of that with about 30 VERY itchy bites all over my torso. We fumigated Queenie 3 days straight and finally seem to have rid ourselves of that guest! Once my back improved and we aired Queenie out, we drove to Munich. Thirty years ago I spent my 22nd birthday in Munich and I did this year too. In fact I may have stayed in the same campground - Thalkirchen, 6 metro stops from city center. Thalkirchen can accomodate 3,000 people and does during Oktoberfest, which we will miss; even now the campground is pretty busy. Saturday morning (not too early!!) we took the underground metro into Marienplatz, the center of the Aldstadt. We walked up the stairs from the metro into this huge plaza with a column in the center, the Mariensaule (Mary Column,) with a golden statue of the Virgin Mary at the top. (Think that may be how the plaza got it's name???!!) A large-sized crowd of people were standing around looking expectant and as we turned ourselves around to take in the view, we discovered we had had our backs to the Neus Rathaus, a massive late-Gothic building with tons of gargoyles and statues and gingerbread brick-a-brac decorating it. It is eye-catching to say the least! What the crowds were waiting for was the high noon show of the Glockenspiel (clock) with two stories of dancing figures portraying knights jousting in honor of a royal medieval wedding, and a dance done by coopers to ward off the plague. (Lots of the German cities we have visited seem to have a story they celebrate in some fashion - Rothenburg and the Meister Trunk, Dinkelsbuhl and the begging children, Munich and dancing coopers.) We had arrived at 11:54, in perfect time to witness the show, it only happens at 11AM, noon and 5 PM - serendipity! Afterwards we explored the plaza a bit more; there is a magnificent bronze dragon climbing up a corner of the Rathaus, and a fish fountain where river fish were once kept live for market. The Aldt Rathaus (old townhall) at the east end now houses a toy museum, but outside there is this metal sculpture that uses wind power to rattle and clang and fascinate the watcher. St. Peter and Heilgeist churches also border the plaza, each with exquisite rococco interiors. One even has another of those holy martyrs preserved in gauze and jewels - very bizarre! We walked to the Viktualienmarkt, a tremendous food market just south of the plaza, selling excellent quality fresh foods, and had lunch of some sort of sausage/kraut/german potato salad (yum) and a beer. We find we like weiss (white, actually wheat) beer the best of the beers we have partaken of so far. Then, while walking around the city center, we came across the Hofbrauhaus, a famous tourist trap/beer garden which also has some WWII history. It was here, in the ballroom upstairs, that the Nazi party had it's first large meeting in Feb, 1920. Downstairs a boisterous beer party with lots of tipsy tourists goes on daily. Finally, we called it a day, jumped the metro and headed for the supermarket to stock up for the weekend. We came up out of the metro at the stop and discovered the supermarket was a WALMART (sheesh) and while scowling over having to give them money, found the store closed at 4:30 on Saturday and didn't open til Monday! We are having more trouble preparing ourselves for weekend meals, just can't get used to the idea that we won't be shopping on Sundays, and we have to grocery shop about every other day since Queenie only has limited space. Defeated, we returned to the campground and bought bratworst (I don't think they eat anything else in Germany!) and kraut to cook up in our mini-oven, which I might add, has turned out to be as good an investment as we had hoped! Bruce says he still hasn't gotten enough sausages & kraut yet - well, by the time we are out of here I will make sure he has!!!

Sunday 8/27/00 - Peg's Birthday

We have discovered and been conquered by Nutella! It is a chocolate/hazelnut butter(?) spread used like peanut butter. Spread some on a croissant in the morning - yyyuuuummmmm! I have been hesitant to try it, seemed a little strange, but we are converts now! If you like museums, Munich will satisfy you. Today was Sunday and some museums were free so we decided to check them out. Again, we got to town around noon, and went straight to the Glyptotheck, which houses Roman and Greek antiquities. The building itself, looking like a Greek temple, was the perfect structure to contain wonderful old statues and vases. However, it was not free on Sundays, but still only cost about $3US. It was kinda odd to us, but all the statues had the genitals covered with a green leaf - they even sold a t-shirt with the leaf on it - of course everything was in German so we never did figure out the reasoning, but these Germans are not shy about nudity, out on the front lawn of the museum where nude sunbathers, so what was that leaf all about? Just down the street from the Glyptothek is the Alte Pinakothek with some magnificent paintings by Peter Paul Rubens (who had some gory visions), Leonardo, Raphael, Bosch, the Van Dykes, Rembrandt, just to name a few WE recognized. Wow! it was really cool, and free AND not crowded! I thought for sure a free museum day would be packed. After 2 museums we were pretty done for the day, and hungry, so we found a Doner Kebop shop, those are a pita bread STUFFED with meat (cut off a 2-ft tall revolving cone of cooked beef) and onion/lettuce/tomato & sauce sandwiches, about $3US each and huge! We discovered them in Paris a year ago and just think they are great. Then we looking for an internet cafe to upload photos to the web page. I am continually surprised with Germany's state of technology. I thought it would be right up there with the U.S. but so far, it has had the slowest connections and been least accessible. When we finally do find an internet place, like as not, it won't take floppies so we can't upload what we have typed at home and saved to disk. Very frustrating!  After one unsuccessful stop, we opted for the most expensive place in town and still were moving in slow-mo uploading photos. So, folks, the upshot is, we are in the process of getting Germany up on the internet, but it is taking longer than usual. Hope you can have more patience than we are, we both reach tantrum-levels at the sloooooooowwwwww connections and have to log off to try to regain our composure!! After that adventure (?) it was 7-ish, I was hoping for usto stay in town til 9PM when the night show of the Glockenspeil goes on, so I dragged Bruce to the Hofbrauhaus for a beer and...you guessed it, a bratworst and kraut snack, to take up some more time, but we finally had to admit defeat, we were tired. By that 9 PM show we were tucked in our bed and glad to be. It was a fun day, but I can sure tell I am no longer 22 years old!

8/28/00 Monday

DISASTER!!! We lost our floppy with all of our reply letters and the diary! I got up around 8 AM and began typing the Munich part of the diary (above). Brought it up to date through my birthday, then worked on photos. Bruce slept. And slept. And slept. Got up around 11:30 - one of those hard days! We went grocery shopping at that Walmart superstore and I hate to admit it but it was a pretty good store. We could get bras and avocados under the same roof! After we got back from the store we decided to try a different internet spot we had found yesterday - looked pretty decent, so off we went. We didn't get to town until around 3:30 PM but figured that was fine, we could wander around after interneting and stick around for the 9:00 PM show of the Glockenspeil. Well, we asked the girl at the internet if the computers took floppies and she didn't know, she said go find out, so we did. It sucked that disk up like a vacuum, only then we couldn't access it! It turns out they use the Linux operating system and it was set up for internet. No one there was adept with the computers and, to make a frustrating story short, my floppy is sitting somewhere within the innards of the computer. We don't think there was a floppy drive installed (hindsight).We couldn't even see it with a flashlight and we couldn't take apart the computer either! I was so angry with the situation! I had written several replies to letters you all have sent, trashed the letters off hotmail (having saved them to the floppy) and never transferred them to our laptop. So, basically, everything that we received in the last week - 10 days is lost. We read them, we enjoyed them, we replied to them, you just didn't receive our replies! There were enough replies I can't begin to duplicate the letters. SO SORRY! Rest assured I won't let that happen again, some of you out there know my penchant for saving everything (sometimes in duplicate), and this is why, I always knew if I didn't I would regret it!!!! Fortunately I did have the diary on the laptop so that didn't need to be recreated. Well, my day was ruined. I scowled off and on for the remainder of the day until Bruce said if that was the worst that happened to me, my life was pretty easy. I had to admit that was so. We killed time at the Munich franchise of Planet Hollywood, having two tasty salads - one Cobb, the other Chicken Oriental - as we looked at movie memorabilia and music videos. I also had a well deserved margarita - billed as the "Best I'll ever drink" - it was greatly enjoyed (first mixed drink since leaving the states) but not the best. Still having an hour to kill before the night show, we wandered the old town area, window shopping, listening to the ever-present entertainers hocking their musical talents and watching the Marienplatz fill up with a large variety of tourists/students waiting for the show. Finally, at nine we were treated to the night-time Glockenspiel show - be sure to see it when you come to Munich. Afterwards we met a couple from Foster City who had just arrived that day, and shared with them some sites we thought worth seeing. Then home and bed.

8/29/00 – Tuesday

Today was the Olympic Park and the Hunting and Fishing Museum. On the metro by 9:15 AM (early for our standards) and straight into Olympic Park, the sight of the 1972 Olympics. In 1970, when I was last here, I had visited the site as it was under construction and I was curious to see the finished product and how well my memory of the layout held up. The grounds are pretty nice, even 30 years after the event they are used as an integral part of Munich life so have been preserved. We visited the Stadium where the gymnastic events were held, the swimming pool complex where Mark Spitz won his 7 medals and rode to the top of the "space needle" for a 360 degree view of the whole Munich area. My memory was of it being built in a large bowl and I wasn't real far off, I see now how that memory was born. Walking around the grounds it was easy to imagine the hustle and bustle of 30 years ago with 100's of fit young atheletes and all their admirers ruling the stadiums and walkways. Across the way was a huge BMW plant with a museum that we visited, but declined to enter, there were lots of displays of the history and concepts of BMW but not many cars/motorcycles which was what we wished to see. Then we rode the metro back to town to visit the Hunting and Fishing museum which a friend, suggested we see. It had displays of hunting (guns) techniques and fishing as well as giving the viewer a lesson in the evolution of hunting/fishing. There were innumerable displays of wildlife, from mammals (ranging from rodents, foxes, deer, bear, etc), to birds to insects to fish, all living in Germany or Europe. We really enjoyed ourselves there, Bruce especially so since all displays were in German and I couldn't read everything in the museum, thusly got through it much faster than my normal pace. We were six hours out by now and realized we were famished, so we went to that huge food market again and found a late lunch. After eating we realized we were pooped too, so we finally went home and took a 2 hour nap, waking up for a twilight dinner of tacos. We have decided Munich is a really nice city, quite cosmopolitan, yet laid back and not in a hurry at all. It is pleasant to the eye with many worthwhile things to see and do. We originally thought we would spend 3 days here and it is stretching into a week, no problem! Tomorrow; the Deutsch museum with an Imax theater and planetarium thrown in for good measure!

8/30/00 Wed.

Change of plans, gee, surprise; we decided to go to the zoo today instead of the museum. We are within walking distance from the campground and it has been on our agenda to see. We wanted a short day today and the zoo would be perfect. We are realizing that this touring stuff is really demanding on the body and the mind. Both of us are tiring out too quickly for my understanding and requiring more frequent "down" days than earlier in the trip. I attribute it to over-stimulation and am beginning to look forward to our winter months in Spain (?) where we will stay in one spot for at the least a month at a stretch and possibly longer depending on the weather. Anyhow, the Munich zoo was the first geo-zoo, creating natural settings for the animals by continent. It is big with over 5000 critters and a real treat. I like zoos but have not experienced nearly enough of them, it was a delight to see how many people came to this zoo, loads of families with little children; teenagers "trolling"; seniors enjoying the surroundings. We saw the European continent display, Africa, the Americas, found the snakes (Bruce's favorite - NOT!), the apes, birds - all separated by woodsy green pathways. Really a nice layout. At 5 pm, after about 3 hours of zoo-ing, we headed for home. Tomorrow is the museum and Friday, we think, Dachau, the concentration camp just outside Munich. Did you know that at the beginning of WWII, 10,000 Jews lived in Munich, only 200 survived!!!!!!

Friday 9/1/00

Yesterday, Thursday, was not a very good day. To start out, I woke Bruce up at 7:30 AM to get us going for the day and he, having not slept well, was grumpy with a capital "G" all morning long. Peggy shies away from a grumpy Bruce like water sizzling off a hot iron. We went interneting again, tried the expensive spot - "Times Square Bistro". All the way around that was unsatisfactory; Hotmail acted funny when I sent my messages, so I had no idea whether or not they went, and while the uploading of the photos started out at a decent pace, it soon deteriorated to more than 3 minutes to upload each photo. That is a ridiculous amount of time when it should take, at the most, 30 seconds each. After an hour and perhaps 10-15 photos more, we called it quits, paid the ridiculous sum of $25 US for 1 hour each on 2 computers and an orange juice and a mineral water! Cyber-robbery!!!We returned to the train/subway system, misdirected ourselves and sat for 10 minutes on the wrong platform looking for the subway to take us to the Deutsches Museum. Finally realizing our error we found the right platform. Bruce was developing a headache by this time and Peg was gun shy of him. Finally we made it to the museum, a huge science and technology museum taking up 6 stories of space in a very cool looking building with big copper domes and lots of stonework. The museum is a guy-museum with the histories of aviation, marine navigation, communication, automobiles, machine tools, mining, bridge building, astronomy, and I have only scratched the surface of the displays set up. Planes, automobiles, boats and ships, yikes, it was huge! On the 6th floor, outside, is a sundial garden with 10-20 different sundials - they don't work real well when it isn't sunny! - and inside is a planetarium. We bought tickets for the 4pm show in the planetarium. I love those darn things and haven't gotten to go to a show since we moved from San Jose, thought it would be great fun. We sat down, the dome darkened, we saw the 360 degree skyline of Munich with the stars overhead, the narrator began explaining what we were seeing - in German!!! OOPS - we forgot that part! Well, it still was a fun time. An IMAX theater is very near the complex and we thought we would see a Dolphin movie playing there, but that had sold out early so we missed it. If you have never experienced an IMAX theater, take the time to find one near you and go to it, you feel like you are in the middle of the experience and not just watching it. It was almost 5 PM and we decided to have a beer at the Marienplatz and watch the Glockenspiel show once again. The day had been overcast and we brought our coats, folded into our backpack. As we sat at an open-air cafe awaiting our drinks, it began to sprinkle. Soon, the waiters were closing umbrellas and folding up vacant chairs and tables. Finally, ours was the last umbrella open and a waiter begged us off to the cafe inside so he could prepare for the rain he said was coming. We went inside to the 5th floor cafe and finished our beer. When we were done, we hurried down the stairs in the square leading to the metro and headed for home. Coming out of the metro at our stop, we discovered the clouds to have opened with a torrential downpour. We donned our coats, grateful to have brought them, and waited for the downpour to cease. Only it didn't. After several minutes we made a long, wet dash to the bus stop to await the bus which would get us closer to the campground. (The walk from campground to metro is almost a mile, and no concern in clear weather.) The bus took too long to arrive and we got wetter and wetter. Just when we were prepared to go ahead and walk the distance, it arrived and took us half our way. Then we just boogied down the pedestrian path under dripping trees and straddling puddles til we made it back to Queenie. Sheesh, it was wet!!! Queenie was standing in a small lake, the ground unable to absorb the water fast enough. We undressed and threw our clothes in a dryer and tried to dry ourselves out as well. Overall we felt the day to be one of our lesser ones, so we opted to drink Jaegermeister, eat cheese and bread, play cards and battleship and try to shrug off the day. Friday was grocery shopping day which we did around 3:30 in the afternoon, back to the Walmart (carrying our umbrella, a talisman against rain) trying to be prepared for the weekend. Can you remember when the states used to honor the Sunday-as-a-day-of-rest tradition? We can, when we were kids, everyone had Sundays off - stores were closed and churches were open. Somewhere along the line, corporate America had it's way and for years now Sundays are as available as the rest of the week. How many of you think nothing of running down to the grocery store for a gallon of milk, or loaf of bread you forgot in prep for Monday's lunches? Not happening here! Throughout all of the Europe we have seen so far, Sundays are a day of rest. And, it seems you better have what you want/need by 4pm on Saturday, cause otherwise you are out of luck til Monday. Open air markets are not open either, we wonder if it is a written law or just tradition. Restaurants ARE open, but even then, not all. Again remember, we have to food shop every other 2-3 days and, more often than not, we are out of fresh foods by Sundays and freaking out - We're gonna starve!!! (right, like that is gonna happen!). So we are trying to adjust our shopping habits to cover Sundays. Here is another thing different from the states: We were in Luxumberg at that mall which had everything, (I think I mentioned it), well, it also had a bar serving beer/wine/alcohol to occupy the bored and waiting husbands as the shopping was in progress. So, you are walking through the mall and lo and behold: Care for a shot of whiskey to liven up the day? Step right up! Outside the Walmart, here in Munchen, a stand was giving out free samples of cigarettes, now have you EVER seen that in America, especially with the rampant anti-smoking campaigns we have there. Anyway, that was Friday, lounging around the campground in our 'jamies til 3:30 and then off to the grocery store and home in time to cook dinner. Another of those "tough days."

Saturday, 9/2/00 – Dachau

In 1933 Hitler and the Nazis had just come to power and that same year they constructed their first concentration camp; Dachau. It is about 20 minutes (by train) from Munich and don't you dare not go if you come to Munich. It was a lesser camp; didn't use it's gas chamber, only had 206,000 registered prisoners instead of the million processed in other camps, but it was the prototype for the others and a necessary side trip. The German people have had a bad shake in the 20th century - for 15 years they allowed a tyrant to to do unspeakable and unacceptable things in their name and he destroyed their reputation. They, as well as the rest of the world, are still trying to understand it, and Dachau is a memorial to help them remember never to let it happen again.Situated in old factory grounds outside the town of Dachau, the camp has been preserved with its walls and gun turrets, electric barbed wire and ditches, parade(?) ground and execution wall, barracks and administration building, crematorium and gas chamber. An excellent museum is housed in the administration building, documenting the rise and attitude of Nazism and concentration camps, specifically Dachau. It is a most sobering experience. There is such an aura of sadness and grief on those grounds, the conditions those prisoners endured were impossible and inhuman, but that was the point. Barracks with beds for 50 prisoners eventually housed 400! Rules and regulations were so strict as to almost be impossible to observe, and punishment severe when not. Weakened and starving men were made to stand for 19 hours straight if one prisoner tried to escape, he was killed and everyone else punished. Many died in those ordeals. To kill them off was fine, it made room for more to come and always for the Nazis, there were more. Dissidents, misfits, gypsies, jews, soviet war prisoners, priests, no one escaped the thorough net the government cast. Citizens from 27 countries were in Dachau, including the United States. An encouraging thing: many young people were at the memorial, and NO ONE can leave that place and not be moved, so hopefully they will help make sure it will not be repeated. People of greater intellect than I, have pondered on how the German people, who knew something was up, could have allowed it to happen, but perhaps it is one of those universal tragedies that mankind must learn from.However, I came here 30 years ago and was moved, and I came again with my husband and we were both moved.