28th April 2010 - Central Europe – Munich

We arrived so late in Munich; we were tired and miserable and had to find somewhere to stay for the night. We walked out of the train station and tried a couple of the places nearby... One wanted to charge us $300 euro for the night. No way, Bill will actually reimburse up to $200.00 US per night. The second place had no rooms available and finally the third had 2 rooms for $85.00 Euros each including breakfast, but no air-conditioning. Outside was very cool so we left open the windows and were extremely comfortable. It in fact had in 3 beds. I guess this is used by backpackers and groups. The beds were comfy and the bathroom clean with lots of hot water. What else can anyone ask for?

Lils and I went to sleep. In the middle of the night, Lily gets up calling out for e, telling me we have missed the bus and she opens up the hotel room door and starts to head off. I jumped out of bed, hauled her back in and settled her back down. The game is getting to her. She got up again in the night worried that she was late for Zoe. It was so funny and she knows she got out of bed in the night but she can't really remember what she did. It was funny but also scary.

We got up early next morning and went all altogether to visit Dachau the infamous Nazi concentration camp. We rented audio guides and walked around for hours reliving the horrors of the war that took place there. How can any human treat another human in this manner is besides me. Below is the memory wall with the promise for all nations that this monstrosity will "never Happen Again", in he square box in front of Lily is the cremated remains of an unknown Jew who lost their life at Dachau.

There is also a photo of the gate of no return, once you were matched through this gate you lost all of your dignity, property, rights and ultimately your life.

Then we went back to the city centre of Munich, had lunch together and encouraged a bunch of people in the beer house to first teach us a beer house song and then to sing the Barbados National Anthem with us. We laughed so much that tears ran down my face. It was so funny to see a bunch of Italian young men singing along with us. unfortunately all of my pictures are in video form. We had to eat the mandatory weisswurst sausage. It looked so unappetising when it first arrived. It looked like 2 white intestines floating in clear water. It tasted better than it looked but still very very bland.
We ate and sang in the oldest and biggest Beer house in tow. This was where Hitler held his first meeting back in the 1940's. Evidently back then around the base of the chandeliers were painted with the red Nazi symbols but those have been painted over with Bavarian scarves. If you look you can see that the scarves do follow the lines of the original Nazi symbols.
Once again because of the rules and regulations we split up and scavenged the city separately. Lily and I walked for miles and miles. One of the challenges was to find all 3 old city gates, well by the time you find all three you have circumnavigated the city. We visited ST. Peters Church and we climbed up 14 flights of stairs ( yes up more steps) up to Old Pete's bell tower which gave us a crows view of the city. Where we could see all the clock towers in the area plus the entire city.

We watch the dancing clock turn midday in the town square. We bought the required items in the market and finally found the staute of Julia ( Juliet from Romeo and Juliet's) statue. This staue was given to Munich as a gift from the city of Veronna.

We lost a lot of time searching for a museum of odd collections which we finally discovered closed about 18 months ago. We visited "the devil's footprint in Frauenkirche church.

We finally visited the Dutch Museum and had to locate one of the earliest globes of the world made by Christopher Columbus , there is one big mistake on the globe and that is it is missing the Americas because they had not been discovered as yet.

When were ready to get a TAXI back to the hotel to meet Zoe and Rainy there were no Taxi's in site so our poor tired feet had to walk another mile or so looking for a TAXI. We were supposed to rent bikes and ride out to a park but we could not find any where to rent the bikes from. Had we rented bikes we would have saved our poor tired feet and made more points. We saw Kit and Joanne on one of our walks. We think they are so neat and are fun to hang out with whenever we get the chance, which isn't often as we go off in different directions every day.

Well we haul all of our luggage back to the train station and off we set to the town of Freiburg. We will again get in too late to scavenge but we will be in place to get going early in the morning. At this point our plans are to leave Freiburg and head for Paris. If we stay in a hotel that costs less than $100.00 tonight we will get 150 points. Freiburg is many hours away by train.

When we arrived we managed to get another hotel for $83.00 Euros which makes us the bonus points. Tonight it is me that gets all confused. When we got into the room the window that we had to leave open was very big and I was worried that Lily might have another dream and climb out so I barricaded it with chairs, suitcases and back packs. Because the windows are open you can hear the trains, people talking and cars going by. I like to hear the sounds so that does not bother me. In the middle of the night I woke up and thought I heard Zoe and Rainy outside the window, so I scramble over the barricade and look out. Three stories down is a blonde woman and a dark headed man putting their luggage in a Taxi. I was so confused that my confuffled brain decided that it was Zoe and Rainey and I started to scream at them through the window asking them if plans had changed. Lily jumped up at all of this commotion and the poor couple down below looked up at me like I was a crazy woman (which at the moment I certainly was). I guess this game is getting to me as well.