Day 48...Achtung! - 13th August

Woke up our usual time (7-8ish) and had our inclusive breakky downstairs. Its all continental in German land which is lighter, but cereal makes me fat. (Not that bacon and eggs don't either haha). I wish there was some fruit. Nate is loving the muesli. The old grandfather clock went off while we were eating and scared the crap out of me!

After Nathan's effort driving yesterday, I thought it was my turn. I thought I would never manage doing the gears on the wrong side, but I was actually surprised at how well I did. And staying on the right side was ok as well. (As time goes on in Germany, it became pretty natural and ok when turning, though roundabouts felt soooo wrong at first. And gear changing is getting better too). But today was still quite scary and you have to concentrate really hard on going the right way. The Peugot doesn' thelp either. Its got everything in a slightly more uncomfortable placing than it should be. So sometimes we hate it.
Only one time each have we relaxed and started driving on the left side of the road. Both times were on rural roads and we corrected straight away (though driving on that side did feel better!).

Driving out of Dachau I was on the right side of the road and Nate was staring at the map, and looked and shat himself! Then he realised I was correct. I laughed and said "poo your pants, you did!" at him Yoda style and he cracked up. (Inny and Dad, you'll be familiar with that one!)

We drove to Dachau Concentration Camp that morning. It was the first concentration camp ever b uilt in 1933 when Hitler rose to power. It was built by Heinrich Himmler in March of that year. In the 12 years of its existence, over 200,000 persons were incarcerated there, and 43,000 of them died. There were Jews, political activists against hitler, communists, Jehovah's witnesses and priests amongst others. The guy who tried to blow Hitler up (I didn't even know someone had tried - but now I do. And you do too!) was kept and killed here. We saw his cell!

Nate and I expected maybe a field and a plaque but when we turned up, there was lots still there! THe main walk to the camp was the original and had some old traintracks from where they would get off at the station and walk to camp. I tried to imagine the fear and loss of control and safety over your life they must have felt. On the gate to the camp were the words "Work Brings Freedom" in German. There wre lots of plaques with sections in English with photos too, so you really felt you were there and it was real. Outside the camp was a black and white photo of the commandants house and headquarters. When you looked up, it was still sitting there! But in colour. It felt like a time warp.

Once we entered the gates - the grounds were huge! To encamp thousands of souls it would have to be, but I was still surprised at the size of the place and how intact it was. As it turned out, the camp became the US soldiers camp and didn't change much. They used the buildings for their own works. Then survivors and relatives campaigned to preserve the place, so its all pretty much there, except for the buildings where they slept.

More people were there at the camp than we expected as well, but the place seemed to swallow them up. The people walking around also helped to get an idea of the size too, and use them as models for prisoners walking around the camp. It was good that I had seen Schindlers List, as although it was a warm day, I could see the cold in my mind. I could see the prisoners standing ther eerect while loud German voices yelled out their names at roll call each morning. They had to stand there for several hours or more, and had to drag their dead comrades out of bed so there were there for roll call too. I had that song in my head from the film - the bit where Liam Neeson see's the girl in the red coat and some kids German song is sung. It kept going over and over in my head and I felt both Nathan and I getting quiter and quiter the more we moved around camp.

We walked over the the Bunker, which was used for torture and interrogation, as well as keeping their 'special prisoners'. The guy who tried to bomb hitler was kept there, as well as some priests. It was a long rectangular building. I pulled a door on the end, not expecting it to open - but it did! And it opened to a long, long corridoor with big wooden doors on either side. They had prisoner-view windows in them, so you could peer through and see a small concrete room. Other rooms, they had removed the doors or pulled back to door, so you could walk inside or see a display. I could almost hear the officers boots echoing down the hall. I was very shocked by how real it all felt. No history lesson in highschool (you mean Mr Coleman was right?), or self research I had read, or Hollywood film I had seen, could be so raw and naked as touching it in the flesh. And it felt horrible and amazing at the same time.

In one cell they had kept a priest and his religious scratchings on the wall were still there. Nathan was surprised at how much was still there. He expected afte rliberation it would have been bulldozed to the ground and tried to be forgotton. It is good that the victims have put in an effort to keep this place, so no one will ever forget. I don't think we'll learn though. We've been doing this kind of stuff since time immemorial.

Nathan spotted a torture pole in the yard, where they put the victims arms behind their head and hung them from the pole. At the end of the corridoor were some SS officers offices which were empty, bar books and plaques of some testimonials. Also some covereage of the officers themselves and whether they were prosecuted etc. The main kitchen and administration was in the building next door, so we wandered into that. They have now changed it into a huge museum. It would have taken a few good horus to read and go thorugh it all. We did the first half thoroughly and walked quickly through the second half (and the second half was repetitive anyway). THey had plates and photos and testimonials and "where are they nows". One bit that rocked us both in a bad way was footage they had of Dachau. An officer had a colour video (film) camera with him on the day of liberation. They shoed his film footage of what he and the American officers found. Outside the crematorium was a massive pile of bodies, just stacked there. They were so emaciated before they died their heads were giant, and their limbs were twisted in the rigour mortis of death. Kinda like Nicole Riche really haha. Inside the crematorium was full of dead naked bodies.
The musuem had photos of people dead trying to escape, photos of dead bodies lying in the grass while SS officers stood around chatting. There was a section on medical experiments they used to do. They would infect people with malaria, or inject them with pus and give them up to 200 experimental tablets a day (which ended up being ineffective and they died anyway). They put people in freezing water to figure out which organs died first (for German pilots crashing into cold seas, you see). They had a picture of them dangling a guy in a huge tub wearing pilot gear. One photo really got to Nathan. The Nazi's purposely gave a guy the bends and took photos as the bubbles reached his brain and killed him. They had the serious of photos on display.

I go treally quiet (which is odd for me haha) and Nathan kept breathing in and out really deeply. I'm not sure he realised he was doing it. It was hard to take photos, and photos of us especially as we didn't know what face to pull and it felt really weird. I even felt weird when I went to a bathroom break. It felt wrong somehow.

We left the museum and wandered over to some reconstructed bunkers they had built. All of the dorms had been torn down, but their foundations were still there and the reconstruction gave you an idea of what it was like. I thought the tour was kinda over after that, with wome memorials down the far end. But Nate had the map and took us down the end, which ended up being the crematorium., The 1st crematorium was small, and they had to build a new bigger one as it couldn't keep up with "production". The 2nd crematorium was much bigger, and Nathan was shocked by the production aspect of it all. There was a disinfecting spray section of the stalls as well. There was a picture a guy took of it back in the day, in black and white. And when you looked up, just like the commandants house - it was there live and gay in colour. Bizarre.

The gas chamber in the crematorium was never used for mass killing. Survivors (guys that had to work in the crematorium) testify that individual prisoners and small groups were killed using poison gas, but not on a mass scale.
Executions and murder operations were carried out in the crematorium area as well. 1942-43 was the biggest year for death, when things got shocking and the most numbers of torture and killings occured. Then the Nazi's clocked on and realised they needed the prisoners for labour, and cut down their activities a bit.
There was a 'waiting' room, a disrobing room, the gas chamber, the dead body storage room, and the crematorium itself. We had seen all the bodies stacked inside and out in the American soldiers film footage, so it was awful to be standing there. A lady was going through with us with her son, and explainging to him each room and what it was for. She did it in a good way, unbiased so the child could make up his own opinion. As I went through I felt weirder and weirder and hearing her calm voice at the end was too much for me...I started to cry! I felt so gay and cliche to cry there, and I didn't think I would do that, but I did. I thought I was the only one and was terribly embarrassed. Nathan told me later that he saw fully grown men sobbing in the bushes. He said it looked like they were older men, who prolly had rellies there or something. And he saw a few women crying too. I didn't see any, and I would have felt better if he told me earlier but oh well. Nate himself came out without some colour in his face and was freaked by the whole thing. We went for a walk in the gardens, which turned out to be awful as there were mass graves, mass ash graves (from the crematorium) and a shooting wall complete with blood ditch. Lovely. We were glad to leave that place.

On the walk out, we kept pondering on how it could get to this. How it could happen. And knowing that in my lifetime, there were people who had it happen in their lifetimes. It was just too close for comfort, and far to wacked for me. And its kinda wacked that stuff like this is happening now and its not being noticed. 4 million people have died in the congo and its not news. But I guess its shocking when a first world nation acts like this. Nate was surprised how quickly Germany has gotten its popularity back.

Funny he said that as Germany wasn't my favourite place to be then. So it was smart idea that we had planned to drive to Switzerland straight after that.

We drove from Dachau at lunchtime, and ducked through a corner of Austria (Osstereich) on the way. It was ll on the autobahn and starting to rain, so we didn't see much of o'l Austria. We started our first ritual on the autobahn of the take-away servo baguette. They are so good! They are delicious and crusty with juicy ham. auughgh. And the best tasting mayo mix, I don't know how they do it! They shit all over anyone elses servo food. Love the Germans. again.

The Germans shit all over the AUssie drinking culture too. I came all proud to be an Aussie, but we are such a watered down culture. Even our major claim to beer is put to shame. In a German servo you'd be lucky to find a chocolate milk, but its standard to see a 1 litre can of beer.

We hit the border to Switzerland from Austria in the late afternoon. It wasn't mountainous, but the town over the border was on a steep hill, with views of these massive blue and purple mountains in the distance. We thought it was pretty countryside and we'd had a big day, so thought it best to get accommodation before they all went to bed. THe town was called Alstatten, and we drove around and asked at a few placed. no one spoke English and the rooms were really expensive! We started to get worried. We decided to try the edge of town, and saw a place that looked a little more budget than the rest. Nathan poked his head in and came straight back. "It's a restaurant!" he said, frustrated. The swiss speak a mix of languages and english is not one of them, and gasthouse confused us. It wasn't translatable properly to german so we weren't sure. I saw a bed symbol on the top and was pretty certain.
"nonsense!" I huffed, and stomped into the restaurant. I then found out why Nate had pulled his head so hurridly back. The whole restaurant turned around and stared! They were all locals, and seemed to be surprised to see us. I got a waitresses attention though and she didn't speak a lick of english. After some gabbing at eaach other and weird hand signals, she discovered the other waitress could speak a little, so we managed to score a room with breakfast for a pretty decent price. Much better than the others. Half off in fact.
After some more confusion we got a key and I came out triumphant to Nate. We grabbed our bags and picked our way upstairs. The place was a restaurant first, a residence second, and a hotel third. The back stairs were covered with their stuff and we picked our way up to the dark third floor. I heard a weird laugh before I opened the door and thought delightedly that the room was haunted, but Nate said it was someone in another room. Darn. haha

The room was old fashioned, clean and tidy with two single beds - and a stern looking crucifix bang in the middle. I loved it. The crucifix (and carefully placed Bible) didn't bother us none - like it would keep us from tomfoolery! We dumped our bags and headed through town to find an ATM. The buildings were tall and thin and very neat. So Swiss! We could see hils and mountains in the background, and although it was wet, it was no longer raining and felt very clean. The rest of the locals we found watching a play in one of the squares. They were drinking beer and watching a weird mime of some sort. Some guys were even sitting in the windows of the buildings with their legs dangling out. Nate and I felt like such outsiders! We were the only tourists in town. It was great. We found some cash and headed back to our place for dinner. Bracing ourselves for the customary "whole-room" stare, we braved and snagged a table. It was obvious that everyone there was a local and knew each other well. You'd have to if you were snowed in together for most of the year, I surmised. Nate heard one local explain to the other that we were english , and they all seemed to hum and cluck over it. I felt like I wasn't in Kansas anymore!

We struggled our way through the menu and did ok (although I ended up with a beer instead of a wine). The beer ended up being great! It was a local swiss beer and very crisp and tasty. It was refreshing without being tart. I drank most of it, which is good for me! I had some tomato soup, and Nathan had a wicked tasty veal schnitzel. We kept it light as Swiss food is really really really really expensive! Somewhere you'd expect to pay $8, its $20!

After that we headed up for some reading, writing and sleep.

Oh and another thing: German and Swiss (Schweiz) TV is really good! They have top movies and TV shows that I really want to watch - but its all dubbed in German! so frustrating. Only CNN and MTV do english, although MTV with south park its dubbed too. Hearing Cartman with a deep German voice is most odd!