05/29/2013 – Dachau Concentration Camp
I guess visiting one of these sites is one of those things you should do once in a lifetime. I do believe a one visit is enough. The atmosphere is somber, and nobody talks to anyone. This is a place of reflection, a place to look back into the history of mankind, and realizing how horrible we can be to one another. Every room in the exhibition room makes you feel all sorts of negative feelings. You come to realize that you are walking the halls that many a men, women, and children once roamed unjustly, kept there for no reason other than to satisfy the wicked and criminal desires of a dictator.
Here we visited the former maintenance building that holds the permanent exposition, the “Roll-call area” where every prisoner had to be very morning, afternoon, and evening, and the barracks. We got to see how these poor prisoners’ lives, in wooden bunk beds stock-piled high, and that fit people tightly packed like sardines. We saw a gas chamber that allegedly never got used, and the many memorials within the site.
One cannot help but to leave this place feeling some sort of nostalgia after spending time in a place where humans were tortured. It was horrible to think about it, and at times it made me debate with myself if I agree that this place still stands, or if it should be taken down.
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| Courtyard at Dachau's concentration camp. Row would be called here a few times a day. |
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| A prisoner's plate, cup, and spoon. |
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| Bunk beds were many prisoners crammed at night. Always more than one person per bed, no mattresses, or sheets, or pillows. |
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| Common bathroom that prisoners shared without privacy. |
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| Furnaces where the prisoners that passed away got cremated. |
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| Victim's memorial. |
05/30/2013 – Nymphenburg Castle and palaces
This beautiful castle was the summer residence of the royal family of the kingdom of Bavaria. It was designed as Italian renaissance but completed with a Baroque park. The walk up to this castle is incredible. The views of the river and the lake in front of the castle, as well as the fountain and the swans… it is a scene from the movies.
The inside of the castle has very exquisite art and decorations. Everything is very lavish and over the top. The fresco in the main hall of the castle is just beyond anything I had ever seen before. I had to sit down on a bench and listen to my audio guide allowing myself to absorb the significance of most of the images of the fresco.
The castle grounds are gorgeous, too. Walks that seem infinite and in the middle of a forest somewhere are actually leading you up to other palaces that belong to this complex:
Amelienburg Palace: a pleasure palace and hunting ground.
Badenburg: A lavish bathhouse
Pagodenburg: A royal house for the royal family after an exhausting day of games and fun
Magdalenenklause: A hermit house built as a ruin.
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| Front view of Nymphenburg Castle. |
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| Fresco inside the main room of the castle. |
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| View back towards the castle from one of the axis. Baroque style gardens. |
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| Courtyard behind Nymphenburg. |
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| View into the courtyard from the castle. |
05/31/2013 – City of Freising –Weihenstephan Brewery (Day Visit)
We visited the city of Freising, and the Technical University of Freising because of their connection to our major. This campus holds the Landscape Architecture program of the university, and the location is very convenient to our site visit.
Freising consists of 3 hills, out of which we visited 2: The Cathedral Hill (Domberg), and the Weihenstephan Hill. The Cathedral hill holds the cathedral, some religious homes, other churches, and other abbeys and cloisters. The Weihenstephan Hill holds the world’s oldest brewery. This brewery was established in the year 1040. We got to visit these sites, and had a traditional German lunch in the brewery’s restaurant. We also got to enjoy their delicious beer.
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| View walking up to Weihenstephan Hill. |
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| Traditional German food, accompanied by Weihenstephan beer... Beer from the oldest brewery in the world. |
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| View down into Freising from one of its prominent hills, |
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| Beautiful gardens around Weihenstephan hill. |
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| More Gardens on the hill. |
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| A main street in Freising. |
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| Bishop Otto of Freising. Very influential to the city and its religious background. |
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| Courtyard in Cathedral Hill. Freising's cathedral towers in the back. |
06/01/2013 – Last Day in Munich (Day off to explore!)
The professor gave us the last day in Munich to go and explore the city. After a first very intense week of walking around almost non-stop from 9 am until 5 pm, a lot of us chose to sleep in a little. The weather was still ugly by that point, and it was not going to get any better until after we left Munich.
Some of us decided to walk around neighborhoods and take a look at local culture, eat more pastries, and such. Eventually we went to the Deutsches Museum, which is a museums where a lot of the pieces are one to one scale. Airplanes, boats, ship engines… No art, just a museum about industrialization! A real-size replica of a section of a coal mine where you walk around for a long period of time hoping to see the sun again… it is all very surreal!
Lastly, we headed to the Allianz Arena, Munich’s own soccer stadium. We walked around it, and got to sneak inside. Unfortunately not all the way to the field, but close enough where I could see the grass of this awesome place!
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| Ellen and Michelle standing outside of the Allianz Arena. |
We left Munich on the morning of June 2, of 2013 with destination Dusseldorf!
- Arturo
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