Arbeit Macht Frei I didn�t want to go. I really didn�t. I tried to con myself into believing that reading books about the Holocaust and seeing Schindler�s List was enough. I don�t need to see this, I thought. My trip, to now, and with limited exceptions, has been an entirely pleasurable experience. �Why change that?� I asked myself. It was a rhetorical question. I knew I had to go to Dachau. It was loaded with irony, even just approaching Dachau. It was a beautiful day today. The sun was bright and brilliant. There were no clouds in the sky bar light and loose ones at the horizons. There was a light west to east wind that swept across the flat Rhineland plains of which Munich is the capital. The town of Dachau is, actually, beautiful. The town centre has packed early 19th century-looking buildings and cobblestone streets. The countryside has flowing fields punctuated by small streams that come together in the town center, necessitating a small romanesque bridge. It�s beautiful. It�s 2 miles from a death camp. So it goes. I won�t tell you start to finish about my tour of Dachau, because if you�re seriously interested you could undoubtedly find a better website with a more talented writer that can take you visually and historically through the whole camp. I�ll just tell you my impressions. I�ve been thinking a lot about my experiences today. I think they could be explained by one image that I just can�t get out of my head. I was sitting on the far end of the camp, near the memorials. The main barracks of the camp, where the prisoners were kept, were knocked down in the 1960�s because they were decrepit. Only the foundations remain. On days like today, the sun beats down particularly hard on these foundations and the gravel paths around them. Being stone, they take this energy and radiate it around them. The effect is like we see on highways or savannas in summer. It�s as if shouts of horror from all those years ago were rising from the ground and shaking the air. It�s the first manifestation of the heavy atmosphere of the camp. One always hears writers use phrases like �The feeling of death was palpable�, or �It was a heavy atmosphere,� or �If these walls could talk...� and things like that. I�d never actually felt it till today. If the walls in Dachau could talk, they would scream. The vicious nature of this place is brought out by the camp motto, molded in iron on the entrance gate �Arbeit macht frei.� Work will set you free. This is a vicious truth. The only freedom one got in Dachau was death. And death was brought, in most cases, through overwork, like a bitter and compassion-free euthanasia. Dachau is a heavy place. One feels the history, the violence, the barbarism. The feeling is brought to life by little simple explanations in different rooms like �And this blank room in front of you is where countless prisoners were tortured to their death.� This takes a bit to sink in, but when it does, and is compounded by others, like �A man was executed for coughing on that spot you�re standing there,� the atmosphere is heavy and oppressive and sad. A look to the perfect sky above, the rolling fields beyond the fences, garners the question �How on earth could something like that have happened?� The only response to this question isn�t really a direct answer and is posted on the memorial, visible only when leaving, in five languages: Never again... Mike�s Bike Tours On a much, much lighter note, I passed this afternoon/evening on Mike�s Bike Tours. Yea, basically they give you a very silly looking bike with Harley Davidson hog handlebars that come up to your shoulders, and a little bell, usually in an embarassing neon color that used to be reserved for early 90�s spandex and MC Hammer video backgrounds. My tour guide (no, his name was not Mike) was a hilarious englishman named Jason. He�s been doing the tour for something like three years now, and when you weren�t being made to say �Wow...� at the historical or practical significance you were probably nearly falling off your bike you were laughing so hard. Definitely recommended to anybody in Munich. They do tours in Paris and Amsterdam, as well, apparently, so next time I�m in either of those places, I�m going to try and hit them up. Lina, etc. Yea, she didn�t try to kill me and we had a great night last night. We went out with her cousin and her cousins friends to the English garten. Definitely a fun time. Hope to see her friday as well. Much love, everybody. I hope all is well. originally posted on 22 may 2002, edited because of embarassing mistakes 23 may 2002 and reposted.