Fog on the lake
Selfie with a traffic mirror
Andechs monastery
Andechs monastery
Andechs monastery courtyard
Andechs monastery
A view from the tower at the Andechs monastery
Bells through the protective screen
700 Year old tree
Dachau prison and labor camp
Dachau
Waiting for the subway
Subway
This morning, we woke up around 6 am to sunny skies and were thrilled–after all the rain yesterday, and the many gray days, this was truly thrilling. Mark and I got ourselves ready quickly and quietly, so as not to wake the others, and were out the door before 7 am. We took the subway and then the commuter train to the southeastern outskirts of Munich, where a number of smaller towns and villages are nestled around a set of beautiful lakes. Our friend Uschi, who grew up in Munich and whose family lived on one of the lakes, the Ammersee, had reminded us of a fun and easy “starter hike” (we are a little rusty after a year of not hiking and after my sciatica issues last winter) — from the lake town of Herrsching to the Andechs monastery, about a 6-mile round trip. We had breakfast at a little cafe, and then started with a walk along the lake, with the boats shrouded in fog. Then on through the town, built on a hill, to a slightly muddy path through the woods all the way up to the monastery, which features a famous brewery (not started until the 19th century, however) and a beautiful baroque church with a wooden onion dome and the classic overload of decorative detail on the inside of the church that is typical of the baroque–gold leaf and ceiling frescoes everywhere (Mark’s question was who had to dust all of that–we only met the guy who was vacuuming the stairs to the church tower!). We did climb the church tower and had a look at the lake far below–since we were right inside the onion dome, we also got to see the big bells–and HEAR them since it rang 10 am while we were up there. Noisy but fun! We looked at a couple of the outbuildings and the courtyard of the monastery, and then walked to the village, Erling, that was established around the monastery in the 19th century, when it was refounded after 50 years or so of being defunct after Napoleon closed the monasteries in 1803. But it featured a 700-year-old linden tree, so that was rather cool. We then returned to Herrsching on another, sunnier and drier path. We eventually even saw other hikers and bikers coming our way, but they are apparently much rarer on weekday mornings than on Sundays, when Herrsching and Andechs are rather overrun, including with beer connoisseurs and plain drunk people. Back in Herrsching, we stopped at a grocery store for water, a couple of sandwiches, and a yummy nut & chocolate dessert (a “Nussecke”), and had those on the train back into town.
We let Kai, who’d stayed home, know when we’d be home, and rounded him up at the vacation rental for yet another long-ish bus trip to Dachau (another hour or so). I’d been years ago, with Kai’s dad, but I knew Kai wanted to see the concentration camp memorial site. I never know what to say about sites like this, which I think are incredibly important, and typically very well documented in Germany–and which, at the same time, only serve to make me ask how it is possible that humans can be so horrifying to other humans. Yes, Dachau was a prison and labor camp, not an extermination camp, and it always bothers me when people do not know about the difference, and do not realize that the gas chamber there was built, but not used (except possibly in a few select cases). But many people died there or were shipped off to other places to die, including to the euthanasia sites also used for the mentally handicapped. The neglect, the torture, and the cruelty are still so mindboggling that I never know what to say. I took in a lot of new details about the camp, and I believe that they had changed and improved the vast exhibit that goes with the buildings and foundations that can be toured at Dachau–some reconstructed (like the barracks and the deadly array of fences), some the originals (like the crematoria and the main kitchen building, where the exhibit is housed). We spent about 2 hours, but we did not actually take the audio tour, but just read the (very detailed) documentation.
It was already 4:30 when we were done with our visit in Dachau, and we took the train back to the center of town, and had ice cream in a cafe on the Theatinerstrasse, in the midst of downtown Munich, while waiting for Imke and Dorothee to come back from an art exhibit they went to see this afternoon. We all went home together on the subway (the modern no-doors kind that snakes through the tunnels in one long movement that , with a stop at the Aldi for some bread for dinner, and spent a quiet rest of the evening with a lovely meal, some blog work, and, for Imke and Dorothee, the news on TV and some reading time. It’s been a long day, but a really good one!