Day Three – Saturday, June 2 - Munich, DE to Prague, CZ

Up at 7am with alarm – giving us a good 9.5 hours sleep, but even then we hit the snooze for a few more zzzzs. I enjoyed a “swim” at the 3rd floor pool, which had a lovely view, but was rather small for any sort of laps. Having done some “geriatric style paddling” for a few minutes, I settled down into some “laps” which consisted of pushing off after a flip turn, gliding and taking one pull stroke which led into the next flip turn, push off and repeat. It wasn’t really big enough to put two strokes together, but with the rapid fire flip turns, I managed to get a bit of aerobic exercise before jumping into the Jacuzzi and sauna and returning to the room.

On the road shortly after 10am, heading toward Dachau. My boss and friend Deepak had expressed some surprise when I had told him that we planned to visit the Dachau concentration camp on our second day in Germany. “Don’t you want to have a chance to like the Germans first before you see that?” he’d asked. We figured we could handle it, nonetheless.

Having hit the road without breakfast or morning coffee, we stopped for a croissant & ham breakfast at a lovely, high-end McDonald’s along the way. Yes, of course we realized that we were in Germany and should be enjoying local fare, but there is a history here…let’s call it “Paul’s McDonalds challenge”. I’m not a huge McDonald’s patron in everyday life in the USA, but I have made a point of stopping at a Mickey D’s in every country possible to have something – usually the “local specialty” not available in the US. I’ve tasted McDonalds in Australia, Morocco, Hong Kong, etc., etc., and – what do you know – it all tastes pretty much the same!! But still I carry on with this stupid quest…

We arrived at the KZ Gedenkstätte Dachau at a little before 11AM and got ourselves a pair of the self-guided audio tour hand batons. Both the displays and the audio tour were very informative and well done, but the effect of seeing a site like this is hard to describe. The experience is very emotional and almost surreal…it’s hard to believe that human beings can become so anesthetized to engage in the mass torture, abuse and murder that went on for years in a suburb of Munich. But there you are, walking around on the very spot where this happened realizing that this was only one of many Nazi concentration camps. There was also an uplifting aspect in the stories of the survivors and bonds of the inmates who came from a diverse selection of “enemies of the Reich” including Polish Catholic priests, gypsies, gays, labor leader and, of course, Jews. But given the circumstances, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have joined the people who purposely crossed one of the exterior boundaries in the suicidal hope of being shot and killed as an attempted escapee.

We left Dachau around 1:00PM and headed toward the Czech border. There was a nice stretch of speed-limit-free autobahn, so it was Annette’s chance to see what the new car could do. She got it up to about 125 mph, but didn’t want to push too hard without a bit more experience behind the wheel of the new ride.

About an hour later, we were getting hungry, so we decided to let the Nuvi find us a place to eat along the way. As we were driving, we punched instructions to find a restaurant. It ID’ed several options and we chose the “Park-Café Reichl”, based on the fact that it was a couple of miles away and had an evocative name…as good a reason as any, we figured. We turned off the autobahn and wound down into a small town, Bad Abbach, to the restaurant, which had the look of a classic Alpine roadhouse, complete with exterior wooden beams, and geraniums in flower boxes. The inside wasn’t as charming (or Disney-esque, depending on how you look at it), but we enjoyed a simple German lunch of sausage salad (Schweitzer Wurstsalat mit brot) and toasted ham & cheese sandwich (Schinken-käse sandwich mit salat), and, of course, beer – in this case Paulanerbräu, which has always been a favorite for me based on name if not taste. Annette, who’s never been a big fan of most beer (with the exception of Leffe Brune, one of the great dark Belgian beers), tried a drink which has since become here favorite – Radler. Radler is the unlikely combination of beer and sparkling lemonade, and turns out to be better than it sounds. Much better!

We were back on the road by 3:15 – heading toward Pilzen. The only stop scheduled in Pilzen (Plzen), home of the wonderful Pilsener Urquell, was the Pivovarské Muzeum (beer museum). The museum is housed in a brewery building that dates back to medieval times and displays everything from dioramas of ancient Egyptians laboring over bread and beer making to dozens of barrels, grain roasting kilns, bottling machines and other brewing tools. After a brief stop in the museum, we went to the attached bar to cash in our token for a Pilsner Urquell, then back on the road.

The GPS did a great job of directing us to the Andels Hotel. The Andels Hotel is a very trendy, modern hotel in the Andels district of Prague, which is similarly modern. Our plan was to head into the Old Quarter for dinner, but we realized we had no Czech currency for the subway (which was about a block from the hotel). A nearby ATM served up the Czech cash, but the metro ticket machine wanted coins. Thus, we ended up across the street at Corlione’s Pizza Restaurant, where a quick drink in order to break the big bill, turned into dinner. The simple, thin-crust pizzas were really good and hit the spot for a couple of weary travelers. Before too long we were under the covers in our “design hotel.”