Three Museums, Two Cities, One Tent

While we are keen to keep the pace of the travels up, we felt an exception could be made for Dachau. Since that meant we would be too late to visit Nuremberg in the same day, Ingolstadt seemed a perfect replacement as it halved the driving time and meant we could have one more day on the Danube before heading into the heart of modern Germany.

While not thrilled to be going back to a concentration camp, since we were near Dachau, the first camp, it felt like an important historical experience. Pictured above is the sign from the gate Arbeit Macht Frei: work sets you free. Incidentally that gate is a replica because the original was stolen in 2014. Although it was anonymously found in Norway in 2016 and returned.

A view of the main administrative block in front of the roll call area.

As the camp grew and later became home to huge numbers of inmates that were transferred there as the Polish camps were liberated. One of the example barracks had the sets of beds from the camp chronologically as it became fuller. Pictured above are the beds from the final stage when the camp had 60,000 inmates.

Despite the emotional whiplash of visiting a concentration camp then a toy museum, Rob was able to cope given the excellent castle section.

Our first stop in Ingolstadt was the Stadt museum, containing the toy museum, and museum number 2 of the day. One of my favourite exhibitions was the coinage one which had a really cool collection of coins from the early 20th century. On the left you can just see the coinage of the German Empire which fell further and further into inflation until the famous hyperinflation of 1923 destroyed its value completely. The subsequent Rentenmark and Reichsmark introduced in 1924 are also present on the next two sets of coins. Then the Nazi coinage can be seen as the all silver coins of the central bloc: curiously more focused on Hindenberg than on Hitler himself. Finally on the right you can just see the coinage of the FRG from the post-war era which was followed by the GDR currency after it. That's 6 different issues of coins in roughly 20 years. And to think, English people kicked off about our notes going from paper to plastic...

One of the really cool features of Ingolstadt was how the town chose to use the space from the old city walls. Some towns we have visited have used that space as a modern ring road, like Valence in France, while others allowed it to become a ring of state buildings around the city like Vienna. Ingolstadt seems to have gone down the same route as Ypres and many Belgium towns and create a ring of trees. This started in the 1860s and has left the residential area of Ingolstadt separated from the commercial town with a beautiful circular woodland. 

Between museum 2 and 3 we wandered our way through the rather picturesque town of Ingolstadt and stopped in our favourite Greggs alternative: Backwerk.

Bavaria, as one of Germany's oldest states, has a long history of waring with the other German states including the incredibly devastating 30 years war. While tragic this did have the side effect of there being a massive collection of arms in the Bavarian Military Museum, including these minecraft-looking squiggly swords.

The Bavarian army museum was beautifully curated into sections on the methods of war, its development, and its depictions in paintings. This however all went out of the window for the exhibit on the Vizier's tent. Seized after the battle of Mohacs, this extraordinary Ottoman tent has been on display almost continually for the subsequent 300 years. Given the coolness of the artefact, the strange place of it in the museum can be forgiven.

A small snapshot of the excitement that dress-up in a museum can bring. Big fan.

Heading further north in Bavaria our next destination in Nuremberg. This does however sadly mean we will be finally leaving the Danube behind for good and the Roman Empire until the last couple days of our trip in the Netherlands.

Rob's top Ingolstadt fact: The illuminati was founded in Ingolstadt

Danni's top Ingolstadt fact: Frankenstein, the scientist not the monster, in the original novel went to university in Ingolstadt