Day trip! Some more literal last minute planning while on the subway to the main train station led me to take a day trip to the sort-of nearby city of Landsberg am Lech. (Landsberg on the Lech River). It’s a pretty city, with another old town center. There’s not a whole lot to do, but it’s got lots of old medieval relics around the town, mostly in the form of towers.  A little ways south of Landsberg is also the concentration camp, commonly called Landsberg Concentration Camp, Buchloe Concentration Camp, or Kaufering Concentration Camp, though it’s ‘official name’ is Kaufering IV Camp. This is the camp depicted in the TV series Band of Brothers, that was liberated by the E Company, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, though the camp was actually discovered by another group the day before. Unfortunately I found out from the tourist information center, the camp is on private lands, and is not available for public touring like the others, though you could still go up to the fence and takes pictures. It’s a little ways outside of town, with no bus or train service so I decided to not go visit. Oh well.

Another interesting unassuming structure, despite it’s old fashioned architecture is the Landsberg Prison, which held a radical by the name of Adolf Hitler in 1924. 10 years before he took absolute control of Germany, Hitler attempted a failed coup against the Bavarian government, and he was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison, although he was released after only less than one year. He dictated his now infamous book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) within this prison, and here he decided the best way to gain power was ‘legitimately’ instead of through violent revolution. And everyone knows how that ended… After the war it was used as a prison for Nazi war criminals, before being returned to the German Government in the mid 1950’s. All you can see is the old fashioned structure/gatehouse up front, but behind it is a very large prison complex still in use today.

Anyways, the town is quite nice to just walk around and see things. As for the title of the post, the most shocking things was the 3 churches I went in. All very bland and boring on the outside, but on the inside the design, color, decoration and architecture and crazy fantastic. Now let’s get to the fun part: Images here!