A good place to hide out
One of the benefits of bloggery is that people come up to tell me about new restaurants, places that haven’t even started advertising yet. I was fortunate that Eva Hyman told me about Hidout in Lafayette this week, and we had to try it out.
Hideout is in the space formerly occupied by il Giardino, tucked away off Mt. Diablo Blvd. It’s a tiny spot, with seating for 26 indoors plus a 10 person banquet table in a lovely side room. Four more tables outside will be delightful in clement weather. The tables were all taken, so Gail and I sat at the bar, gaining a view of the busy small kitchen.
We quickly made the acquaintance of JB Balingit, the youthful owner and chef. He started out in his family’s restaurant in the Philipines at the age of 10, and just never stopped learning and growing until now he gets to run the show.
Mike the minion and JB the boss
We planned on splitting the pear and feta salad, but the kitchen sent out a Lafayette salad, so that’s what we had. The house offered to bring us the correct dish, but that seemed wasteful, and we appreciated that they had properly divided the dish and brought us two plates. In any event, the salad was mixed greens with strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and cheese–you can hardly complain about that. I cleaned my plate and snagged Gails blueberries.
Originally, I wanted the salmon, but when the waitress told me it was farmed I opted for the pasta putanesca. The owner later told us the salmon that particular day was wild, but it was too late. Fortunately, the pasta was great:
“Whore’s pasta”–tomatoes, capers, onions, kalmata olives, anchovies and garlic
It takes talent to take what is basically a dish popular because it is cheap to make and turn it into a feast, but talent is apparently in abundance here. I loved it.
The wine list is well chosen. Gail chose a chardonnay with which she was unfamiliar and liked it so much we got the bottle back to take a photo:
A chardonnay to remember
Gail had the mac and cheese, and once again Hideout made pedestrian comfort food into a delight. The dish is exceptionally heavy, so she was simply forced to bring half of it home for lunch the next day. Darn.
The food is good, the wine is good, the service is friendly and helpful. Hideout is too small to successfully handle reservations, so seating is first come first served. The owner says you can call before you come down to be put on the wait list, which I’d seriously recommend. They are open for lunch and dinner and Saturday & Sunday brunch, closed Mondays. We’ll be going there again.
Fine dining in Emeryville?
I wrote about the Townhouse in Emeryville a couple of years ago, when we tried it with Jack and Carol, and I remember liking the place quite a bit.
Recently, we’ve eaten there twice as it’s a convenient meeting point for management dinners with Kate and Brad. “Management” is the way you say tax deductible in business school.
The food is good. We are particularly fond of the avocado bruschetta, an enormous appetizer that is attractive, tasty and quite filling:
Sliced ripe avocado on toast with balsamic reduction. Very close to a meal all by itself.
Portions here are large–Gail has twice chosen just to have two appetizers (plus her share of the avocado), and twice thought she had too much food.
Last night the “specials” were a gazpacho with crab and a halibut with crab. Both were very good, both were the same “specials” that were offered two weeks ago. I do not think that word means what they think it does.
I had the pork chop stuffed with Italian sausage.
Stuffed pork chop with mashed potatoes and string beans.
Hard to get more down home classic than pork chop, spuds and string beans, but the stuffing makes it sort-of original. I wish the chop had been cooked a bit less or brined or both; it would have been more tender and juicy. The potatoes and beans were decent, but pedestrian.
Here’s the real problem I have with the Townhouse—the reservation system. They are on Opentable, of course. But for some beknighted reason they have activated the system where you have to give them a credit card to hold you table. Folks, The French Laundry.this place ain’t. People are not clamoring to get in here months in advance.
On top of the credit card issue, they insist on 48 hours notice of cancellation or they threaten to charge you. My life isn’t that easy; things are happening and changing all the time, people have events and trips and families and issues all the damned time and there is often much less than 48 hours notice of a dinner being changed or moved or cancelled.
I tried to talk to the host about this, but he claimed that sometimes they were busy and no-shows were expensive (that part is undoubtedly true–always, always, always call to cancel if you can’t make it). He said Opentable would not let them ask for credit cards only on busy nights: it was all or nothing. I call bullshit on this, other restaurants manage to get card numbers for special nights only. He also claimed that the 48 hour rule was from Opentable, but I doubt that as well. I think the Townhouse is just trying to bully their customers and make a few bucks with petty rules that in the long run make me not want to eat there.
So the bottom line is that the food is good, the service is decent, the location is convenient and the way they treat their customer base regarding reservations is miserable, insulting and unpleasant. They were pretty darned empty last night, maybe you just don’t need a reservation, at least mid-week.
Ice Cream the new way
I’m still coughing like a superannuated Welsh coal miner, but we dragged out to dinner tonight at Lotsa Pasta in Danville with Lisa. Nothing fancy there, just a very good plate of pasta with a goodly variety of sauces and well-turned garlic bread. The restaurant is very small, but there ater 4 or 5 tables outside, and we enjoyed the beautiful evening for a proper meal al fresco.
I was ready for something interesting for dessert, preferably something very cold and smooth to sooth my tired throat. Lisa said there was a new high-end ice cream place a block away on Railroad Avenue and away we walked.
Crafts Creamery is brand new, still in their “soft opening” phase where they are experimenting with hours and systems. Nonetheless, on this balmy Saturday night they were packed to the gunwales and going like the pounding hammers of hell. It’s hard to imagine them doing much more business when they really open.
Crafts is at the head of the latest trend in chi-chi ice cream–the make the stuff on the spot with liquid nitrogen. You order one of perhaps 30 types of ice cream, and the put the mix in a bowl and freeze it right then. Not only does this make some very very good ice cream, but it’s showy and dramatic as well.
A row of mixer/freezers churning out individual servings. The clouds of condensation are all part of the act.
Any ice cream story is a good place to find kids, and the little ones like playing in the cool, billowing clouds of condensation that pour out of the machinery.
These are the 4 Nicholson kids, whose dad was in line just ahead of me. I think they enjoyed the process as much as they enjoyed the ice cream treat.
Our timing was good–soon after we arrived the line snaked almost out the door. Ordering takes a bit, with multiple choices of ice cream base, flavor and then topping. Then you get a chair and wait, because somebody has to make your dessert on the spot.
The system needs a bit of refining at the finish. The store is quite noisy and acoustically awful, so it is almost impossible to hear the your woman at the end of process try to call out numbers to get the finished produce to the customer. I suspect they will end up with some kind of sign board that flashes the current number, or they will have to hire somebody like me to be heard above the crowd. No, I won’t work for ice cream.
The show is good, but the most important thing is the product, and Crafts Creamery delivers. I had chocolate hazelnut ice cream with banana, butterscotch and whipped cream, and it was pretty perfect. The ice cream is very smooth, cold but not hard and with excellent mouth feel. The bananas were fresh cut, the whipped cream had the right amount of sweetness, the whole thing was just what I wanted.
To put all that in visual terms:
Lisa with French Vanilla, peanuts and butterscotch
Not surprisingly, very good cutting edge trendy is expensive. Three cups of ice cream completely chewed up a $20. In this world, you have to pay for your pleasures.
Crafts Creamery is already jammed. Get there soon before you need a reservation for an ice cream cone.
A Man’s Gotta Ramble
I haven’t written much lately, and now I have a bunch of things to ramble on about–no big main topic today.
I was a bad boy this morning; I took a very long, hot shower.Not that I was being indulgent in the midst of a drought, but 6 days of ceassless coughing had me talking, again, to the Kaiser Advice nurce show suggested that the warm moist air would be good for unclogging my lungs. It works–I’m breathing better than I have in days.
These damn summer colds are a slow, weary pain. Viral in nature, they don’t respond to antibiotics so you can’t get them cleared up with a Z-pack or course of Amoxicillin. You just have to miserably soldier through, powering down hot tea and honey, cough drops and hot showers. Of course, at bedtime there is the best of all cures–Thera-Flu, tea, honey and bourbon. Lots of bourbon. A good nights sleep won’t cure the cold, but enough bourbon and you’ll feel better in the morning anyway.
PROPAGANDA FAIL
The situation in Greece has been very interesting this week. The people were asked to vote on whether or not to accept a bailout deal which would include even more austerity cuts. The last five years of austerity have cratered the Greek economy, leading to 25% unemployment, so it is no surprise that they aren’t eager for more of the same.
Big business and big banks, though, want the bailout on any terms because they will get back the money they have loaned Greece, at the expense of the populace. If loaning interest you, it’s best to click this link now loanigo.co.uk to meet the best brokers who will help you throughout the loaning process. If you noticed, all the new articles leading up to today’s elections have been rosy about the referendum receiving a “yes” vote, or saying that the election was too close to call. Greek television only showed demonstrations for the “yes’ vote. That was pure propaganda, desperately trying to sway the election.
When the results came in today, NO won 61% to 39%. The propaganda program failed miserably, just as the austerity program has.
I understand that the French and the Germans have no desire to continue funding a country where people retire at 50 and cheating on your taxes is the norm. I also know that Lord Keynes was right, and you have to spend your way out of an economic disaster. Yes, those two statements are in opposition, and that’s why I’m glad I’m not a central banker in Europe right now.
RESTAURANT FAIL
Some good news–our friend Nyles Gregory has been looking for a job in the Bay Area for almost 10 yeas (while working for the Park department in Pasadena) and perseverance paid off. He is going to work in Berkelely, in a better job at more money. Now he can stop commuting every other week to visit his sweetie, Gail’s friend Reed.
To celebrate, we went out to FARM at the Carneros Inn, one of our favorite places. Instead of sitting down to dinner, we chose to sit in their outdoor arcade, where there are comfortable seats and sofas, low tables and a beautiful fire pit. We started with some fancy champagne Reed brought:
This is the good stuff
The restaurant charges $25 if you bring in your own bottle, which is still much cheaper than what they mark up Dom Perignon. This is a “brut”, which means sweet, which means I like it, since I have the sweet tooth of a 4 year old. I have no idea why somebody thought it would be cool to use the word “dry” to mean not-sweet, and I never get the concept of a dry liquid. IPerhaps the reason I don’t drink is that it’s just too confusing for me. It looks nice, though.
The wine looks beautiful, and so does Reed in the backgournd.
We ordered food, and things took a turn for the worse. FARM has always had an excellent, thoroughly trained waitstaff, ready to explain all the intricacies of the complex dishes they produce. I don’t know where they got the waitress we had, but she had no clue.
Because it was such a special occasion, we thought we’d start with the caviar. Well, we ordered it first at least. ALL the other appetizers we ordered came, at once, first. They were excellent, as we have come to expect. They just weren’t caviar.
In fact, she forgot it. We had to tell her again what we wanted.
Finishing the caviar, we ordered a couple more dishes, and a bottle of champagne. The house was having some special event centered around Veuve Cliquot, so that’s what we ordered. The waitress said they were out. Then she went back to get the cheese plate. Then we asked again about the champagne, and she managed to find a bottle.
The cheese plate arrived, but I was underwhelmed. It sure looked like three servings of the exact same cheese to me, so I asked our server what we had. She replied, “a goats milk scheese, a sheeps milk cheese and a cows milk cheese.” You will understand if I didn’t find that answer either responsive or convincing.
Servers shouldn’t lie–if they don’t know, they are supposed to find out the answer, not make something up. I asked her what one of the items accompanying the cheeses was, and she told me “those are pearls infused with tapioca.” Gibberish. The pearls ARE the tapioca.
I could go on, but you get the point. We had an untrained, untrustworthy, less than acceptable waitress. I still like FARM, but my respect has been considerably diminished. The front of house manager has some work to do.
INFLATION
Am I the only one noticing our economy getting inflated as hell? We bought 2 loaves of bread last week for a party and it came to almost $10–that’s absurd. The corn that used to be 10¢ an ear is 3 for a dollar.
I see cities making a big deal out of raising the minimum wage, and then I wonder what difference it is going to make–employers just have to raise prices and the new wages don’t buy any more than the old.
Berkeley institued a tax on sugared drinks, and we raised prices to cover the tax, as did everyone else.
I feel like this is insidious, like nobody is particularly noticing that we’re all floating in money while the buying power keeps shrinking and we’re barely keeping even without being aware of it.
Secret laws suck
The new CHP cars
I got a speeding ticket Saturday, driving down I5, heading to Fresno.
Motoring smoothly at 83 MPH, fast lane, cruise control set, I saw the CHP cruiser on the other side of the freeway hit his lights and power into a U-turn across the median. Knowing I was cooked, I just pulled over and waited for the inevitable.
I’ve been up and down that road dozens of times, and every single one I get upset that the speed limit is a secret. Yes, I know that the signs say “70 mph”, but I also know that nobody ever, ever, ever got cited for going 72. Or 75. Or 77. Until Saturday, I would have said that the real, true, enforced speed limit was 85, and I still think thats’ generally true.
It infuriates me that nobody will admit what we all know–there is a speed limit somewhere, but it’s a secret and the police can change it anytime if they are behind on their “performance review standards” (because ticket writing quotas are illegal, but under another name……………)
If you tried to drive 70 in the fast lane the fuzz would cite you for driving too slowly. I’d love to take 2 cars, drive the speed limit next to each other and see how long it took to get pulled over and chewed out for blocking traffic.
Ask the cops what the limti is, and you’ll be told in their most serious and stentorian tones “The speed limit is 70 mies per hour, strictly enforced at all times”. That’s a damned lie, and if they had any self respect they would be ashamed of themseves. Sadly, self-respect is surgically removed at the police academy.
This is just a game. Speeding tickets are a random tax; drive long enough and you’ll have to pay. We are subject to a law that is enforced capriciously and idiosyncratically, as dependent on the cops moods as on our driving. I’ve driven as fast a 110 on that road without issue, and had people pass me while I was doing it. Interstate 5 was designed for a posted speed limit of 80, which means people would drive 90 regularly, but now the police and courts will self-righteously claim it is “unsafe” to exceed 70. Of course, the insurance companies love this as they raise the rates of the poor schlubs who get nabbed in the scam that is traffic enforcement.
And that leads me to the second part of the problem–the essential unfairness of our judicial system. I’m cranky about that ticket, but it doesn’t much matter. I’ll pay the fine, pay the fees to take traffic school, pay the school, take the course online and be done with it. If I was a guy who worked at Burger King, this would be a catastrophe–the fine could be a weeks pay, I might not own a computer or know how to take traffic school online and would be out a full day to take the live course. One speeding ticket could make the difference between paying the rent and being homeless, and that ‘s a high price to pay for an unpredictiable system that can strike without warning.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that we could have realistic speed limits, like 80 or 85 on the interstates, clearly and strictly enforced. That would require realism from the politicians as well as honesty and openness from the police, though, so I suppose it’s just a pipe dream
We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Clown Car
The Donald
As if the Republican presidential race wasn’t sufficiently surreal already, with Ben Carson telling us that prison proves homosexuality is a choice, Jeb Bush afraid to use his last name, Carly Fiorina claiming that running HP into the ground is experience, Ted Cruz (born in Canada) saying Obama isn’t a citizen, Rich Santorum telling the Pope to mind his own business and Rick Perry, like Sarah Palin, now sporting clear glasses to look smarter, Big Don Trump stopped pussyfooting around this morning and announced that he is actually, really, in fact running, not just playing the press as he has the last few go-rounds.
I tried to watch his speech, I really did, but a man can only take so much. There are no $3 websites. My deductibles have not gone up because of Obamacare. Unemployment is not 18-20%. President Obama is a natural born citizen. The man is a walking, talking pile of bullshit, crowned with his signature comb-forward.
It’s OK that Colbert went off the air and Stewart is leaving–these clowns will give us all the laughs we need.
Catching up
Home for a week, it’s time I finished the trip here on the blog.
Dachau and then BMW made for a very full day, but there was no way I was going to leave Munich without taking the kid to the Hofbrauhaus, where they have been brewing beer since 1589.
The same location since 1609.
It’s a huge facility, with arched, painted ceilings, an oom-pah band pumping up the crowd, and a horde of staff delivering huge mugs of beer. I got absurdly, stupidly, shamefully drunk here in 1974; I’m glad they let me back in.
The young master, looking like an American tourist should. One of these beers is mine, but he drank a good part of it.
The next morning we took the train to Zurich, enjoying the ride through the Alps, a fine meal on the train and on-time arrival at the huge Zurich Bahnhof.
My God, is Zurich expensive!. Worse than London, worse than Tokyo.Get into a taxi, and it is 6 CHF (Swiss Francs) for the flag drop, 80CHF an hour waiting time–which is important, because Zurich has horrendous traffic and it takes forever to get anywhere. The taxi from the train station to the hotel is perhaps 1 mile, and drained 25CHF (about $27) from my wallet. (The abbreviation “CHF” is derived from the Latin name of the country, “Confoederatio Helvetica”.)
The good news is that it’s a beautiful city where everything works, the streets are clean, the people are nice and the food is good. I guess all that is worth a few more francs.
With one full day to explore, we laid out a plan–first stop, the Kunsthaus. A very modern museum with an extensive collection including three pieces by Van Gogh I hadn’t seen before:
There was an Alberto Giacometti exhibit, perfect for a pair of sculpture lovers. Since his signature style was very tall and very thin people, his work is almost impossible for me to photograph, but I found one piece with 4 small figures on top that demonstrate his work:
Finally a Giacometti I can photograph
Fully sated with art, we dedicated the afternoon to a city tour by bus and boat–Zurich lies on the waters of the Zurichsee, Lake Zurich, a 24 mile long narrow lake. It was a very warm, sunny day and Zurichers were out in force on their beaches, docks and boats.
The tour stopped at the Fraumünster church, where Marc Chagall created world famous stained glass windows–an interesting choice for a Jewish artist.
After the boat cruise came a long and expensive taxi ride back to the hotel, and the difficult decision of where to eat dinner. We settled on the Kronenhalle, reputedly #80 on a list of the world’s top 100 restaurants. For this, we ironed our shirts and dug out the good shoes.
Kronenhalle has been a city landmark since 1921, frequented by noblemen, politicians and artists, by Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and James Joyce, who wrote much of Ulysses in the bar. The art collection is staggering–the walls are covered with a priceless variety of work by Chagall, MIro, Picasso, Rodin, Matisse, Bonnard and Giacometti.
Gail and Toby. That’s a Miro behind them.
Kate and I in front of a Chagall.
The dining room is what you would expect–rich wood, heavy silver, thick linen. Even the flowers were spectacular:
Roses for the table
The surroundings are stunning, but the food is what matters. Kate started with avocados served in a fashion I’ve never seen:
As lovely a presentation of sea bass as you will ever see.
I can’t resist venison, even when it comes with chantarelles:
Meat and potatoes, Swiss style
Gail and Toby had the lamb chops–carved tableside from a rolling cart. This is more show biz than culinary necessity, but it’s a nice touch.
Is he from central casting or the culinary academy? And who cares?
Dessert was more theater–we ordered the chocolate mousse, and they brought out a huge crock of pudding, artfully scooping it into large quenelles then napping them with creme anglaise.
More tableside showmanship.
The final product:
Dessert fit for royals.
A sumptuous dinner in spectacular surroundings, the perfect end to an excellent vacation.
Then the bill came. I expected it to be horrendous, but it exceeded my expectations, so much so that I stopped to check it, and found a tiny error–CHF138, to be precise. Just about $150 too much. Getting that corrected lowered the bill to the neighborhood of the national debt of Bolivia, but it was worth it.
I thought we had a 10am flight, but the airline said they had changed our flight to 7am, which is far too early for our taste. It took a bit of wrangling and sternly reminding American Airlines that when THEY change my flight, I get to change to any other flight that is more convenient without charge. We ended up with better flights and got home sooner than expected.
This was a delightful trip, There were a few bumps, but that’s what adventure is all about. Life is good.
Big Boy’s Toys
BMW. Bayerische Motoren Werke. Bavarian Motor Works. Very nice family cars, mind-rocking sports cars and motorcycles. We saw two sides of Germany in one day–started out at the somber Dachau, then went to the temple of fine sheet metal, the BMW Museum.
Corporate headquarters on the left, museum on the right
The corporate headquarters building is designed to evoke a 4 cylinder engine. The museum building is called “the bowl”, and is clearly modeled on the Guggenheim museum in New York, with an interior ringed by a spiral ramp.
Inside is a phenomenal collection of BMW’s and Mini Coopers (BMW now owns Cooper, as well as Rolls Royce. There are no Rolls in the collection.). Each car is magnificently, perfectly restored to its pristine original condition, maybe even better than new. The place is like an automotive jewel box.
1939 Model 335
The hotel concierge arranged for us to join one of the the guided tours. Anyone can just walk in and buy a ticket to the collection, but taking the guided tour improves the experience tenfold.
Our tour guide perfect but strangely accented English, using a radio and earphone system that worked badly–surprising in a place so high tech. He was incredibly well trained and knowledgeable, kept the tour moving and was a complete pleasure.
The forerunner of the modern motorcycle
BMW is famous for motorcycles, too. Our friend Karl Rowley has been riding a Beemer for 40 years or so (not the same one, they keep getting better). They originated the flat, two cylinder engine and the shaft driven motorcycle, he looks awesome wearing his shoei helmets while riding such an amazing bike. I can’t look at the bike above and not think of it as much as a work of art as a machine.
The building is a multi-story affair, with great open interior spaces.. There is a vantage point where you can look down on some of the most beautiful of roadsters:
An eye level shot of two of them:
How beautiful. A 1934 model 315/1
1998 Z1–notice the doors retracting into the body.
There were some strange and exotic things, too.
1955 Isetta. There is only one door–the front of the vehicle opens out, steering wheel and all.
The Isetta seats two and goes about 50 miles an hour, if there isn’t a headwind. There are two very very small wheels in the back.
Who hid the engine in this 1964 Model 700?
The engine is in the rear, of course. An air-cooled flat four–somebody was peeking at Volkswagens. This vehicle was not a success.
Maybe it’s a German Corvair.
.
There was a wonderful race car– a winner of the famed Miglia Milla, the 1,000 mile road race through Italy.
1939 Model 328
It looks pretty good from the front, too.
From the sleek, fast, techno-wonder of the Beemers, we moved to the Bowl to see an exhibit of Mini-Coopers. The part I liked the most was the specialty versions that have been created over the years:
Finally, we come to the most beautiful car I have ever seen. A convertible street version of the race car above. Although it was powerful and fast, I doubt that it drove as well as my Chrysler 200. Who cares. This car is like liquid sex.
1939 BMW 328
I’m in love.
Duct taped to the wing
looking forward. from steerage to business class
We’re on our way home. In fact, we’re 36,000 feet over Minnesota as I type this. Wifi on airplanes is wonderful.
Gail got the only upgrade on this flight. When I asked, they just laughed, handed me a roll of duct tape and pointed out the way to the wing.
We had quite an experience leaving Zurich this morning. We asked for some help so Gail didn’t have to walk all the way to the gate, and were off on an adventure. A man came with an electric cart, and all three of us piled on. We drove towards security, where they have an automatic system to check your boarding pass, then into the security gate itself.
First, they made Kate delete the video she was making because it might have shown some personnel. Then an absurdly thorough screening; contents of my backpack checked, removed from bag and swiped, scanned and re-checked, pat down so complete I may be engaged to a guy in Switzerland and a litany of insane questions.
Finally cleared, we got back into the cart, drove into an elevator, went up, drove for ages, into another elevator, went down, drove some more and got out
Now we were at passport control, but only for the people in carts. One officer, with lots of questions like how long were you here, where did you come from, where are you going, what page did they stamp on your entry to Germany? There were also three people sitting by an X-ray machine doing nothing in case anyone came in the other direction.
Finished with that inquisition, we now got into a van and drove five minutes on hidden underground roads around the airport to our gate
Another elevator, up, some more security people with the same inane questions about did anyone give you anything, and at last we were ready to board the plane.
The plane was a Boeing 767, and I don’t like it. The interior design team should all be fired, or sent through Zurich security three times a day for a month.
The tray is impossible to get out, and harder to replace. There is a touch sensitive light switch on the armrest which only works a couple of obscure mini-lights, but your arm constantly turns them on and off. The switch for the larger overhead lights is hidden in a closed compartment so well concealed you will never find it. The attendant call button is in the same place, but it doesn’t work, or the crew doesn’t work. In any event, we had little service. The seats aren’t very comfortable and don’t adjust well. A pox on the 767.
After a two hour wait in JFK, we boarded the final flight, then sat at the gate for an hour while some mystery fix was effectuated on some nameless system.
We’ll be home in about four hours, I’ll sleep in my own bed and all will be right with the world. The end of another cool trip.
Dachau
There’s a frightening name–Dachau. Nazi Concentration Camp #1, opened just 2 months after Hitler and his party came into power. Not a happy place, but an important one in history, something we don’t want to forget. The Travel Goddess thought it would be “yucky”, but it wasn’t. Decidedly not someplace to be missed.
We took a tour. Met at the Radius Tours office in the train station, then an 11 minute ride to the city of Dachau, a 60,000 person suburb with green lawns and tree lined streets. Got on the city bus and rode past JFK Plaza to the memorial.
You start with the front gate:
Work makes you free.
Over 200,000 people passed through this gate, from 1933 to 1945, all terrified with foreboding of the horrors within. People often associate the concentration camps with the Holocaust, the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, but forget that in total over 12 million died: Jews, Catholic clergy, homosexuals, Gypsies, political oppositionists of all variety. The Nazis were equal opportunity murderers.
The camp began as a place to hold political prisoners; anyone who in any way opposed the government. They were systematically stripped of identity, dignity, courage and hope. Dachau was not an extermination camp, designed solely to murder people in mass numbers, although many did indeed perish.
Administration building and the vast yard for roll call
Our guide was a man from Wisconsin who emigrated here to be a teacher. He was immensely knowledgeable about the entire history of the Nazi Party and gave a depth to the story of the camp we truly appreciated.
The administration building seems to go on forever. It now houses the Museum and the cinema, where a film about the camp is shown.
Life in Dachau followed a direful progression. Barracks that at first held 50 men were progressively overfilled until they held 400, while every tiny amenity, such as the possibility of having a photo of a loved one, was removed.
Replica of the barracks. Each bunk would hold many men.
Toilet facilities designed to dehumanize
Regardless of the overcrowding, everything has to be immaculately clean and neat. A scrap of paper on the floor would get an entire building penalized.
Lockers
Dachau was not only the first camp, it adjoined the SS training center for all the camp guards. In the entire 12 years of operation, there was only one escape, partly because the other side of the wall was the training facility–there was literally no place to go.
Foundations show where rows and rows of barracks stood, with a guard tower behind them.
The camp was surrounded by a grass strip, which was death to step on, a fence, a ditch, another fence, an electrified fence, a moat and yet another fence. And then the training camp. It is surmised that many of the “escape attempts” were in actuality suicides.
Ditch and fence, just a part of the security system
Although Dachau was not an extermination camp, a gassing room was constructed but never used.
Entrance to the gas chamber
The sign above the door “brausebad”, means shower. The German people no longer use this word, preferring “duche” instead.
Vaunted German efficiency continues to amaze–the guide, and the museum exhibits, give incredibly specific number for what happened here. They don’t say 200,000 people, they say 206,341 (as an example). The number who died is not 32,000, but 31,xxx, an exact number I can’ t perfectly quote.
Those 32,000 (approx) presented a problem of disposal that was solved with a crematorium. And then another.
The original crematorium
The secondary facility, larger and hotter to work faster.
The nation of Germany has done an admirable job of avoiding revisionism–they face their past squarely and honestly, believing that only by acknowledging the errors of the past can they be prevented in the future. There is no shying away from the painful and ugly truths of the concentration camp system, which grew to over 1100 separate camps spread throughout the Reich.
Today, Dachau is dotted with memorials and art that commemorate the dead and enjoin against reliving it.
Freedom way, the street between the rows of barracks. A Catholic memorial is at the end.
Artwork created by a former prisoner, depicting bodies on the barbed wire.
The visitors center contains a bookstore with books both by and about the prisoners of the camp and the history of the third Reich. Admission is always free.
Here is yet another monument to the tragedy of Dachau:
Five languages, one meaning.
There are religious memorials from Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Visiting Dachau isn’t a fun trip, but it is important. The way to avoid totalitarianism is to be aware of it from the start and never forget its dangers.
I’ll end this with a Jewish memorial, which seems to me to include remembrance of the past and hope for the future:
Never Again
Totally Unauthorized 