Munich!

Pictures here: Dachau

Ok, so we've made it to Munich - via Mannheim and Stuttgart... but we're here!
We arrive last night around 4 and started by checking into our hotel and doing the other housekeeping stuff... finding a bank machine, deciding what we'd like to do while here... We ended up getting dinner from a grocery store and having sandwiches in a park where there was a giant red O (I mean like 50 feet high!). What it was supposed to symbolise is beyond me. Anyone happen to know?
We ended up walking from there to a square known as "Marienplatz" where there is a large clocktower that has animatronic figures that do some actions at certain times of day... go figure. The thing that's special is that this was built some 400ish years ago! (Did I mention that Munich is celebrating it's 850th birthday this year? - and you thought Montreal was old...) We hung around the square for a while just taking it all in, and partaking in a bit of people-watching... the weather's been clear and hot for the last two days, so it was nice to be in the cooler evening air.
After that we came back here, and just chilled out for the evening, reading books - I'm reading The World According to Garp at the moment, and it's a hard one to put down, so I was up 'til about 1:00 reading, while Tim packed it i around 11, I think.
This morning we made our way over to the train station to meet up with a guide who would give us a tour of the Dachau concentration camp, in the west end of Munich. I'm still digesting everything we learned there, but I'll tell you that walking through the gas chamber (which "only" killed 50 people in practice) was one of the most eerie experiences of my life.
Now we're back at the hotel for a break before dinner, and I've managed to find an open wifi access point to send out an e-mail or two and post this. The hotel advertises free wireless internet, but I'll be darned if I can make it work right

One last observation from Germany - despite the language being one that I am not in the least familiar with, I've found that it's much easier to communicate with people overall - firstly many people speak enlish, and second they're not as intimidating as Parisians seem to be.

That's it from here for now - stay well! Salzburg tomorrow!