Munich

Since I'm lazy, I'm just going to list the things we did while we were here.

• Spent lots of time in Munich's beer halls ("biergartens" in German)
• Ate lots and lots of Bavarian food (sausage, sauerkraut, and potato pancakes....mmmmm :))
• Visited the BMW Museum, which was largely uneventful (though the building itself was pretty cool)
• Visited Dachau concentration camp, which was a very sobering experience (pictures below)
• Shopping (after Christmas sales here are amazing!)
• Drinking hot wine and watching ice skaters downtown (which we had intentions of doing but never got around to it)

And things we didn't do (which I really wish we had…):
• Visited Neuschwanstein Castle (which just means I'll have to come back... :))

And finally, some interesting facts:
• Germans use the letter ß in place of "ss"
• Most luxury car manufacturers in Germany follow what is known as a gentlemen's agreement by limiting the top speed of their cars to 250km/hour (155 miles/hour), though this is easy to remove
• Doing the Nazi salute is punishable by a fine of up to 10,000 Euro
• 80% of Munich was destroyed in WWII
• There were 42 assassination attempts on Hitler during WWII, most of which were by Germans
• BMW, along with many other companies, employed slaves from German concentration camps to work on their assembly lines during WWII
• The tea party in America has used propaganda identical to the propaganda used by the Nazi party
• Oktoberfest celebrates the anniversary of former German King Ludwig I