Dachau and Munich, 2008

(Thank you to Lisa for providing me with these pictures)

Dachau.
What can I say about Dachau? It was opened in 1933, one of the first camps opened. 1933 was an important year, why? Burning of the Reichstag (German parliament) = Hitler was able to say to the Kaiser "yo, give me all the power and make me Supreme Chancellor." The Nazi Party rose to power with only 37% of the vote. not. even. a. majority. Hitler becomes Supreme Chancellor and opens up Dachau and a few other camps as work camps. These are for political prisoners... death camps like Auschwitz aren't in full swing yet. The most important thing at the time was to get the political dissidents out of the way and working for the war machine.

Lisa and I went to Dachau straight from the train station. For any of you planning on going, I highly recommend the audio guide! So informative and it's cheap and just SO worth it.
It was really really cold in Dachau. Really really cold. And one of the things I remember from the first books I read on the Holocaust (you know, like Night and some others) is always talking about the cold. So to have a freezing cold day in Dachau just as a visitor... it was chilling in more than one way, you know?

We saw a short film the museum puts on.
We walked through barracks. We learned about medical experiments. We learned that Dachau was a work camp for men and a brothel was created at the far end of the camp to bring in women from another camp for the workers who 'earned' a visit to the women. We learned about roll call. We saw the gas chambers. We saw the showers.
It was stunning. I walked around in silence. I couldn't help but feel dark and heavy the whole time, despite the blue skies.
Lisa, thanks for going with me. It was good to be able to hold your hand while walking around!

After approx 3 hours in Dachau we were ready to head back to Munich.

I'm just going to put it out there that Lisa and I had an awesome time with our host in Munich. She's smart and funny, has GREAT taste in music, is probably the most generous person I've ever met, owner of an awesome espresso machine, and is a vegetarian! Oh MAN. I will dub her Chaka. For Chaka Khan for absolutely no reason at all. (this picture shows the stairs to Chaka's apartment. there were a LOT of stairs. a LOT).

So Chaka picked up Lisa and I from a coffeeshop and drove us to her amazing apartment that she has decorated herself. It's beautiful and SO how I would love to have an apartment for myself, should I ever be able to live successfully (affordably) without roommates. Chaka whipped us up a dinner of spicy mushroom pasta and introduced me to prosecco. We listened to Brandi Carlisle, we built a fire, we had grappa (whoa, how do you spell that?). We sat around talking about evvvverything eating delicious noodles and getting to know each other. Great first night in Munich!