Gutentaag!

Last weekend was spent in Munich, Germany and it was one of the best trips yet. A couple of us left very early Friday morning (4:00 am) to get to the airport for our 6:30 flight, which of course was delayed about an hour. Once we got off the plane, I realized that I wasn’t sure how to get to our hostel. I knew the street that it was on, but we weren’t sure how to get there from the airport. There was a little old man who was helping everyone out, and when he saw us standing in front of the ticket machine in the subway he came over to help. We told him our dilemma and and he told us exactly where we needed to go and sent us on our way. Then, some Italians came up to us and tried to sell us their subway pass. We thought this might be a bit sketchy, but apparently it is common practice in Germany. The pass they sold us (for 5€) was an 18€ pass that was good for 5 people and for 24hours. Apparently they had bought the ticket because it is cheaper than buying 2 individual passes and they were leaving to go back to Italy, so we got a cheap subway pass and were on our way. As a side not about the subway system in Munich, there are no gates and no one checks your tickets, so after our 24 hours expired, we figured we’d just chance it and not worry about the tickets. It worked.

Anyway, once we got to our hostel we dropped our bags and headed to Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp located just outside of Munich. I was looking forward to this visit, except for the fact that it was 40˚ and pouring rain. The walkways in Dachau are gravel, so I had trench foot by the time this visit was over, but it was worth it to see this piece of history, plus I think the weather suited the mood anyway.

When we got into the camp, there were rows of buildings and you could see where the old watchtowers were and the foundations of the rows and rows of buildings where the prisoners were housed. The first building we went to was where the “special prisoners” were housed. These were usually ministers, doctors and I think a lot of “non-Jewish” people. There were really long hallways of cells and it was dark and damp and very sad to think of someone having to live there. This part of the building looked a lot like prison cells. I think this is also where they would punish the prisoners by isolation in the dark, “pole hangings” and other terrible things. At the end of one of the halls, there was a gate that blocked off the rest of the cells for whatever reason, and people had left flowers, coins, notes and other things as a sort of memorial. It was moving to see. The rest of this building had been converted into a museum where there were stories, people’s belongings, uniforms etcetera. It was interesting to read the survivors’ stories and appalling to think that these things were allowed to occur. The museum seemed to go on forever and it was set against a background of the basically unchanged rooms of the past. After leaving the museum area, we headed to where people were housed. It was rows and rows and rows of wooden bunk beds. Not the kind you think of now, but stacked and crammed in. I couldn’t even imagine living in conditions such as this, as I can’t even stand sharing a room, let alone a bed. Some of the stories I had read at the museum talked about how the beds had to be made which such precision and the floors had to be spotless and perfect, all within an hour. If they were not just right, they were subjected to harsh and horrible punishment. After leaving the bunkhouses, we went to where the gas chambers and crematoriums were. The strangest part about going to this area was that it smelled horrible, like death. The only reason I even know what something dead smells like is from driving by poor animals on the road, but the smell is unmistakable and I could smell it in this area. It actually was nauseating. I asked my friends if they could smell it, and they could too. It definitely intensified the situation and the thoughts I was already lost in. As we walked through this area, I was taking pictures feeling like a horrible person, but I wanted to be able to show people at home what I was seeing. It didn’t make me feel any better, but I tried to remind myself of this fact through this area. It was very disturbing to think of these things and I was anxious to finish our visit to Dachau. We stopped in one of the many churches on the property and paid our respects and promptly left. I am glad I was able to see Dachau, and I feel that it is important to experience these kinds of things, but this was definitely not an uplifting segment of our trip and I was ready to be uplifted.

After Dachau, we realized that we were starving, so we got off at Hackerbrucke (the stop where Oktoberfest is) and decided to go look for food there. We knew we wanted a beer and German food. So we stopped at the first place we came to, a huge place called Hacker-Pschorr. We walked in and it was packed, as it was directly across from the festivities. However, we happened to catch people leaving a table, so we snatched it up and parked it for quite a while. The first thing we wanted was a liter of beer. Then we had to figure out how to read German and order dinner. We flagged over our waitress and asked some questions, and she promptly brought us the English menu, which made things much easier. I ended up going with the “Crispy pork with potato dumplings, cabbage salad with beer sauce.” It was delicious as was my first real German beer. After we had finished eating, we met some Germans at the table next to us. They came up and sat with us and we had a really good time with them. The party really started to get going around 7pm when the band started to play. At this point the Germans had bought us another round and we were dancing on chairs singing German songs. We then met a couple from Hudson (which is a couple towns away from Kent…so random) who were so nice and really fun as well. By the time 9:30 rolled around, my roommate, Tracy had well over enough to drink so we had to cart her back to the hostel. So we said auf weidersehen to our newfound friends and decided it was best if we all turn in early to prepare for our early wake-up call the next day.

7 am came very early Saturday, but in order for us to even have a small chance of getting into the tents, we would have to be in line by 8. We decided to go for the tent that is one of the biggest and most popular, Hofbrauhaus. I particularly wanted to go here, because as you Cincinnatians know, Cincinnati has the only other Hofbrauhas in the world besides Munich (and Vegas) and it is one of my favorite places to hang out in Cincy. Anyway, this tent is almost impossible to get into, so we knew we were going to have to fight. So we get to the tent and there is already a huge crowd, so we kinda push our way in to get a spot in line. The tents don’t open until 10, so we prepare to wait for a couple of hours. Well, around 8:30 people start cheering, and me being short, I can’t see what everyone is cheering about, but I can tell that we are moving, so I run up and grab my friends too. Well, then it starts to get a little tight. Which each surge forward f the crowd, the back comes running up, and I am sandwiched in the middle. It continues in this manner for about 10 minutes. At this point, my feet are barely touching the ground, because my body is wedged up so tight against the person in front of me and I can barely breathe because there is no room to expand my chest. This is when it starts to become painful and I realize that if I just don’t keep going with the crowd and keep my head up, I will get swallowed up and potentially seriously injured. The crowd keeps pushing and pushing and I just keep getting more and more squished. I am crying out in pain, as is everyone else, but we are almost to the door. Finally we get into the foyer, but there is still one more door to go through, and instead of it being a wide doorway, it is the size of a regular doorway. Imagine squeezing 2000 people into one small doorway at the same time. I basically get swept away from my friends in the current of bodies and get all turned around and twisted and then all of a sudden, I notice that I am in!!!! My excitement is put on hold as a German police officer grabs me and starts screaming at me in German, and I finally realize he wants to search my bag. So I open it and he does and then he throws me away and into the area where the tables are. There are not many left, so I grab a table and wait for my friends. We all eventually find each other and are ecstatic that we got in and are hugging and jumping around like we had just won the lottery. We got to know our neighbors at our table, who happened to be Italian and waited patiently for the beer to come. Around 9, this sweet old lady came to our table carrying 8 liters of beer. It was an amazing feat, as I can barely carry one without breaking my arm and I was particularly sore on the top of my hand from the giant steins of the night before. But anyhow, we got our beers and “Prost!”-ed more times than I can count and got down to enjoying our delicious Hofbaruhaus Oktoberfest brew. The Italians next to us finally get their beers too and “Prost” us, and they are really hard core because, they break my glass into pieces. So, I get another, no big deal. Well the second time around they want to toast, and again. They break my glass and their glass this time so, after that I decided no more of that, I would just nod and smile. After staying there until around 4 we decided that we needed to do some souvenir shopping and to get something to eat. So I decide to try a sausage, and I still didn’t like it, just like I don’t in the States, but I figured I should try it. So I pulled out the sausage and ate the bun. Tracy and I headed to Marienplatz where there is a ton of shopping. We got a few souvenirs and went back to the hostel to find the other girls. Once we got there, we were hungry again, so we went to the Chinese place down the street and headed back to Oktoberfest before they closed for the night. We had one last beer there and went back to our hostel to take advantage of the bar in the basement. It turned out to be really fun and we danced all night to bad European techno and had a great time.

Sunday we had to be at the airport by 9:30, so we didn’t have time to really do anything, but we had a layover in Zurich for 5 hours. Once we got to Zurich we got some lunch at Burger King (it sounded good...haha) and realized that Zurich isn’t on the Euro or even in Germany. We asked the nice lady at the BK counter where we were, and she laughed and informed us that we were in Switzerland, which is on the Swiss Franc. This was news to us, as we realized that we had paid $13USD for a “value meal”. The only reason I know how much I paid in dollars is because the Swiss Franc is 1:1 with the dollar, so this was ridiculous and that was my meal for the day. After our extravagant meal at Burger King we found a place to hang out for the next 5 hours. Luckily it ended up being a place that we could sleep, so we did just that. Finally it was time for our plane to leave and as we were flying home to Italy, I looked out the window and noticed we were flying over the Swiss Alps. It was so cool because they are so tall! It looked as if the plane was flying low, but I assume it was not as that would be dangerous, and the peaks of the mountains were so close! It was a very cool ending to our great trip to Munich and once we got back to Florence everyone crashed early to recuperate from the weekends festivities. This weekend I am off to Dublin, so until then!

Ciao!