Munich; Saturday, 02 October, 2004

Saturday morning and it was an early start to get to the Oktoberfest early so that we could get a table. Unfortunately my stomach got the best of me, and after a couple of hours at the Oktoberfest drinking only water I decided to head back to the hotel. After about an hour at the hotel (and some more water) I felt better, but decided to give any more beer a miss, so whilst my friends stayed on at the Oktoberfest I went on the short trip out of town on the S-Bahn to Dachau

Dachau itself is a pretty and small town. It should have remained just that, a pretty suburb of Munich, except for the Concentration camp which was built on it's outskirts.

Today the site of the camp has been reopened as a visitors centre. The site is free to look around, though the audio guides that help you to interpret the site cost about €3.

Despite the number of visitors to the site an eerie silence still hangs over a place where over 30,000 people died and many tens of thousands more were held before being sent to their deaths in other camps.

At the back of the site is one of the most distressing places in the whole camp the Crematorium which also includes the gas chamber marked as "Shower"

The site also includes a large museum (KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau) charting the history of the concentration camp system and the crimes that were committed within their walls.

After visiting the museum I caught the bus back into town and had a look around the pretty town centre which is in such a contrast to the bleak foreboding of the camp just 3 miles outside that you can barely believe they both exist in reality.

I then headed back to the station and back into Munich for a spot to eat before heading to bed.