This morning we checked out of the hotel, and went to the city center, Marienplatz, to watch the Glockenspiel at 11am. The whole thing took about ten minutes to complete. I’d have to say it was a little underwhelming for all of the hype. The figures mostly just moved in circles and/or spun around. After that, most of the people in our group left for Dusseldorf. The three of us that stayed behind had tickets to the Bayern Munich game that afternoon. It was pretty easy to find our way there – follow the masses of people on the subway. The game was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The amount of people at the game and the quality of the team were both amazing. After the game we took an overnight train to the Dusseldorf airport. We were expecting just to have chairs for the nine hour journey, but somehow we ended up in a sleeper car. We got a lot better sleep than we would have sitting up the whole time. The three older people in our car were on their way to Brussels, and helped point us in the right direction for our connecting train when we arrived in Cologne. Without them it wouldn’t have been to hard to misread the sign and miss our train. We got to the airport about three hours before everyone else, so sat around for a while and prepared for the long flight home.

Today some of us went on a tour of the BMW plant in Munich. The plant is located in the Olympic park and was a pretty neat place. The whole thing took about two hours, but we got to see almost the whole process of how BMWs are made. The entire plant, except for the motor assembly, is almost completely automated. Robots make the cars. This was a pretty incredible thing to see, especially considering how precise they have to be. Later that night we went to another big tourist attraction, the Hofbräuhaus. The place was packed, but the huge one-liter beers were a nice way to end the day.

Today we went to the first concentration camp in Germany. Dachau was primarily a work camp, unlike some of the others. The camp had an extensive museum set up in the main building with tons of information. Outside, a lot of the camp is gone now, but the a handful of buildings and the crematoriums still remain. Although the gas chamber at Dachau was never used, the crematoriums were used every day. When we left the camp we went back towards the center of the city. We walked around for a while and did some shopping. Later that evening we all went out to the Paulaner Brauhaus and hung out and talked for a while. One thing that I like about these trips is that you’re forced to get to know people that you might otherwise not.

Today we started our last three, and free, days of the trip. The majority of the group got on the train to Munich. When we got off the train, we walked about twenty minutes to try and find the hotel we were staying in. We finally found it, had to buzz our way in, the walked four floors up the unlit staircase. Some people were a little skeptical. Everything turned out to be pretty good. We went out that night to a “chicken restaurant” that the guy at the hotel suggested. I had half of a chicken, which was some of the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had. We walked around for a little bit afterwards, but when we didn’t find much we headed back to the hotel. We turned on a movie and eventually fell asleep.