Munich & Weimar
Finally done with Amsterdam, I made my way to Berlin with a couple of stops en route. The first stop was Munich, capital of beer-drenched Bavaria. I felt my family had already well-explored Bavaria on our visits to Nuremberg, Regensberg, and Passau, but everyone said Munich was a must-see so I opted for a quick trip.
It was worth it for the Deutsches Museum alone. The place was like the Louvre of technology and science. It was huge (ok, not quite as huge as the Louvre) and I would have needed days to sufficiently explore it. They had exhibits on everything from ship-building to microelectronics to power machinery to tunnel construction to pharmacology to musical instruments. In each section there were examples (copies or originals) of all the innovations of note in that field, explaining the importance of each step in the technology. There were demonstrations (most ear-splittingly in the electricity lab) and interactive exhibits (most playfully in bridge-building). They even had a whole seciton on photography including eamples of every kind of camera bod and lens since the invention of film. Wow. This place would make anyone with any interest in science or technology feel like a kid in a candy shop.
After exploring the Deutsches Museum the best I could in my time constraints and without making my brain explode, I was planning on making late afternoon trip to the concentration camp at Dachau to see the darker side of German innovation. Unfortunately after my 25 minute ride on the commuter train to the suburbs, the train station attendant informed me that Dachau is closed on Mondays. Stupid guidebook, "9am-5pm daily" my rear end.
I was too tired to do anything else when I got back to the hostel, so I conked out for 5 hours before going to explore the city at night. It was much more pleasant at night, without the mobs of tourists and the sweltering heat. Despite being 11pm on a Wednesday, there were lots of people out and about, going for walks or bicycling home. Young people all gathered to drink and chat on the benches and steps of old buildings along the traffic circle of Gartnerplatz. There was also some kind of concert going on in the Schwabing, the student section of town, all making for a pleasant nighttime stroll.
The next day I got up at the crack of dawn to go to Weimar, the capital of Germany during the interwar period of the Weimar Republic in the 1920's. Despite this political importance, the place was tiny. Miniscule, even. I have no idea how it would have been the seat of a national government. I was staying in a place called Hababusch, which is an unrestored 19th century house run cooperatively by a bunch of college students who live there, manage the rooms, and (occasionally) man the reception. It felt a lot like a co-op at Stanford and having spent my senior year in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest I felt quite at home. Plus it was dirt cheap.
Having missed Dachau, I decided to go to Buchenwald, another concentration camp just outside Weimar's (diminutive) city limits. The Allies ha bombed the hell out of the place so a lot of it was just rubble, but that made it even more eery. One of the few buildings left standing was the furnace room where they burned the bodies. Buchenwald was mostly a forced labor camp, full of men and boys forced to work on revenue-producing projects for the Nazis. The SS would rent out a factory, workers included, to various companies requiring manual labor. Prisoners were sometimes even dragged into Weimar itself to work on construction projects in the city (although this was limited to prevent visibility of the conditions under which the prisoners were kept). This was also where hordes of Russion POW's were sent. Most were shot upon arrival. Another of the still-standing buildings was the "examination room" here Russian POW's were told to stand on a scale facing away from the wall, and then would be shot in the nape of the neck from a slit in the wall. They would then be piled into a wheelbarrow and carted next door to be incinerated. They were then ropped in mass graves in the woods. Now they have installed metal poles along the burial sites to commemorate the dead.
Here the Nazis also conducted medical experiments on prisoners, infecting them with various diseases to test cures or just to watch and document the person's slow progression toward death. This building was leveled, however, so only the foundations remain. There was also a museum with various displays and artefacts on the SS, the prisoners, and the setup of the place. One photo I saw was extremely haunting, of a prisoner looking into the camera immediately before he was shot. The museum also had an exhibit on photographers who chronicled what happened there, including some prisoners who somehow managed to take photos while the camp was still running (most of them were otherwise in charge of taking ID pictures of incoming inmates; that's how they had access to camera equipment). Most of the photographs on display, however, were taken by Allied war correspondents. This included Lee Miller, who I'd learned about at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.
On a lighter note, one of the other things I'd come to see in Weimar was the Bauhaus Museum. The Bauhaus design school was basically the forerunner of most modern western design, so as I'd felt the need to brush up on my art history credentials by visiting museums in Paris, there was no way I could skip out on visiting the birthplace of the Bauhaus. Well it was a good thing I got a lot out of my visit to Buchenwald, because the Bauhaus Museum was a bust. There were only three small rooms open to the public with some works that were not very well-labeled or explained. What little signage they did have was entirely in German. It took me about 20 minutes to walk through the whole place, and I didn't get much out of it. Too bad, but luckily there was another Bauhaus Museum in Berlin to try.
So it was back to the co-op for a good night's sleep before finally heading to Berlin... Up to top
It was worth it for the Deutsches Museum alone. The place was like the Louvre of technology and science. It was huge (ok, not quite as huge as the Louvre) and I would have needed days to sufficiently explore it. They had exhibits on everything from ship-building to microelectronics to power machinery to tunnel construction to pharmacology to musical instruments. In each section there were examples (copies or originals) of all the innovations of note in that field, explaining the importance of each step in the technology. There were demonstrations (most ear-splittingly in the electricity lab) and interactive exhibits (most playfully in bridge-building). They even had a whole seciton on photography including eamples of every kind of camera bod and lens since the invention of film. Wow. This place would make anyone with any interest in science or technology feel like a kid in a candy shop.
After exploring the Deutsches Museum the best I could in my time constraints and without making my brain explode, I was planning on making late afternoon trip to the concentration camp at Dachau to see the darker side of German innovation. Unfortunately after my 25 minute ride on the commuter train to the suburbs, the train station attendant informed me that Dachau is closed on Mondays. Stupid guidebook, "9am-5pm daily" my rear end.
I was too tired to do anything else when I got back to the hostel, so I conked out for 5 hours before going to explore the city at night. It was much more pleasant at night, without the mobs of tourists and the sweltering heat. Despite being 11pm on a Wednesday, there were lots of people out and about, going for walks or bicycling home. Young people all gathered to drink and chat on the benches and steps of old buildings along the traffic circle of Gartnerplatz. There was also some kind of concert going on in the Schwabing, the student section of town, all making for a pleasant nighttime stroll.
The next day I got up at the crack of dawn to go to Weimar, the capital of Germany during the interwar period of the Weimar Republic in the 1920's. Despite this political importance, the place was tiny. Miniscule, even. I have no idea how it would have been the seat of a national government. I was staying in a place called Hababusch, which is an unrestored 19th century house run cooperatively by a bunch of college students who live there, manage the rooms, and (occasionally) man the reception. It felt a lot like a co-op at Stanford and having spent my senior year in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest I felt quite at home. Plus it was dirt cheap.
Having missed Dachau, I decided to go to Buchenwald, another concentration camp just outside Weimar's (diminutive) city limits. The Allies ha bombed the hell out of the place so a lot of it was just rubble, but that made it even more eery. One of the few buildings left standing was the furnace room where they burned the bodies. Buchenwald was mostly a forced labor camp, full of men and boys forced to work on revenue-producing projects for the Nazis. The SS would rent out a factory, workers included, to various companies requiring manual labor. Prisoners were sometimes even dragged into Weimar itself to work on construction projects in the city (although this was limited to prevent visibility of the conditions under which the prisoners were kept). This was also where hordes of Russion POW's were sent. Most were shot upon arrival. Another of the still-standing buildings was the "examination room" here Russian POW's were told to stand on a scale facing away from the wall, and then would be shot in the nape of the neck from a slit in the wall. They would then be piled into a wheelbarrow and carted next door to be incinerated. They were then ropped in mass graves in the woods. Now they have installed metal poles along the burial sites to commemorate the dead.
Here the Nazis also conducted medical experiments on prisoners, infecting them with various diseases to test cures or just to watch and document the person's slow progression toward death. This building was leveled, however, so only the foundations remain. There was also a museum with various displays and artefacts on the SS, the prisoners, and the setup of the place. One photo I saw was extremely haunting, of a prisoner looking into the camera immediately before he was shot. The museum also had an exhibit on photographers who chronicled what happened there, including some prisoners who somehow managed to take photos while the camp was still running (most of them were otherwise in charge of taking ID pictures of incoming inmates; that's how they had access to camera equipment). Most of the photographs on display, however, were taken by Allied war correspondents. This included Lee Miller, who I'd learned about at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.
On a lighter note, one of the other things I'd come to see in Weimar was the Bauhaus Museum. The Bauhaus design school was basically the forerunner of most modern western design, so as I'd felt the need to brush up on my art history credentials by visiting museums in Paris, there was no way I could skip out on visiting the birthplace of the Bauhaus. Well it was a good thing I got a lot out of my visit to Buchenwald, because the Bauhaus Museum was a bust. There were only three small rooms open to the public with some works that were not very well-labeled or explained. What little signage they did have was entirely in German. It took me about 20 minutes to walk through the whole place, and I didn't get much out of it. Too bad, but luckily there was another Bauhaus Museum in Berlin to try.
So it was back to the co-op for a good night's sleep before finally heading to Berlin... Up to top
posted by Nora @ 9:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home