Day Eleven: Munich to St Goar, Northern German countryside town...

Today started not like your average day.

As we approached Dachau concentration camp, just outside Munich, we immediately engaged in a most sobering experience...

When we walked in through the gates to the camp entrance it was like stepping into history and reliving the tragedy that was the Holocaust. We could see numerous barracks, where Jewish prisoners lived in horrid conditions and made to work.

We walked through the crematoriums; where Jews were burnt alive and then the 'bathrooms' where Jews were told they were being taken to shower, when in fact they were to be gassed. The gas chambers even resembled showers to an extent, and we were able to stroll straight through them. This was the part for me which moved me most.

Our early morning piece of history definitely woke us up and made us both appreciate Germany whilst also disliking German history at the same time. It was something that although was not a particularly happy highlight of the contiki tour, it was a must-do and a throughly reflective encounter.

As we left Dachau we were not in the best of spirits. But we quickly we brought back to the realisation that we were headed to another destination and another new kind of experience: St Goar.

Before arriving in St Goar, we made a rather expensive service stop for lunch. Ouch went the bank accounts. Lunch was not even remotely cheap. All and all, this was where Lauren and I tried one amazing frankfurter. When in Germany....
Then of course there was movenpick icecream, another German specialty which we couldn't resist indulging in. However, even after my time working at a Movenpick store back in Wellington, I chose possibly the worst flavours. Cherry and Rum. One: I hate cherry and Two: I was to say the least, hungover so the last thing I felt like was the taste of alcohol. Not a wise choice. 

We arrived in the beautiful town of St Goar. It was a particularly picturesque location and Garai pointed out to us the Loreley Rock and the Mermaid statue, which made the petite town so very renowned. We saw countless castles in the hills as we passed through the town and headed to our hotel.

After climbing up the ridiculously narrow and steep stairs to our rooms and dropping off our overnight bags, we walked a very short walk to the main street to the beerstein store for a demonstration. We saw hundreds upon hundreds of beautifully designed and unique beersteins within the large store. The biggest beerstein in the world was one of them. Very cool. There was even a specially designed Contiki Europe one. Fancy that.

After we visited the original store of the first teddy bear. Very cool indeed.

We wandered through the street- not streets- there was only really the one street, and Lauren and I were on a mission; we had to find vanilla cigars. And we did! We bought the whole shop out of their stock funnily enough. However, we did only purchase four each. If only we could have bought more... Sigh.

We had a rather heavy and fairly average dinner at the hotel then headed off to the white wine tasting closeby. We wandered down a dark narrow staircase, the twenty of us or so that opted to take part, and one after the other we received five very different types of white wines that were characteristic of the region. Most of them were delicious, and we could all feel ourselves getting progressively tipsy. We then were all given a small taste of a VERY expensive wine, and it was absolutely delicious. At this point, we really knew who the lightweights were...

With our cigars in one hand and a beer in the other, we headed down to the waterfront area. We enjoyed our cigars a little too much....

We were ushered away from the police boat which we all found rather amusing, and instead headed to the hotel pub. We didnt want to stay put, so we decided to see what was happening elsewhere. And well, there was absolutely NOTHING going on. It was a Monday night after all I suppose. So we found small things to entertain ourselves; for instance, lying on the road and imitating 'the notebook' scene... 

...and bumping into random teenagers on their skateboards etc etc. After awhile we decided to make it a quiet one - well some of us did, others just caused complete mayhem downstairs in the bar - and prepare for the folllowing day: "AMSTERDAMAGE".