We walked up to the area near the train station where there is an Easy Internet Cafe. We've used Easy Internet before and they are very good. You buy a ticket (90 euro cents per hour, minimum purchase 50 euro cents) with a password on it, and you can sign on and off as much as you want until it is used up.
Shari found an interesting place for us to stay in Salzburg. It is a camp ground that provides 4-person platform tents, so we just need our fleece sleeping bags. They also have community kitchen facilities so we can cook rather than buying take away food like we have been doing in Germany. For the most part, the hostels in Germany don't have self catering kitchens. Shari made reservations at the campground for Saturday and Sunday. We couldn't really find anything that sounded good for Innsbruk so we will wait uintil we get to Salzburg and ask if they have any recommendations.
We came back to the hostel after using the internet and read and rested for awhile and then walked up to a different part of the city for a guided walking tour that started at 3PM. The tour was just over 2 hours and was led by a young woman who was fun to watch and listen to, but wasn't as good a tour guide as some of the others we've met. It was great ot see another part of the city, the Marianplatz area, a much nicer area than the train station area or where our hostel is.
After the tour we walked in the English Gardens, a huge park with lots of trails, a lake and a river - all man-made). It is well known because nude sunbathing is allowed in the park (we didn't see any nude people though). We walked a lot today - up and back to the internet about a mile each way, and then from 3PM - 8:30PM. I was happy to go to bed early, although it was still hot in the room.
8/15: Boy did it rain last night! It cooled off the room somewhat about 4AM, but it was still warm. It stopped raining by the time we got up so we were going out to Dachau this morning. When I signed onto email I had gotten a message confirming our flights to St. Thomas in January. I read the email and realized I had screwed up the reservations. I had booked flights between Miami and what I thought was Charlotte Amalie (the main town in St. Thomas) but what I booked by mistake was Charlotte, North Carolina. I was so flustered and depressed by my mistake, it stuck with me all day and pretty much ruined my day. I checked other flights to St. Thomas and got phone numbers for American Airlines, but I was never able to get anyone on the phone. I just used up my phone card minutes. Twice I got a "call back later" message and once it said someone would be with me in 30 minutes. So I did what I always do when I have a problem when I'm traveling. I wrote to Susan asking for help. I had used my frequent flier miles for our tickets so they were free. I just hope they don't charge too much to change them.
After I used the internet and made my unsuccessful calls, we took the S-bahn and bus out to Dachau to visit the concentration camp memorial site. It was very moving being there. We got there about noon and stayed for about 3.5 hours. We rented headsets and walked all over the memorial site - the roll call area, the bunker, the barracks, the entry area, the museum, the crematorium, the religious memorials and the monument that was erected in 1965. Dachaua was Nazi Germany's first official concentration camp, created in 1933 by Heinrich Himmler. Before it was liberated by American GIs in 1945, tens of thousands of people from over 34 nations suffered and died there at the hands of the Nazis. During the 12 years of its existence about 206,000 people were held prisoner there, of which at least 32,000 died. Dachau was a model for the other concentration camps and it was also a training center for the SS, where recruits were indoctrinated into a system which encouraged the torture, humiliation and killing of prisoners. A horrifying place and an extremely well done memorial. I would recommend a visit to Dachau to anyone visitng the Munich area.
We came back to downtown Munich about 4:30 so we could see the mechanical figures move and the chimes sound in the carillon (Glockenspiel) in the tower of the New Town Hall at 5PM. Munich was heavily damaged during World War II (only 5% of the residents survived intact) and the buildings were rebuilt to look old. The new town hall looks like a building hundreds of years old.
We then went back to the hostel and found we have three new young people in our room. They had stuff all over the place but seemed very nice and were interesting to talk to. We got a good deal for dinner. You can buy half-price pizza from the cafe next door if you buy a ticket for the pizza through the hostel before 7PM. We bought the ticket and split a terrific pizza. I had a McDonald's sundae and went to bed about 9PM
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