We got it! We got it! The gut really isn't as big as it looks.
 |
 |
| The Englischer Garten in midsummer sun and shade. |
Next morning we're up and out on the road across town to the Englischer Garten. I miss all the turns, and a whole bunch of U-turns later we park the car in an excruciatingly tight parking space and walk toward the Garten. We try to find the Chineschescher Turm but miss all the turns, and a whole bunch of U-turns later we finally find it. We have a Speizi, browse around for a while, and walk back to the car.
Interesting contrast: at the Hirschgarten you walk in, grab a big old mug, fill it and pay, and leave the mug when you're done. At the more touristy Chineschescher Turm, you go up to a booth, put down a deposit on a mug, fill it and pay, and turn the mug back in to collect your deposit when you're done.
We slog our way across town to the ADAC office, buy a couple additional maps and the Swiss highway vignette (you must have a Permit To Exist in order to drive Swiss freeways, it's a tax-thing...) and hit the road for Dachau. Dachau is basically a northern suburb of Munich, a pretty bedroom community with a scattering of small shopping centers. Oh, and an old concentration camp on the fringes of town.
The concentration camp museum is low-key, and the road signs are small - you can imagine that the locals must be ambivalent about its preservation. The administrative buildings still exist, and various religious denominations have built memorials at the site over the past fifty years, but only a single barrack has been recreated. Still, the exhibits are powerful enough and present a decently honest picture of the history of the camp and the brutality and eventual desperation of those who would operate such a place. There's a large map showing the network of transit, concentration, and extermination camps throughout Germany during the Nazi era; I consider myself reasonably well-versed in history's curiosities but the extent and organization of the camps surprised me.
 |
 |
| Dachau and the camp. |
Back to the car and back on the road south. We manage to nudge the speedometer up near 130MPH briefly on the run south from Munich, and cruise at about 100. The car, alas, is proving to be less than perfect: there's a slight but annoying wheel imbalance at about 80MPH.
 |
 |
| Enroute to Mittenwald, and the town. | |
We glide through Garmisch and out to Mittenwald. The entry into town is something like descending into Sausalito (if you know the SF Bay Area) without the bay - down a series of narrow roads into the valley. We find the Post Hotel parking lot by accident - that's the back side of the building, and it's very unimpressive. It's big, and it's dark, but the room is clean and well-insulated, well-maintained, and very 1971, right down to the dial telephone and the built-in state-of-the-art console stereo.
We stow the bags and head out for a walk - the much-more-attractive front of the hotel opens on the Obermarkt, a big carless tourist zone. After half an hour of strolling around we don't find a whole lot to keep our attention, and we start looking at restaurants. Eva doesn't want pasta, or pizza, so we keep wandering and eventually find ourselves in a sweltering Greek restaurant. The food was decent, but the atmosphere stifling.