Munich

Sunday 18th September

We were up early as we are most days on tour, as we wanted to go on a tour of the city sights of Munich before they closed the streets in preparation for the Octoberfest parade through the streets. This city is 800 years old but as 80 per cent of it was destroyed in the 2nd World War the majority of the buildings are 60 years old or less. The day to day commercial buildings are very modern in style but the buildings built by previous kings were rebuilt as exact replicas. The reason Munich was bombed so much was because this was Hitler’s head office and his military head office. Would you believe all the buildings around were destroyed, but these two buildings were not and still stand today and are used as part of a University. We also went past the infamous Olympic stadium where some of the Israeli team were killed. Munich is also the head office for BMW cars, MAN trucks and Alliance Insurance and Munich Re Insurance.

We had to terminate our tour around early in order to stop and watch the Octoberfest parade. It has always been held in sunshine for the past 20 years, however today it rained which was a shame. However it was still quite a sight and very interesting with all the Bavarian bands and different styles of traditional dress, as well as the different brewery carts drawn by magnificent draft horses. It was a very long parade with participants coming from all parts of Bavaria to celebrate the occasion and was very interesting to see despite the rain. We then walked to the town square where we had lunch and then took a tour by bus to Dacau, the first Nazi concentration camp upon which all others were modelled. This was a very sobering and bleak visit as we walked in the rain through the camp and the various buildings.

Unfortunately for us our impression of Munich was just grey and wet. There is a lot of history here, a lot of it quite recent and we were assured that it is in fact a very pretty city, but for us it was marred somewhat by the continual rain.