champagne wishes and caviar dreams....: Munich!

So call me lazy, but I'm still trying to get all the pictures up from our trip last month (there's just so many pics!). After we left Garmisch, we headed north to Munich for three days. Munich is an amazing city- the art, architecture, and history make it a must see for anyone who gets a chance to visit Germany. We were lucky enough to be in Munich just in time for the Christmas markets- it was unbelieveably cold, but completely worth it (I think Karl and I bought half the market and we have A LOT of Christmas decorations now!).

This is a close-up of the famous Glockenspiel in the Marienplatz Plaza. The Glockenspiel celebrates two separate events from Munich's past with two levels of clockwork action. The dancers are coopers and are depicted doing the "Dance of the Coopers". This is done in memory of the end of the plague in 1517. The other part is jousting knights. These re-enact a famous tournament that was held for the royal wedding of Duke Wilhelm V which took place on Marienplatz in 1568.

The door in the middle of the picture is very infamous throughout Munich; this was the door that led to one of the first command centers for Hitler. If you walked by this door without "hailing Hitler", you would be sent to a concentation camp and charged with treason. For this reason, to the left of this picture, Munich residents made a path around the building to avoid Hitler's door.

. Another picture of the Glockenspiel

One of the days we were in Munich, Karl and I drove right outside the city to Dachau Concentration Camp, the first-ever concentration camp. This was truely an experience that puts your life in perspective; it was so emotional that I couldn't even finish walking the grounds. We did get some good pictures, but most of them are heartwrenching and I have choosen not to post them. If you are interested in seeing pictures (keep in mind that some are graphic), here is a great website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp. The picture below is the entrance that prisoners came though for processing when they came to Dachau.

The building in the background now houses the Dachau museum, but used to be used for processing new prisoners. The sculpture in the foreground is a memorial to all of those affected at Dachau. We took this picture while standing in the old role call area where prisoners lined up everyday to be counted.

Below is the hallway of the prison of Dachau- this is where the most brutal punishments happened and it was a surreal experience. Karl and I were the only ones in the entire building and I was completely creeped out- I can't even explain it.