Munich - Imperial Lichtspiele Cinema - Look What I Bumped Into

Before I go away to mainland Europe and to places that are significant to World War Two, I do my homework. The results of this normally equates to a list of places and my phone, heavy with screenshots of them taken during the war. I show these screenshots to my travel companion (normally my Girlfriend) and tell her to look out for these things and alert me if she does so.

Travelling with me is a nuisance.

As long as I know the general direction and what i'm looking for, then I can't go wrong.

Sometimes when i'm in a city in relaxed mode, not wide eyed and interested like a cat at a fish market, I spot something completely accidentally that I had no intention of looking for at all. This was one of these occasions.

Munich. We arrive there hours before we could check in to the hotel, lugging our cases with us through the streets and over the cobbles which help us to sound like we are using an out of tune Xylophone to alert the Germans of our presence.

I recognised this building mostly because of it's odd shape. Somewhere i'd seen a picture of this with a knocked out Panther tank in front of it.

 When the Americans captured the city in 1945 they didn't encounter as much resistance as they expected. As well the dwindling numbers of German soldiers were the Volksstrum - the last line of defence, made up of young boys or old men. They put up a fight but many surrendered early on.  

The Americans also liberated nearby Dachau concentration camp.

The tank shown outside was sent to the United States for testing and after that lived its life in various museums around the country and is today at Fort Benning, Georgia. The building that used to be a cinema is now a hotel.