Munich= Meat City????, Dachau

Just got back from Munich this morning/last night at 5 AM, and I'm running on about 4 hours of sleep, but it was definitely worth it. If Munich wasn't my favorite city in Europe, it was at least one of my most enjoyable weekends since I came to Europe. I think Petey might be contemplating actually moving there- kid was in his element the entire time (the beer and sausage element...which probably makes up at least 60% of Pete's entire personality). You guys must be getting pretty bored with my posts at this point, because everywhere I go the report is usually exactly the same...it was awesome.

After a great night with Dickinson, learning how to make tagliatelle pasta and having a great dinner with the Amici di Dickinson ("Friends of Dickinson") and my class, I headed out to a birthday party for a couple of French girls in the giardini, which was a nice change of pace from the usual party scene here in Bologna on Wednesday nights. Overall, it was just a great night, but I realized pretty early on that the lady teaching us to make pasta is an expert and I have no chance of ever recreating what she made, so don't get your hopes up for me cooking back home. The "Friends of Dickinson" is a nice little organization of Italian people connected with the center who put on some events to make sure we have a good experience in Bologna. I was pretty grateful for everything they did, and of course for all the great wine, prosciutto, and pasta that seemed to come endlessly at dinner. The whole thing was at an old farm that one of the older guys helped to rebuild. Like I said, afterward I ended up going down to the giardini for the night.

I woke up in the morning and tried to get my laundry done before my train left, but of course the laundromat was full so I ended up getting pretty creative with the clothes I was wearing all weekend. I hopped on the train at 11:30 for my 7 hour trip, the last long distance trip I'll be taking in Europe. The train ride was awesome, riding through the Italian alps, and then up through Austria and Innesbruck before getting into Munich at about 6:30. For a second in Innesburck, I was seriously convinced that I had gotten on the wrong train because the conductor thanked everyone for choosing OBB for their travel, but it all worked out and I ended up in Munich right on time. The first thing I noticed, especially on the train, was how abruptly the architecture changes from Italy to Austria and Germany. Up toward the Alps, though, there's this really weird region called South Tyrol which is technically part of Italy, but they speak German and Italian there. At the time, I had no idea where I was, so my mind was basically blown. When I got into Munich, I immediately got lost looking for my hostel but somehow still ended up in the main square. I waited for about 5 hours for Petey and his friends from Vienna to get in, and with my limited knowledge of German (read:none) I decided to just get KFC for dinner, since people at fast food places here usually speak English enough to give you your order. Pete's tried to teach me some things so many times, but I still can't even say hello or count to 3 in German...guess it must just be a language overload with Italian. The city is pretty nice, and it's definitely more modern than anything here in Italy. I guess after WWII, the city was obviously devastated by bombings, but they rebuilt it to look somewhat old to restore the original architecture the best they could. In the main square, there was the Rathaus and the famous glockenspeil with a bunch of figures that move and depict different important Bavarian scenes twice a day I believe. Our tour guide the next day called it the second most overrated tourist attraction in Europe but I still thought it was pretty cool. I basically just walked around, not really knowing exactly what I was seeing, but looking forward to Petey getting in because I knew it was going to be a great time. He finally got in at around 11:30, and we walked back down to the city center from our hostel trying to get our first beer in Munich. We couldn't find anywhere that was open, though, so we just walked back to our hostel. I will say, for the money we paid for our hostel, it was very clean and perfect for what we needed. It was really cool, and set up with a bar on one side, a breakfast place on the other, and they had plenty of events designed for younger tourists.

The next day, we woke up pretty early and were all excited to start going around the city. The girls wanted to go on a tour, and Pete and I almost didn't do it, but I'm really glad we did. We had this Irish tour guide named Donagh who showed us all of the important stuff in the city center and had some great stories about the city. At the beginning of the tour, he told us that if he asked us a question, about 85% of the time the answer would be beer. I thought he was kidding, but the beer culture is just so ingrained in the daily lives of people in Munich that I'd say his estimate was spot on. We started off at the Rathaus, where the tour guides were just absolutely knocking the glockenspiel...but I figured out later that its probably because they have to sit there and watch it every single day, so I could definitely understand where they were coming from. We saw the main church (I forget what it's called) that according to legend was built by the hands of Satan. Legend also has it that the devil's footprint is in the front of the Church. The story goes that the devil came to destroy the church before he saw its design, which didn't have very many windows. He agreed to build the rest of the church as long as the architect wouldn't put in any more windows, thinking that the church would be too gloomy for people to worship God in. No more windows were added, but when the devil returned after 20 years (when the church was completed) it was all lit up due to clever designing, so he stamped his foot in the front. Apparently that story is officially a part of Catholic teaching, and obviously I don't know how true it is but the fact that the church was built in only 20 years when others that size generally take hundreds it kind of makes you wonder...... Close by to the church was this really strange Michael Jackson shrine that the city keeps tearing down but people keep putting back up. If MJ's shrine is so important to them I can't wait to see what they put up when Hasselhof bites the dust. We saw a place where Mozart may or may not have lived, a great outdoor market, and of course the Hofbrauhaus. At the market is a giant maypole, and Donagh told us that towns all across Germany try to steal each others' maypoles every year in basically a national game of capture the flag. The ransom for the maypole is a huge party...and beer. In 2005 the cops even stole a maypole from the bierhall in the airport in Munich and didn't give it back until the whole police force got a party and free beer. People also carve maypoles for girls they like, and if the girls don't like them back they give them a case of jam. I'm just kidding...it's a case of beer of course. One of the funnier things we saw was a parking space for dogs outside of a pharmacy...the Germans are just absurd people. There was also a church that they built 8 clocks on to consolidate the 4 clocks from another church that had been destroyed that they decided not to rebuild...once again just absurd. We actually got to stop in a beer hall mid way through the tour and Pete was smiling ear to ear. I've never seen a person so in their element before...just a kid who's a beer nerd about to drink a ton of some of the best beer in the world. Finally our first beer in Munich, after 10 long hours of waiting. It was great, and of course it came in the giant liter mug. People in Munich and Bavaria literally drink beer in the morning the way we eat bacon and eggs...it's just the way they do it there. We then went outside and saw the main shopping road where all the rich people in Munich go, and there were some ridiculously expensive cars. We stopped by the opera house, which had a great story in its past concerning...you guessed it, beer. From what I remember, it was burning down in the 1800's I believe, and they tried to put the fire out with beer since so many breweries and bierhalls were so close, but somewhere along the way people stopped trying to put the fire out and ended up just drinking the beer and watching the opera house go down in flames. Our next stop on the tour was a street where a lot of passive resistance against the Nazis occurred, the site of where Hitler first tried to stage a revolution and take Munich under Nazi control, but ultimately failed. There was a plaque during the regime commemorating the 20 "brave Nazis" killed in the revolt, although 4 were police fighting and 1 was an innocent bystander. It was interesting to see how the Nazis were constantly rewriting the history books as it suited them. However, people who couldn't stand to salute the plaque ducked down this one alleyway, usually risking some kind of arrest. Hitler ended up using that same square to throw a lot of rallies and give speeches, and it was pretty creepy standing in the exact place that he must have been. I was extremely interested in trying to figure out Hitler's rise to power, because a lot of people knew what he was all about from the start. It's just amazing to see how he could convince millions of people to accept his total control and heap hatred on everyone who didn't fit into the Aryan mold. I don't think I'll ever fully understand. We ended our tour on that spot, and it was off to the beer halls. We started out at the Hofbrauhaus, which is the biggest and most famous pub in the world. I think they said it had seating for like 9,000 people or something but don't quote me on that. They have these people called stamsteich or stamtag I can't really remember because German goes in one ear and out the other for me, but they have their own tables and are allowed to kick anyone out who sits there. To become one, you have to drink at the Hofbrauhaus 3 times a week for 15 years. Immediately reminded of us at home with Stadium Grille...I still don't know why we don't have our own table there yet. The beer was delicious of course. We spent the rest of the day going to bierhalls all over the center that Pete wanted to try, so we indulged him. We eventually remembered that even though they consider beer to be food in Munich, our American stomachs needed something else, so we headed to the market to get some cheap sassssage products. We ended up losing Pete's friend Ken somehow after he got up to go to the bathroom. We didn't find out where he was until around 10:30 that night, and at this point it was only about 4. We looked for him for an hour and a half, everywhere we could think of, which at that point wasn't very many places. We finally decided that Ken would want us to eat a fish sandwich and then go to Spring Fest, so that's what we did. (We later found out that Ken had fallen asleep sitting on a toilet in a restaurant for 2 and a half hours...he was sleeping at our hostel safe and sound when we got back...so yeah, it was that kind of a day). Spring Fest didn't really impress me at first. It's held in this giant field, which I'm pretty sure is also where Oktoberfest is. Really, all it was at first was just a fair, and not much bigger than some of the fairs I've been to. It was like looking at America in some kind of warped mirror. I was starting to get a little bummed...but then we saw the tents. There were 2 that we saw, each filled with 3-5,000 people, eating traditional German food, drinking huge beers, and listening to bands play that ridiculous German music and wearing laderhosen or however you spell it (those crazy suspender shorts things). It was epic. The whole thing ended at like 11:30, and usually I don't even go out until way past then, but trust me that was the perfect ending time because it was definitely time to go. I met a couple of German kids outside the tent and talked to them a bit, before I got totally separated from Pete and the others. I made it back to the hostel myself though. I must have some sort of internal radar because every time I have a couple of drinks in me I always end up safe in my own bed somehow. It's uncanny. Pete, however, ended up going to some bar with these Swedish guys. Let's just say he had a bit rougher of a night than I did.

The next day we took it a lot easier, and headed out to the last stop on the train out of Munich to this little town to go to the Sacred Mountain of Beer...yes it's a real place, and probably John F. Twineman's summer home at least. There's a monastery at the top of this hill where they brew some of the greatest beer I've ever had, if not the best. We had to hike for about an hour through the woods to get there, and it was really one of the coolest places I've ever seen. All of a sudden, out of all the trees we could see a field and a big dome. The church was beautiful, and there was a great view of the Bavarian countryside. You could even see the alps in the distance. We went to one of the 3 bier gardens and I had literally the best beer of my life. It was a double bock, essentially brewed by God himself. We sat there for an hour just taking in the sights and watching the priests around us drinking beers. It really is just a part of life there. Beer is to Bavarians as wine is to Italians as soda or iced tea is to Americans, basically. They honestly think its essential to health to drink beer. I can't say I agree, but one apfelweiss, a couple of weisswurst, and German potato salad later we sadly said goodbye to the Sacred Mountain of Beer before hiking down to the train. We saw these 14 or 15 year old kids playing in the street in the town, some kind of dodgeball type game where they try to hit a big water bottle in the middle. They all had beers lined up perfectly in front of them, and when one team hit the bottle in the middle I was shocked to see 3 15 year old kids in the middle of the street with their beers pointed to the sky chugging until the other team could get the bottle back to its place in the middle. I'm going to have to bring that one back to Phi Delt in the fall. It was nice to see a little town outside of Munich, and I'm very happy that we went. We got back into the city, and then went to go meet up with some kids from Pete's program who had been couchsurfing with a couple of Germans (staying at their house for free...it's a concept I still don't really understand and even though it's pretty common among young people in Europe, I don't think it's something that people would ever really do in America). They told us they were having a barbecue, so we just assumed it would be at someone's house with a few people. WRONG. They were actually down by the river, with about 3,000 other people who had been hanging out all day. There were fires everywhere, and police, and ambulances. It was just a giant tailgate with no actual event to go to after. It was great. They picked probably the worst spot in the whole place, though. We had to climb down a bridge that was probably 12-15 feet off the ground to get to their little spot, and Tristan ended up breaking the mug that he had bought at Andechs (the Sacred Mountain). We only stayed there for about 20 minutes, then headed off to a few bars that the German guys wanted to show us. One was named Damien and the other was Henrich, and they turned out to be great guys who just wanted to show us a good time. We had a lot of fun with them. There was this cool little place that was basically like a drive through bar that we went to, and a couple others that were just pretty standard places. Overall, though, it was a great night because we got to go to a bunch of places that we never would have found otherwise and got to know a little bit about the real culture of Munich. We did back off on the gas pedal a bit, though, because I had convinced Pete to go to Dachau in the morning and I wanted to have my wits about me.

The next morning, we woke up early, got all of our stuff together, and checked out of the hostel. We still had a full day, though, because my train left at 9 PM and Pete's bus didn't leave until 11:30. We both decided that it was really important to go see a concentration camp while we had the chance, and the same tour company that gave us our tour on Friday had one to Dachau. Dachau was the first concentration camp, and the one that all the others were modeled after. They used to say "have the Dachau spirit" to encourage guards to be even crueler to the prisoners in other concentration camps, so you can imagine how evil this place was. Dachau is a town about 20 minutes outside of Munich, and I'm very surprised that they didn't change the name of their city in the wake of everything that happened there. I was kind of expecting the camp to be in some kind of barren wasteland, but it's really close to the town, which at first glance seems like any perfectly normal small town. The city runs right up next to the camp as well. Once again, I was pretty much expecting that the camp would be off somewhere in the middle of the woods or something. It was a beautiful day, which really made the whole experience more surreal and just confusing really. Day in and day out, whether it was 10 degrees or 75, the people in Dachau had to go through the same struggle to survive. The whole experience was just intense. The first thing we saw was the train tracks...but then found out those were mostly used for supplies and that prisoners came into the camp through the MAIN PUBLIC STATION. The people had to have had at least an idea of what was going on, I'd imagine. The whole time I just kept trying to ask myself what I would do if I were a German or what I would do if I were locked in a concentration camp, and I really couldn't give myself an honest answer. Would I have protected my family if I were a German? Probably, to be honest and just try to weather the storm of the Nazi rule. What I really just can't get over is the guards. To see people come in as human beings, then day after day try to pick away at them little by little, trying to mess with their minds even though you know that they're going to die anyway...that's what I can't understand. What's the point of the antagonizing? Another thing I kept thinking was that if these people (the Germans, or the guards at least) were raised Christian, obviously knowing the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, obviously knowing the JESUS HIMSELF was a Jew, how could do what they did so unflinchingly? None of it adds up. None. And it wasn't just the Jews either, which everyone focuses on for the obvious reason that it was a racial extermination, but they were also killing off Catholic priests. In fact, when the camp was liberated in 1945 there were more Catholics present than any other group, and this is why the Catholics actually have the largest religious monument within the camp. I was shocked. The one thing that stuck out to me the most was the organization of it all...it was cold and calculated, ingenious really with some of the psychological games they were using, like shelves placed on beds to remind prisoners that they had nothing to put on them, or the no smoking sign in the camp when they knew prisoners would have no means of smoking anyway, or the fake bunk that they made the prisoners slave over so that when international organizations came to investigate they would send favorable reports back about the camps. Even the front gate itself was a psychological game..."Work Sets you Free." Maybe free through an earlier death, I don't know. I've learned about the Holocaust for a long time, seen all the movies, but actually being there makes it real, not just a page in a textbook. We saw the blocks (bunks), we saw a bit of a museum inside the original reception building. We went into easily the scariest building I've ever been in, the bunker where they housed "special" prisoners, and sometimes put boards in their cells so they couldn't sit for 3 straight days, as well as beat them and etc. etc. The pain and the death just absolutely permeated the air. There were a lot of places that I couldn't stand staying near too long in the camp. The crematorium. The fucking crematorium. Excuse my language but it was like witnessing Hell on Earth. There's no other words to describe how strongly I feel about that place. I'm not an incredibly emotional guy, places like Gettysburg don't really affect me too significantly if we're being honest. At least you know it was a fair fight. Hell, at least you know both sides at least thought of each other as human. The people in the concentration camp weren't at war against the Nazis. They were just trying to get by, live their lives like anyone else. I don't want to get into the crematorium but I was literally almost physically sick, especially walking through the gas chamber, which wasn't ever used for a mass killing apparently, but just the fact that it was there. Just the fact that they went to the trouble to build it, with what they had in mind. I'm trying to describe how I was feeling, what I was thinking, but I have no words. My brain was short circuiting and it still does when I think about that place. I was very glad to get away from there. I will leave you with two things that I took away from Dachau. 1) A German citizen, from what I saw,  today is a lot like an American. Maybe that has a lot to do with the Marshall Plan yada yada yada. However, a lot of these people had grandparents in the army. Some of these grandparents were guards at concentration camps. Do NOT get this mixed up. I'm not saying that German people are Nazis today, not even a little bit. What I'm saying is, if we're so similar today, then what switch flipped back then (and I'm talking about the guards here)? Is there a switch inside all of us, given the right circumstances that is capable of such cruelty? It's a scary thought, but genocides have happened all over the world. I think the lesson to take away from that is very, very bad things can happen when a government takes too much control. Often, it can be really hard to stop. We should all be thankful in the U.S. that we have such a strong democracy with a system of checks and balances. One man should never have all the power, no matter what. 2) I think everyone, if they have the chance, should visit a concentration camp at some point. You'll only need to go once. However, if you go make sure you at least maintain a certain decorum. There were plenty of people I saw that were either only talking about beer (inside the camp), joking around, or acting like they were spending a day at a beautiful park. It really made me sad to see all of that because it's so important to respect all the suffering that took place there. We were at the site where enough murders occurred to fill a Division I football stadium. I'm always kind of shocked by people who seem to be so self absorbed that they don't even know where they are, so I dunno take it for what it's worth.

It was one of the strangest days of my life, and I was so happy to get out of there, but at the same time I felt like it was a really worthwhile experience and I'm glad I went. It was still a terrible day though. Pete and I must have said 10 words to each other the whole time, and we were just happy to get back into the city and try to get our mind off of what we'd just seen.

When we got back, it was still pretty early, so we got our last beers in Munich...one at the Hofbrauhaus, one at the Schnieder Weiss bierhall under my heavy protest, and the last one at the Augustiner brewery that was right across the street from our hostel, but for some reason we hadn't been to yet. By the time my train finally left at 9, I think I was ready to go back and spend my last few weeks in Bologna, but I still had an amazing time from start to finish, with the obvious exception of Dachau. I didn't sleep much on the train, just about 2 hours, but we got in at 4 AM...just in time for me to call my Mom and wish her a happy Mother's Day. Hopefully that scored me some more brownie points and maybe some extra cash might suspiciously show up in my bank account, who knows? Anyway, Munich is great. If you're into beer you should definitely go because it's basically the Disneyworld of beer. If you're not, it's still really cool since apparently when we stereotype Germans we're actually thinking Bavarians. 2 weeks left, almost to the day. Like I've said before I'm gonna be thrilled to get back to the States but pretty damn sad to leave Europe. Might be going to Abruzzo again this weekend, but I'm not sure because the work's starting to pile up, the funds are running low, and it's starting to feel like playtime is finally over with anyway. I'll let you all know though. Have a good week.

P.S.- I can't be 100% sure, but out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn I saw John F. Twineman and Clyde Rippington handing Pete a beer at Spring Fest. Coulda just been my imagination.

Mike