Europe--Day 7

Nyquil is amazing. Seriously. Amazing. We got 6 uninterupted hours of sleep on the train ride back to Germany.

We headed into Munich, and our first stop was St. Michael's Church. Ludwig IV's tomb is in the back of the church. The funny thing is it used to be at the altar--likely an attempt at making people see association between royalty and God.

A huge highlight in Munich was The Residenz, the palace of the Wittelsbachs (who ruled Bavaria for 700 plus years). It was heavily bombed during WWII, so many of the rooms are remodeled, but there are quite a few exquisit originals displayed in the rooms.

Brady loved these Shell Grottos, and all the shells were donated by Bavarians during the reconstruction of The Residenz.


This is the Antiquariam, and is composed of the busts of Roman rulers, and used as a banquet hall. Above the busts are paintings of the 120 original Bavarian villages as they looked in 1550, Historians love this room.

This "Onyx Service" of porcelain was commissioned by Ludwig I. It has 717 pieces, each of them painted individually. Porcelain was a big deal here, and often given as gifts of alliance and marriage.

Tapastries like the one below are everywhere in the palace. 10 originals have survived, and the colors are still rich because they were only brought out for special occasions. The cost of creating and commissioning these works was enormous, especially when you account for the fact that the average tapstry-maker created 0.44 square meters per month. Three men had to work for 4 weeks to make one square meter--whew. That's a lot more effort than our tie-quilts, eh?

This is the Portrait Gallary, and furnishes pictures of the Wittelsbach family through 738 years. All guests were reminded of the royal legacy because they were forced to walk through this room on their way into the meeting rooms. In 1944, the pictures were sliced out of frames and hid as quickly as possible before the bombings began. You can see the cut marks (not in these pictures, though).

This was all boring compared to the Residenz Treasury. Yeah. Jewels--diamonds, rubies, saphires...everything you can imagine! I felt "obsessed with treasure" (and I really am excited for Pirates III). The oldest jewels are 200 years older than the city of Munich.

This is the crown of the English queen from 1370, and it was eventually passed down to the Wittelsbachs by marriage.

This crown, sceptre, and sword of the kingdom date from 1809, and were commissioned by Napoleon. They were never used, however, because Bavaria decided to not side with Napoleon after all. Apparently they declined to return the treasure after they called off the deal.

Love, love, love this Statuette of St. George. It dates from 1597, and shows St. George killing a dragon using more than 2,000 precious stones! (Rick tells us the dragon actually represents the "evil" forces of Protestantism.)

After that display of wealth, we headed to Dachau, the concentration camp outside of Munich famous for it's role as the first concentration camp (1933), and because it was the training grounds for Nazi guards.

The entry states, "Work will set you free." What a lie. This camp was not an extermination camp (those were only outside of Germany), but the inmates were used for slave labor. Any concerned citizens were told that if they wanted to know what was going on, they could stay in the camp for an unlimited amount of time. That tactic worked, and the citizens of Dachau were oblivous to the heinous crimes and torture that occured here.

The conditions were overcrowed and terrible. The AC was turned on in the winter, and the heat was used in the summer. The rooms to the right contained the "standing cells," which were so small that only standing was permitted, and for days at a time.

These are the grounds of them camp. When the site was turned into a memorial, many of the barracks were torn down.

Even though this was not an extermination camp, 32,000 were killed here. These ovens were rarely put to use because coal was in short supply here. The room right before the ovens is where gas chambers were built, with a sign that said "Showers" over the entry. Usually, the killing was done by hanging right next to the oven, and then they were stacked in. They were often about 70 pounds at the time of death. (Below is our tour guide.)

The tour was done well, and mostly reminded us that this did not happen long ago. In school, studying WWII seems like studying ancient history. After touring so much European history, though, it was put in perspective for us, and we realized just how recently this all happened.

After returning to Munich, we ascended St. Peter's tower (another church) for views of the city. This is New Town Hall, rebuilt after the war. That was fun, but seeing a 2nd century skeleton dressed up inside was even better.