A day in Munich

We had a short stay in Munich and did three cool things…

1. Went to the Hofbrauhouse for dinner. We enjoyed some sensational German sausage, beer, sauerkraut and potatoes.

2. Strolled through the markets that we already starting to sell beautiful Christmas decorations

3. Daniel found a music shop and got to play guitar! 

Dachau Concentration Camp

The most intense and moving thing that we have done on our trip so far was visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp memorial site.

Some quick background….Dachau was the very first concentration camp opened by the Nazis in 1933.  Known as the ‘Academy of Terror’, it was the model that all subsequent camps were based upon. Originally built to house 6000 prisoners, it held around 30,000 at it’s peak. It is estimated that over 30,000 people died there. 

It is hard to capture the full extent of emotions that we felt in a short blog post. We simultaneously felt shocked, sickened, sad, empty, confused, angry and hollow.

Intellectually we understood that the ground we were standing on was of immense significance, but it is hard to fully grasp, comprehend and process that reality. 

We found ourselves asking the age-old question ‘how can one human being do this to another?’

After learning about the torture, the murders, the sub-human living conditions, the human experiments and the indefinite incarceration without trial or hope of release, it was hard not to feel hollow when standing in front of the memorial plaque that read ‘Never Again’.

Thought provoking Berlin

We’re confident that we won’t offend too many people by saying that Berlin isn’t the most aesthetically beautiful city in the world. But for what it lacks in beauty, however, it makes up for in incredible history.

Berlin is immediately thought provoking, and does an incredibly good job of recognizing it’s past through some brilliant museums and memorials.

Two memorials in particular stood out. Firstly The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which contained 2711 concrete stelae rising from the ground. As you walk through them, you are quickly engulfed as the ground slopes downwards beneath you. You begin to lose all sense of where you are in the concrete maze. While the architect never said what it is supposed to represent, for us it was incredibly stirring and interactive, and in some small symbolic way provided a sense of scale to the atrocities.

Secondly, Menashe Kadishman's Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) installation at the Jewish Museum was incredibly chilling. Over 10,000 open-mouthed faces coarsely cut from heavy, circular iron plates cover the floor. The artist expects visitors to walk across the floor, which presents you with a range of emotions as you walk along the pain-stricken faces, with the haunting sound of the iron clinking under your feet. It was incredibly interactive and gave us a chilling sense of scale, anonymity, pain and suffering. 

Berlin with Tanya and Jennifer

We left than van in long term parking in Paris fly to Berlin for a few days to catch up with Tanya and Jennifer. We arrived in a bit of a quasi jet lagged haze after getting up at 4am to catch our 6:30am flight.

Again, it was fantastic to spend some quality time with Tanya and Jennifer. In our quest to do a load of washing, Monique and Tanya stumbled across a hostel that had 8 Euro all you can eat German buffet, plus one free beer per person between 7-9pm.

On discovering this, Daniel quickly put two and two together, realizing that Monique, Tanya and Jennifer don’t drink beer, thus equaling four free beers for him. Thankfully, the girls did their bit and the rest is history.

We (Daniel) had such a good time that we decided to go back do it all again the next night. 


On another note, we got to see a Bentley Continental, worth about AUD211,000 getting picked up and towed away because he parked in a taxi zone. Very entertaining sightseeing.