Dachau Nazi Concentration Camp - Dachau - Things To Do Reviews

The rain never stops. I've been in Europe for two days now and what I find most suitable is being wet, having nowhere to sit, a backpack that's my life, and personal drive that's beginning to question itself. Thoughts, just thoughts, of calling it quits surface and linger on as rain and walking become my best friends.

Enough of the gab, seeing Dachau's concentration camp was, with a stupid cue for simple word use, an 'experience'. I got off @ the town's main train station and walked the entire way to the camp in the pouring rain. I saw and experienced a lot on that path of streets neighboring houses, places of business, rural farms ripe with fertilizer and sowed lanes of vegetation and black earth, and your average German walking their Hunde. Immersed in the typical life, as always, I think about buying a cheeseburger with a Warsteiner at the local McDonald's that happened to be on the way, but opt out to buy Coca Cola Light and a sweets at a petro station nestled among cobblestone alleys that would make any band's album cover cool beans. Reaching Dachau took a while, but once I saw the tour buses I knew I had reached the gig.

"Would you like a audio tour device?" asked the guy in the booth.

Never opting for those ridiculous vibrators of tourist soup, I told the dude, "Nein, bitte," and walked to the camp.

The museum there was really good and I came out feeling an objective but accurate account was given on the things that happened at the camp. Military students were on required field trip to the site. Italians were Italians. The photography and sculptures were cool. And the book that anyone can write in was open and vacant.

Outside was a different experience. Trees make no illusion to the vast rock gardens covering the fallen and silent generations buried in the depths. Walking on the graves of thousands is not fun, but you think about what led you and others to this place. Some came to remember. Some came to die. Some came with the purpose of learning to not repeat a past of mistakes.

The church and temple there were cool, but the place really isn't a "nice place". It is, like I wrote, an experience. I saw the ovens used to burn the dead. The lockers where bodies were stored. The hooks that hung the dead. And a place I never want to go to again. Me and another old dude go inside to pay our respects to the sisters running one of the remembrance sanctuaries there; she talks to him as I wander around looking at the walls and reading letters in lost language, the language of hope.

Keep in mind that I'm soaking wet, and have been for the last ten hours ever since I left Munich on rail. The only real break where I've been able to sit down was the freakin Zug. Last memory of the camp was seeing the tourist bus people stare at me as I started my walk back to the main station in the pouring rain--oh, and I never carry parkas or weather gear, just a black hoody.

The walk back had me dazed and confused like Hunter S. Thompson jacked my mind. I thought I was lost for a moment, but I remembered the thought of a cheeseburger and beer to hone in on my location. "As long as I find the fertilizer farm," I said to myself, "I'll be sort of OK." Usually, when I walk back the way I came I take the opposite side of the road or what have you to take in something different. Oddly enough--and this happened all the time I was in Europe--Europeans asked me for directions. LMAO! You're asking the wrong, Dude. I'm American. I didn't say that, but the first group of questions came from two Italian dudes trying to speak German. I told them in a Westphalia accent, "Nicht verstehen" and laughed as they walked away talking in English of how wonderful no one seems to understand their German:) It always sucked when a hot German girl would hit on me because I would be straight up checking her out but upfront and say in American mumbling "tourist" and then look like a sad, wet puppy. Ah, traveling alone has certain perks, but not being treated like a tourist can be dangerous sometimes based on people's reactions when they find out you ARE a tourist.

Case in point, when I finally made it back to Dachau's main station everyone there was miserable in the rain. I stood out because I'm sort of built and had this look of exhaustion but blessed aura around me. Some dude smoking a Rauchen came up to me to pass small talk. I was in no mood to talk, so I told him in my dialect, "Schlekt Wetter. Sehr munde. Was ein Tage?"

He started talking again and I really didn't want to converse, so I used the old 'I don't understand trick' and it didn't work. Fast forward, the guy asked me if I was afraid of traveling by myself and worried about having my throat slit, assuming, of course, that I didn't know what he was talking about. I laughed at his comment and responded, "Nein. Nicht der Tod."

He was caught a little off guard, but then offered me a cigarette. "Nein, danke. Nicht rauchen," I said to him. After that I walked away from him to wait for the Zug elsewhere and he just looked baffled and quipped to some nearby lady about why would a German pretend to be American. LOL.

FIN

Last semester I took a class on the study of Genocide. The professor was like an encyclopedia of knowledge on this topic, but the information he provided on Nazi Germany really didnt sink in until this experience. What a somber one at that...

First you walk in and see the sign that says "work will set you free".. makes you realize why people never fought back... they had aspirations of leaving.... Too bad many suffered the fate of Gas Chambers and the Kremotorium.... When I passed this room a feeling of sadness and curiosity entered me.... I thought how could another human being gather up enough courage to destroy a human life without feeling or remorse...

You can take a self guided tour here using an ipod like recorder that provides you all of the details you need to gain the full experience.. I want to say it was like 5 EURO, but I may be wrong... I know it wasnt that much. On average they say it takes about 4 hours to take in the entire site. However, if your not the type who likes to read and stop in front of things to appreciate their worth... you could zip through in about 2-2.5 hours...

Whichever is more convinient for you is your perogative... However, to know that you stood on the same grounds that helped start a war against all of the superpowers of the world... a place where so much pain and suffering occurred... is just an overwhelming experience, which I saw brought some people to tears.