Our last day in Munich! We kept meaning to go to Nuremberg, an hour away, to see the Christmas market there, but we only got as far as finding out the train tickets were 60 Euros, which seemed a bit steep, and then we ended up sleeping too late anyway. So for the last day in Munich we headed to the most fun place of all, the Nazi Documentation Museum.
On the way there we passed through the Konigsplatz, a huge square filled with big neoclassical buildings, some of which are museums and some just monuments. This was the heart of Nazi Germany. They completely rebuilt the square to be as impressively dominating as possible. Most of the changes they made were reversed after the war, with several buildings being torn down completely.
The Nazi Documentation Museum sits on the former site of the party headquarters, which was destroyed after World War II. There are no artifacts or fancy displays here, just lots of pictures and text telling the story of what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It is not a place to take kids, for example. But it was very, very sobering, and very worth seeing. One line I remember in particular: "The rise of the Nazi Party was not inevitable. It was the result of regular people not trying hard enough to fight back against extremism."
Anyway, after that we went and got some sausages in a nearby Christmas market. This one was devoted entirely to food.
This is maybe the only time in Germany we encountered somebody who didn't speak English. We ended up pointing to the sausage we wanted and it all worked out great. Then we stood in the street and ate them like all these other people.
After that we went back to our room to pack up! And then we met our friends Art & Leanne, coincidentally also vacationing in Munich, for an early dinner at Restaurant Alter Hof in a building that dates from the 1200s.
It was super fun to see them! The last time we saw Leanne & Art we were in Vermont. Apparently we unconsciously coordinate our vacation plans.
Then one last trip through the Marianplatz Christmas market!
Then we tried to go to bed early and failed and got terrible sleep, because our bodies knew we had to get up at 5:00am to catch a train.
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