Depressing & dreadful Dachau & some art.

Yesterday was a bit of a quiet day with the only thing achieved was taking the 2nd & 3rd Hop on Hop off Bus trips, which were interesting in themselves.

The Purple Line tour took us through an area we went the previous day and basically out to the 1972 Olympic Precinct & the adjacent BMW Museum, which was vast.

The BMW Museum (where the soup bowl is)

However not once was there any mention of the terrorist massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic team members and one West German police officer by eight Palestinian terrorists from the ‘Black September’ organisation on 5 September 1972. I could go into detail about this incident, as I remember it vividly from my childhood, but I think it's left in the annuls of history along with all the other atrocities by various countries & terrorist organisations since then. It's just weird that it wasn't mentioned, perhaps because of the poor security by the Germans.

We headed back to the city and transferred to the Blue Line which took us to the Arts area of Munich which isn't far from the city centre. There are numerous galleries side by side but unfortunately the one I really wanted to see, Neue Pinakothek (New Pinakothek), is closed to the public for several years, until 2030, due to general renovation work.

I had to make do with the Museum Brandhorst, a museum for contemporary art, where a small exhibition entitled "Comparisons" that had a couple of Andy Warhol & Keith Haring works. A couple of examples below, though there was some dross as well.

Grabbed the Blue Line bus back to the city and headed to Cucina de Nina for drinks & dinner, day done.

Up early today, Monday, for breakfast then headed to München Hauptbahnhof, or Munich Central Station across the road from our hotel; the main railway station in the city of Munich. The attendant in the Ticket Office sold us some train & bus all in one tickets to transport us to Dachau.

An easy trip with waiting buses to take us to the memorial site of the 1933–1945 Dachau Concentration Camp .

I can't begin to tell you the sense of pure human evil that you get by just visiting this memorial, given I've been to Changi Prison, the Killing Field and the Land Mine Museum in Cambodia. Thankfully it isn't as bad as those but you have to question the limits of pure human hatred. I've just attached some pictures below which I hope will be enough. The sculpture I find reminiscent of Picasso's Guernica, my favourite painting of all time. This sculpture I believe captures similar emotions about war & its evils. I changed some of the photos to B&W which I think enhances them, well I think so anyway.

The exhibition and displays were really well done & simple. Totally effective though, angled & leaning theatre flats joined at one point, wired banners & poster and some great etched glass work. Floors & walls left rough.

We grabbed a bus back to the station and queried some drivers about the old town and a palace there that the ticketing attendant had promoted to us. They put us on the bus and off we went. We disembarked the bus and headed in the direction pointed by the driver only to scale the small cobblestone street to find it closed on Monday, just like the Guggenheim in Bilbao first time I went there in 1997.

Nonetheless, we head back to the bus stop and grabbed a bus, but that driver said he was going to the station; didn't mention that he was going via nearly every street in Dachau. We eventually go there, boarded the next train, go of at Karlsplatz where we walked into some back lanes and found a nice restaurant for lunch, and wines for Mandy. Walked back to the hotel & soon to check out the hotel bar & it's snack options. More on Wednesday as we have a huge day tomorrow, which I can't wait for.