Munich, beer capital of the world, and also site of many infamous Nazi events prior to the Second world war. We were blissfully unaware of the dark history here until we took a free walking tour of the city. From Munich Hitler had planned to march to Berlin and overthrow the parliament, after their inability to bring the country out of depression following the first world war. The police found out and blocked the route. A bit of a bloodbath ensued and Hitler fled after his bodyguard took 11 bullets for him. Eventually the Nazis got into power, and started the first concentration camp at Dachau just outside Munich.

Our starting point for the walking tour was the new town hall, which is actually older than the old town hall which was bombed during the war and later rebuilt. The new town hall is a pretty impressive building, and houses the glockenspeil (musical clock). Unfortunately, like almost every beautiful building in Europe that we've been to look at, it was having some work done and was obscured by scaffolding. We then checked out the cathedral with it's two spires. The church was bombed heavily during the war, but the spires remained as a landmark for bomber pilots. We stopped for lunch at a great food market. There was a huge selection of meats, cheeses, dips, olives, bread, as well as fast food stalls selling roast pork and bratwurst.

We walked to Max Joseph Platz, named after the first king of Bavaria. There is a statue of him there that he apparently didn't like. But he died two weeks after they started making a replacement, and his son decided the old one was OK. The opera house is on this square, and features an inverted dome to catch water for firefighting. The first time there was a fire was in January, winter, and the water was frozen!! They had to use beer to put out the fire! Major beer crime, wasting beer to save an opera house of all things. Maybe a brewery, but not an opera house.

From here we went to the site where the Nazi march to Berlin was stopped and 13 people died (4 police, 8 nazi ss troops, and an innocent waiter). There was only a small plaque in the ground to commemorate this day. Generally Munich seems to have tried to repress the history of the nazis and the war. The city was re-constructed to it's pre-war state thanks to clever citizens who took thousands of photos of the buildings when the war broke out.

After the walk we were mighty thirsty, so we went to a beer garden in the English garden for a mass (one litre) beer. Unfortunately it started raining about half a litre in so we had to scamper under cover and they closed the bar.

For dinner that night we went to the Paulaner brewery brauhaus where Zilla had the Goulash, and I had a big schnitzel. Washed down with a few fresh Paulaners.

Our hostel was just down the road from the Oktoberfest site, so we went there to eat our breakfast. Amazingly the huge tents are already taking shape two months before the festival. For the afternoon we headed to the Dachau concentration camp, which has been set up as a memorial site. We paid for an auidioguide, which was loud enough for both of us to listen to at once. Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp, established well before the war started. It was designed to house 6,000 people, and by the end of the war held around 40,000. The site has two preserved barracks, and the outlines of all the others are marked. Dachau was used as a model for all the other concentration camps that were set up in other areas. There was a crematorium which couldn't cope with the number of deaths in the camp, so they built a bigger one. It was pretty chilling to walk around the site listening to the information, but what really brought home the attrocities here was a 30 minute video in the museum. It had actual footage of the prisoners and the conditions they were forced to endure, as well as footage of piles of malnourished dead bodies being carted away after the liberation of the camp by American soldiers. Another scene showed the American soldiers forcing residents from the nearby town to look at piles of dead at the crematorium so they knew what really happened inside the camp walls. Really spine tingling stuff, and well worth the visit. We ran out of time before we got to look through the museum exhibits properly. There is just so much information here.

That night we headed to the Hoffbrauhaus (the most famous beer hall in Munich) for another bavarian feed. Zilla had the meatballs (basically big rissoles) and I had the roast pork knuckle. One of the tastiest lumps of pork I've ever had. It was served with what I thought were boiled spuds, but the springy texture lead me to thinking that they were dumplings. We were at a table with some random Aussies and Americans, and once they saw my pork, a few of them had to order some too. Of course the meal was accompanied by a few masses of Hoffbrau beer.