Day Six, Dachau

(Last night I had to try an experiment. I count at least four American fast food joints within walking distance of my hotel: McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and Pizza Hut. The only major differences I`ve spotted so far are no breakfast menus, a wider coffee selection, and beer. Yes, you can get a beer with your Big Mac. So I went to Pizza Hut for supper last night, and ordered a barbecue chicken pizza for one. What they brought me could have fed 2 comfortably, and it was piled high with chunks of chicken, pepperoni, red onion and red and yellow bell peppers. And the sauce was the right mix of sweet and savory. Very tasty. I must ask the McDonalds here if they`ll offer a McLeberkäse sandwich sometime ...) *** My Dad told me about his visit to Dachau, in the late 1940s shortly after the war. He recalled that the one thing that struck him hardest was the smell of the place. Well, sixty years on, the smell is gone, but there is a feel about the place. Gentle readers, I at times believe in pantheism, and that places can have memories as well as people. The feeling I got at the Dachau concentration camp chilled me. Granted, it had rained during the night and the day was cloudy, windy and cold (the first time since I got here), but it could have been bright daylight in summer and the place would still have made itself known to me. Known to me? It damned near screamed at me. In an effort to make sure that people remember, the surviving inmates prevailed on the German Government to tear the barracks down in 1955 (people were living in them, and had converted some into schools and stores), and set the site aside as a memorial. The two barracks that are standing are recreations, as are the foundations of the other barracks. The gate house, with its iron gate bearing the mocking slogan Arbeit Macht Frei, the maintenance building where inmates were processed and given their weekly showers, and the Bunker (for punishment and the housing of special prisoners, such as Pastor Martin Niemoller) are the original. Both of the crematoria are also original. Four religious shrines are there as well: Jewish, Russian Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic. They`re needed. The main sculpture on the memorial to the dead was made by a former inmate, a Yugoslavian fellow who spent 8 years there. It`s a disturbing casting in wrought iron depicting emaciated prisoners caught in barbed wire, and a short distance away is a plaque with a slogan on it in five languages. Never again. *** I had planned on doing nothing tomorrow (it being Sunday and all), but I can`t sit still for too very long. Among other things I want to start arranging transportation for my day trips. I plan on visiting: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and journey to the top of the Zugspitze; Friedrichshafen, and visit the Zeppelin Museum and Lake Constance, and Schloss Neuschwanstein. I think that may be all I can manage before I have to leave for home next Saturday. Well, time to hit another biergarten for supper!