dachau - tour agency vs tour upon arrival vs self guided audio

It has been awhile since I have done the tour available at Dachau. I remember it being very detailed and longer than I had expected. It involved a lot of stories about people, etc. My husband and I appreciated it, but it got a little long for us. (It was a lot of standing and listening to long explanations and my feet don't like just standing on cement for long periods of time. ) You don't say how old your children are, but I do wonder if the tour would hold their interest for the whole time. If it were me, I would look for a tour that was geared towards families or even consider hiring a private guide that would take your children's ages into consideration. (I don't know of one as we only did the tour that was available at Dachau.) I would assume the 5-6 hour guided tours would include travel from Munich and time to explore on your own. We did not do the self guided audio at Dachau, but we did do it a Mauthausen. Once again, it was very detailed with lot of history and stories, but much of it did not relate to what we were directly looking at while at the camp. There was much more information than we could absorb in a first time visit. I would say we are history lovers and we spend a lot of time before the trip reading and learning about the places we are going to see. Once there, we enjoy time exploring on our own and getting to actually see the places we have seen.

If you do the trip yourself, and take the S-Bahn from the Hbf to Dachau Bahnhof and the bus (#726) from there, the trip will take you 38 minutes, with a 10 minutes change time at Dachau Bahnhof. The bus stops are in front of the station, about a 5 minutes walk from the train platform, and the bus to the Memorial is well marked. The S-Bahn and buses both run on a 20 minute cycle, so you never have a long time to wait. The S2 S-Bahn leaves the Hbf at :10, :30, and :50 min past each hour.

Assuming you will already want an inner zone transit pass for Munich that day (12,60€ for 5 people), it will cost 3,30€ more (15,90€) for a Munich XXL pass that includes both the inner zone and the second zone. Dachau is in the second zone.

There is no need to take a tour if you want to spend less time. Admission is free and you can just go in and walk around and read the signs, but you'd miss a lot.

As I remember, I arrived about an hour before the tour, signed up, then got something to eat in the snack bar at the Memorial.

Here is the website for the Memorial.

We took public transit out (very easy to do) and toured on our own. The four of us all found different exhibits of interest. We just picked up a booklet at the visitor center and read material at the exhibits. This way we were able to tour at our own pace. Even with eating a quick lunch there, we were back in Munich around 2:00. One thing to note: all of us have read a great deal about Nazi Germany and were very familiar with work camps and the Holocaust; if your group does not have this background, you might find a guide more helpful.

We did a self-guided audio tour and it seemed shorter than that. The trip on the S bahn from Munich to Dachau was short. I think its about 30 to 40 minutes each way. Buses run from the train station to the camp quite frequently.

Buses run from the train station to the camp quite frequently.

Read my post above. It's every 20 minutes. With some exceptions (late night, weekends), the entire MVV (Munich metro) runs on a repeating 20 minute cycle (they call it a "Takt", or beat, in German). The S2 leaves the Hbf S-Bahn station at 10, 30, and 50 minutes past each hour and takes 21 minutes to get to the Dachau station. The bus leaves Dachau station 10 minutes after the S2 arrives and takes 7 minutes to the Memorial - 38 minutes.

There is also a train leaving the above-ground part of the Hbf at approximately 15 minutes past each hour. It's a regional train of the Bahn, so it's not in the Takt of the MVV, i.e., not exactly 15 after each hour. It get's to the Dachau station faster, more like 11 minutes, but you still connect to a bus on a 20 minute cycle.

create,

I took a tour of Dachau with Radius Tours and quite enjoyed it - http://radiustours.com/en/english-tours/dachau-concentration-camp-memorial.html#frameId=iframe&height=369

The group I was with travelled from Munich on the S-Bahn and Bus (the same as if going on your own), but it was nice to get a background of the history from the guide on the trip out there. I thought the tour was good value, and I wouldn't hesitate to do that again.