With the morning sun, I set off to explore Munich downtown. By this time, I had a fair idea of the S-bahn and Subway train services. The day pass took me to “Sendlinger Tor” on the train going to Feld-moching from Messestadt-Ost. “Sendlinger Tor” is an important station that takes you to the heart of the downtown while coming from “Am Moosfeld”. All the shops on either side of the road were closed on Sunday. These are certain areas where I thought Germany is probably closer to India than US. Especially like Keralalites, Germans preferred to stay at home even if that means loss of decent number of customers. Something else that might irritate you would be the people who keeps staring at you for no real reason. This was never the case in US but much like that in India. I could immediately place German culture somewhere in middle between that of US and India.

Munich city was beautiful. Especially the way buildings were painted. They retained the elegance of the past still with a modern outlook. Mostly, the buildings were painted in mild colors like ivory or bright white with ebony black linings. These monuments showcase the architectural skills and craftsmanship of Germans.

Unlike Americans, Germans do not use powerful air-conditioning, thanks to the decent year-round weather. To survive the winter snow, the buildings had protective double-walls with vacuum in between. Also, most of the rooms had heating systems. There were no sky-scrappers in the city; to uphold the dignity of the Central Church, The building rules of the city banned by law of construction that exceeds the height of the church.

The roads in the city and suburbs seemed to be quite narrow. With the excellent public transportation system, number of private vehicles remained substantially low. Of the available private vehicles, BMW, and Audi seemed to have the major share with Volkswagon, Renault and Mercedes brands not way behind. Many of the cars had manual gear system like in India (unlike in US, where more than 95% have automatic transmission). Contrary to the domination of Honda or Toyota across the world, Japanese cars had a very low profile in the region. Whereas I could hardly see any of the City, Civic or Corolla or even Accord or Lexus for that matter, I noticed a better presence of Suzuki with the Swift, Baleno and even WagonR parked on the streets. The traffic flowed very smoothly. Parking was mostly tricky; at certain places, vehicles were parked with front wheels well over the curb. The lanes and even whole of the road width in California would roughly be more than double of what you could find in Germany.

The city seemed to embrace art and music with a lot of passion. There were at least Twenty-Four different museums in the city with most of them showcasing the paintings or sculptures by various artists. Theatrical performance like Opera and live music bands were integral part of the city life. The Bavarian food is something that you will pay special attention to. The servings had a lot of quantity that would easily overwhelm any one from the sub-continent. Much of the main course would be dominated by red meat with most of the restaurants serving at least one variety of chicken, Turkey or Fish.

Fashion was another thing that Bavarians followed quite close to the heart, probably with the influence from their historically-hostile neighbor, the French. Across the city, number of designer wear outlets clearly dominated the show. At the same time, the degree of greenery in Munich could easily compete with any other city in the world. Bavaria would remain in my memory for a lot more years to come!

Second weekend of my stay in Germany came with a pleasant surprise. It was a long weekend on account of Pentecost (believed to be the 50th day after Easter). Bobby called me up inviting me to Frankfurt. At the same time, I got a mail from Rick by surprise. Rick was coming driving down from Zurich to Dresden. Since Munich was on the way, he was quite happy to come down and meet me. He was driving on the Autobahn, the only free way probably in the world with no blanket speed limit. You could drive as fast as you can with certain exceptions of patches with Speed Limit.

Rick ringed the door bell exactly at 10:00PM on Friday night when I had almost slipped to slumber. He seemed to be a happy and excited and looked smart and lively. After his stint in India and after spending couple of months in Dresden, he was finally being employed at a decent company in Zurich. We went down to the Hotel Restaurant and talked a lot over dinner. At 11:45 PM, we were the only two in the restaurant and had to leave, since we already overstayed for 45 minutes beyond the closure hours.

We continued the talk about Bavarian food, Zurich’s cross-cultural society, Rick’s feelings about his stay in India, Austrian Tourism and Alps, SimManager and MSC, Rick’s new job, Turks in Frankfurt and many more things. It was about 2:30 AM and was time for Rick to start driving again back to Dresden. We said “Tchuz” and hoped to meet again sometime somewhere in this small planet. Rick restarted his rental car and GPS and set off to Dresden.

Got up quite late at around 9:30AM on Saturday and had to quickly sort out my plans for the day. Frankfurt did not seem to be an option any longer. By the time I reached the breakfast floor at the Hotel, it was closed. The lady at the reception said they close by 10. I took a day pass for the train and have her mark the Concentration Camp Memorial Site station. The station was outside the MVV inner ring and I had to take an extra ticket. At Hauptbahnolf (Central Station), while waiting for the second train, I called up Bobby and informed him of the change of plans.

At around 12:30, train reached Dachau station. I had a very bad feeling for the place I was about to go. This was not a place to just enjoy with fun and laughter. It is memorial that reminds humanity of the brutal cruelty by a section of the society on free and educated humankind. From Dachau, for the first time in Munich I got a chance to ride a public transport bus to reach the Memorial site.

Dachau memorial site gripped a sorrowful silence. People were just moving round without much chatter. Memorial site offer two types of tours to the visitors. One is a guided tour by a voluntary organization and the other an audio-guided tour. To learn about the history in a little detail, I opted for the guided tour. Three words welcome you at the entrance or the gate of the Dachau Concentration camp; it reads “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” which translates to “Freedom through Work”.

Dachau was the first concentration camp set up by SS army of Hitler and the only one that was left without any damage after the liberation day in 1945 when Hitler and SS Army was defeated by US and its allies. Other than concentration camps, SS Army formed “extermination camp” located mainly in Poland due to its geographical position at the middle of Europe. Extermination camps, as the name reveals massacred thousands or millions for various reasons known only to SS Army.

Concentraion camps were a result of the extreme patriotism promoted by a group of cruel individuals. They believed that the only way to salvage pride for Germany is by promoting a strong sense of national pride and brutally suppressing even the slightest of opposition. There was no longer freedom of the press; the fundamental human rights were denied for the common man; SS army was quite successful in its initial forming days to spread the terror across breadth and width of the country.

10 years before the SS army was formed, through his book “Mein Kamph”, Hitler openly declared his hostility towards Jews. To Hitler and SS army, anyone who can not work to build arms and ammunitions or who can not be part of the army and fight, were just burden to the nation. Through various “extermination camps” and concentration camps, SS army successfully carried out their mission of mass murder of women, children and weak or sicker population of the society.

Dachau is a reminder to humanity of the state of things that can happen to the world with even a minor section of the society adapting to an extreme and hostile attitude towards the rest of the world. In the modern days, SS army can manifest itself in the form of Al Queda or Bush Administration or Saddam’s regime or LTTE or Parvez Musharaf. It is the need of the hour to identify these uprisings and combat them in a timely fashion. (To be continued...)