Still raining.
After lunch, Hostess drove us to the KZ-Gedenkstätte Concentration Camp Memorial Site in Dachau. It’s only a half-hour drive and although I’d have been willing to get myself there by public transport — because it can’t really be fun, for want of a better word, being dragged there by every tourist who visits — but she was keen to oblige. The weather was suitably bleak and I felt slightly conspicuous with my (Hostess-provided) rainbow umbrella to the point that I didn’t use it while the rain remained sufficiently not-rainy.
In 1933 the Dachau camp was commissioned, the first of its kind and a model for all later concentration camps. Initially a place to incarcerate those with opposing political views, new groups of prisoners arrived following the normalisation of discrimination until the camp was liberated on April 29, 1945. The memorial was built in 1965 at the behest of former prisoners.
An afternoon is not enough. The site closes at 5pm and we had perhaps only seen about two-thirds of the permanent exhibition, following the “path of the prisoners” from their arrival at the camp to whatever fate awaited them. We had just finished the “shunt room” and moved on to the first of many more terrifyingly descriptive panels in the prisoner baths when it was time to leave. Hostess and I briefly looked at the dormitories and common room but ultimately decided that the whole is deserving of more of our time and attention, perhaps during this visit if she doesn’t mind the trauma. I got the impression that she kept on rediscovering things she wished she’d forgotten while I became increasingly aware of my own (what had hitherto been blissful) ignorance.
Dachau is a colourful commuter-belt town and home to about 45,000 people. We had a little time for exploration before darkness fell and the rain-cum-drizzle-cum-rain became too boring to bear and sought refuge in a restaurant that serves vegan Breznknödel (very nice) that Hostess wanted to visit. I had a slice of carrot cake and my first ever V60 (coffee, not Volvo).
By the time we’d finished our civilised impromptu tea, the light was starting to fail but we still had time to look at The Priory of Saint Jakob, the outside of the Palace, and the water tower but in all honesty they’d have been better seen in daylight and with temperatures at least in double digits. I’m still regretting that choice of coat, but it was a successful half-day of tourism nonetheless and I had a guide.
Tomorrow we might have a stroll around Gröbenzell in the morning.
Oktoberfest proper (for us, in any case) will most likely be Saturday or Sunday. A half-day will suffice for beer, probably, leaving time for lots of other things to be explored.
