This morning started with meeting Ryan and heading to a grocery store to get some food and water for our day's adventures. Once fully packed up we caught a train towards Dachau Concentration Camp. The "original" or model that all other concentration camps were fashioned after. Now I've never been to a concentration camp before and wasn't really sure what to expect or if I was going to be able to handle it. But I'm so glad I went.
A 20 minute train ride and a 10 minute bus ride brought us here. The rough translation of this is "Work sets you free". I won't get too much into the history of Dachau as I'm sure you all know roughly what went on here, and if you don't then look it up and you'll get a little taste of what I read/saw today.
Remember the clock from yesterday? Here's what it once looked like. Walking through the compound was just really eerie and I didn't feel quite right there. A bit of a sick strange feeling overcame me upon walking through the gates. You see a relatively open space in front of you, but there is an ominous feeling that overcomes you as you look off into the distance and see the electric barbed wire fence and guard towers looming. I've seen so many things that have effected me on this trip but I had goosebumps the entire time we were inside the gates of the camp.
After simply walking through the front gate to catch a bus back to Munich we got back onto another train and headed to Füssen. About a 2 hour train ride south of Munich, and totally worth it.
We started off down in that town you can see at the bottom and hiked up the mountain to get to our destination. Schloss Neuschwanstein, or The Swan Rock Castle, OR Cinderella's Castle! It's true, this is the castle that Disney based her castle off of! Now there is something to me that screams "Princess" when I see blonde hair and a Disney castle, alas, we were not able to find a Princess this day.
The picture above was taken from the bridge that you see in this photo. We continued our trek through the woods and up/ across the hill to reach the castle. Because what is a castle without an epic trek to the top. Prince Charming needs SOMETHING to overcome right? You can't make it easy on him. This Castle was built for King Ludwig II and he lived in the orange castle on the right hand side for 17 years while they constructed it. Unfortunately he only got to live in the castle (which has a room that is a Cave… seriously) for 172 days before meeting his untimely demise in a curious drowning situation. At the time of his death all contraction work on the castle stopped, so it remains unfinished to this day.
Getting down was a lot more fun than going up for sure! We cut it a little close to the wire to get back to catch our bus to the train station. However, being young and energetic, we decided to run down the hill. We cut through the woods where possible and made it to the bottom in an impressive 7 minutes! I'm not sure exactly how long it took us to get to the top, so there's not much to judge it by, but it was probably about 30 or 40 minutes to get up.
We didn't end up catching the bus, but not because we weren't there in time, but because it was just too full of people. After catching the next bus and the subsequent train we made it back into the city by around 8PM and decided to grab a bite to eat. Ryan took us to one of his favourite places. We had some perfectly cooked penne pasta in arribiatta sauce and a pesto and spinach pizza.
Our last stop of the day was near the Olympic stadium, a smaller hill than the one we climbed earlier. This hill was created from the rubble of old buildings in Munich and now is the perfect place to get a gorgeous panoramic photo of the city of Munich. Perfect way to end our one fun filled, action packed day in Munich.
Mad props to our fearless leader Ryan who led us around the city and without whom we would never have been able to successfully execute this over-achievers endeavour to see two days of sites in one epic day.
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