Bavaria

Apart from Oktoberfest, there is actually more to Bavaria than you'd realise. Munich itself isn't a bad place to start, but once you get out of the city you realise how beautiful a place it is, full of variety. To illustrate this I'll tell you about 2 of our day trips.

The first one was down to Fussen to visit the castle of Schloss Neuschwanstein (New Swan Stone palace). This castle was built by King Ludwig II, although not completed. He was an interesting case by the sounds of it, who had a hell of an imagination and loved the surreal....he was later declared clinically insane and was stripped of his right to rule Bavaria. Not long after he was found dead in a lake along with his psychiatrist, the reason why remains a mystery to this day.
Before his death he managed to build a couple of other beautiful castles/palaces, but Neuschwanstein was in many people's opinion the most beautiful. Having seen it we think it is definitely the most beautiful castle we have seen. You might recognise it a little....this castle is actually the one Walt Disney copied to build the Cinderella castle at Disneyland.


After touring the castle we managed to squeeze in a trip to Oberammagau. This quaint little town which is famous for its woodwork was beautiful. Parts were reminiscent of Goslar, although the town is much smaller. We went on the hunt for Cuckoo clocks and found one we liked without too much trouble....the main problem was choosing one from the multitude available, all of which were beautifully hand made.


So trip 1 was like being in another world most of the time, one of fairytales and of beautiful things. Trip 2 on the other hand, although as if not more captivating was definitely about the real world and things that no-one is proud of.


It included a trip to Dachau concentration camp. Dachau was the first concentration camp in Germany, upon which the other camps were modelled. Following Hitler's election as Chancellor, it was originally set-up for the 're-education of political prisoners', capable of housing ~4000 people in barracks, and was situated outside the law. Of course from the outset it wasn't really used for the stated purpose, though the propaganda surrounding it led everyone to believe it was....consider that independent organisations such as the Red Cross commended the SS on the running of the camp and how well everyone was looked after. Of course this was all a facade, a staged event put on for such organistations.


Later, with several other events occuring in the meantime, the capacity of the camp was increased to around 40 000, although they were still fitting into the same barracks. The atrocities that occurred in the camp was so great that the on-site crematorium couldn't keep up, and a new crematorium considerably larger was constructed, complete with in-house 'showers'....which was actually a mass gas chamber. The new crematorium building was in effect a very efficient killing factory - prisoners entered one end as living people and exited as ashes.


The stories that we heard went on and on, each more dreadful than the last. One of the most disturbing for me that made me realise the scale of this was that the dentistry that was set-up for the camp - which was paraded to outsiders as a service to prisoners - was actually only used to remove the gold from the dead's mouths (fillings etc). In a single letter, they were asking what should be done with the 50kg they had already extracted. This letter was before the camp was in full swing.


You couldn't leave without being disgusted. A couple of other facts that I found particularly outrageous. There were serveral HUNDRED camps throughout Germany and occupied territories.


Also, after hearing everything that went on here, consider that Dachau was a concentration camp, NOT an extermination camp like Auschwitz was. Also, only Auschwitz prisoners were given a tattoo, the reason being that people were killed in such numbers there that they had to use the tattoo to identify who was dead for their records.

Bavaria, was a fantastic place to visit. It certainly has an interesting history and it kept you on your toes....