Dr. Eric Conway writes:
Day 10 - Dachau, BMW Museum, and Farewell Dinner
Due
to the German national holiday - Corpus Christi - as well as being the
day before our departure, we used our final full day to further explore
Munich. Although the main purpose of these tours is to spread the great
word about Morgan State University in song, as you can tell from the
tour sites visited, we are always trying to give our students
opportunities to learn about their world. What better way to learn
about history than to visit historical sites to become virtually engaged
in the history as much as you can centuries later.
Today
we visited the Dachau concentration camp - very first concentration
camp in Germany. As we entered the property, we saw the deceiving
words: "Arbeit Macht Frei" - "Work will make you free.” Although I do
not want to go in too much detail about the atrocities of the Holocaust
in this report, however, I do want to say that it was good for our
students to see up close and personal man’s inhumanity to man. We sang a
concert at Chizuk Amuno congregation in April on Holocaust Remembrance
Day. Our visit to Dachau was a great follow-up to that concert. I
toiled over whether we should visit a place such as this on the last day
of our tour, but in the end we must never forget, and learn from
humanity's mistakes. See short video clip captured of the exhibit if
you choose to view, (it does show some graphic imagery), and a link to
the audio of a twenty minute presentation about Dachau if you want to
hear a formal lecture on Dachaugg.
From Dachau,
we went back to city center of Munich for lunch on our own. Due to the
holiday, many shops were closed. There were far fewer persons on the
streets. Those who were walking around downtown Munich were in holiday
mode!
BMW stands for Bavarian Motor Works. We
happened to be in Bavaria. We took the time to visit the BMW museum.
Even if you were not a driving enthusiast, you could not happen to
appreciate the beautiful BMW cars of earlier times. The colors of the
cars were brilliantly displayed with colors that one could not help but
to at least take a closer look! The BMW museum - called BMW Welt
(World) - was across from the Munich Olympic stadium where the infamous
1972 Munich Summer Olympics games were held.
After
the museum, we returned to the hotel to begin packing and prepare for
our early departure. At 7 PM, we had a farewell dinner, a short visit
from the hotel. Unfortunately, it rained heavily on the walk to the
restaurant. We fondly reflected on the ten-day tour of this Central
European area.
We were blessed to have an
excellent tour guide, Lela Delic, from Croatia. She was a last-minute
replacement due to an urgent matter that our original guide had to
resolve. It turned out that Lela was perhaps the best guide that we
have ever had during the years of our touring. She was stern when she
needed to be with the group regarding being on time. She also was quite
knowledgeable about the region. She also had a very unique perceptive,
being a former journalist with the BBC.
We immediately went in anticipation of our 5:30 departure in the morning!
Link to audio of Dachau presentation:
Dachua short video:
Musicians in Munich performing on the main square:
Video from BMW museum:
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