Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Munich or Muenchen

So this last weekend we went to Munich, or ,as it is called in German, Muenchen. Munich is about three hours southeast of Mannheim so we just left after class. As usual our Friday trip was lazy. We got into the city, checked into our hostel, claimed beds for the evening - the most important aspect of the hostel experience is claiming a good bed - and then dinner. Our hostel was really close to the main train station, or Hauptbahnhof, which made the rest of the weekend a breeze. We booked a 14 mixed bed room. This means there are fourteen girls and boys sleeping together. This can get incredibly sketchy as the boys - yes, I am stereotyping here - are usually of the I-am-a-backpacker-and-don't-have-to-shower variety. The room was split up into ten beds in one room with a bathroom and four beds sharing a bathroom on the other side of the entryway. Luckily we only had three people so we fit into the four bed room. The other room had people who were smoking on the balcony of a non-smoking room even though they were not allowed to smoke on the premises. This would have only been an annoyance except for one of the girls that I was traveling with is allergic to smoke. It is to the point where if she did not take her allergy pill every morning we would need an epy pin if someone was smoking in the vicinity. We alerted the front desk who told them to stop or leave. Our neighbors also came back at four in the morning the next day drunk and throwing up. Luckily they left us and our bathroom alone. This has not been the best hostel experience, but it could always be worse.

We went to the Augustiner-Keller beer garden that night. It is a restaurant with a huge outdoor seating area. We sat outside, but had a hard time finding a table. It is a local favorite and many local patrons have their own tables. These tables are round and usually have the family crest on the table or all of the family members names on engraved tablets. We had to find a table with edges to sit at for all six of us. Our friends had joined us and were staying in another room in our hostel. Our waiter was incredibly funny. The first person who ordered tried to do it in English, but he said, "No, this is a cultural experience. You must order in German." You could tell that he was kidding, but I still explained that we were studying German in Mannheim and from now on we would order in German. He loved this and the rest of the night spoke to us only "auf Deutsch." I ordered wurst with kartoffelsalat and an Augustiner beer. The Augustiner Brewery was established in 1328, and was one of the oldest brewery in Munich. It was so good! I have decided that I do not dislike beer, but that I dislike American beer. German beer is amazing. I will say though that the beer that college students drink - Natural Light (Natty Light for the true fans) at UF - is like filtered piss. But Corrs? Bud? Nein, ich will Deutsche Bier! The wurst was amazing too and the kartoffelsalat is the best that I have had in Germany. This is saying something because kartoffelsalat comes with every meat dish you order in Germany. It started to rain though. So we quickly finished our food and headed inside with our beers. The inside was like a giant mess hall with huge benches and a stage. Nothing was being performed, which was disappointing. It was incredibly loud inside and we had to shout to hear ourselves. We decided if it was that loud we would play a drinking game. We decided on the animal game. The instructions are as follows: everyone has an animal sign. You could be a moose and make moose ears; a monkey where you pull your ears and puff up your cheeks; a tiger and make a claw. Everyone bangs the table twice and then claps on a beat. The first person starts and does a bang, a bang, their animal sign while everyone else claps, bang, bang, then that person makes someone else's animal sign. The person whose animal sign was made then repeats the cycle with their animal sign and someone else's. The first person who messes up has to take a drink. This becomes incredibly interesting as more beer is consumed. Anyways the whole evening was a success.

The nest day we got up super early and headed to Dachau. It was a twenty minutes from the Hauptbahnhof. We bought the 2 euro audio guides (yeah! for being a student) and walked through the whole of Dachau. The weather was slightly overcast making the place even more depressing and grim than it already was. The weather combined with our early arrival meant that we had the place almost entirely to ourselves for an hour. While being completely depressing, Dachau gives a complete picture of the concentration camp system since Dachau was the model for the rest of the concentration camps. They were systematic and evolved to fit the needs of the Nazi party. Eventually prisoners were farmed out to work in factories in armament production. There are several memorials on the camp site, but most are around the crematoria. This wasn't used for mass killing as in other death camps, but it was definitely used. The sign proclaiming that the gas chamber was a shower room is still there. These authentic relics from that age of terror bring it to life, such as the gates that you enter the camp through read "work makes one free." The museum is interesting as well with information about the types of people in the camps and several biographies on victims. Many priests who spoke out were held in Dachau including the Bishop of Munich. Only the German priests were allowed to pray. Anyone else - Russian priests, rabbi - were punished if caught. The museum also traces the history of the holocaust and the rise and fall of the Nazi party. We watched the twenty minute video on Dachau and the footage is disturbing to say the least. The only lighthearted moment of the whole day came when we found out what the U.S. forces did when they liberated Dachau. They forced the people who lived in Dachau to come to the camp, and view what was happing in the Dachau people's back yard. There were still dead bodies piled up that had not been burned. The camp had run out of coal. That is such an American thing to do. Look, you f***ed up. This is what it looks like. You see it. See it? Don't ever do this again. The worst thing about Dachau is that it shows how much worse the genocide was there. This is not to say that I don't think that the situations in Serbia or Darfur are good, but they aren't systematic. With the Nazis, it was not blind hatred and rage fueling rash slaughters of towns of people. It was a systematic destruction of a race. Propaganda and camps were involved. It was organized, and that makes it so much colder to think of.

After Dachua we all came back to Munich. Erica and I just walked around Marienplatz taking in the sites and watching the German people. Then we went to another brewery called Andescher. It was not as good as the Augustiner brew.

That night a few of us went to the Isar Bridge where one of the celebrations for Munich's 850th birthday was happening. There were concerts going on on all of the bridges, but this happened to be the bridge closest to us. When we got to the concert they were playing "Walking on Sunshine," and continued with "Shout," "Moscow," "Hit the Road, Jack," "We Will Rock You," and many others. It was completely ridiculous, but we managed to work our way to the front of the crowd. When we were in the second row of people, the Germans around us figured out that we were from the U.S. and were shocked that we did not know these songs. We tried to explain that these songs were twenty plus years old and we were not alive then. In German, during a loud concert, this was hard to do. We got back at 2 AM.

We got up at 6 AM the next day to go to Neuschwanstein. This trip took two hour on the train, and then we caught a bus into town. We reserved our tickets ahead of time, which was the right thing to do. We got to cut about an hour and a half worth of people in line and grab our tickets. We headed up the mountain to the castle on foot because, yes, we are too cheap to spend 2.80 euros per person in a carriage or bus. Every guide book stated that if you walked fast you could make it up the mountain in 30 - 40 minutes. 20. That's right. We made it up the mountain, which is at a steep incline, in twenty minutes because, yes, we owned the mountain. OWNED IT!! We were completely out of breath by the time we got to the top, but that did not matter because we OWNED IT! We also walked another ten minutes to Mary's Bridge to get some good pictures with a back drop of the castle. Turns out that they were doing restorative construction on the back of it so we spent the next twenty minutes trying to take pictures using ourselves to block the scaffolding. Why is every major castle in Europe under construction in the summer? First Versailles; now Neuschwanstein. Isn't the summer Europe's busy season? Anyways, afterwards we went on a fifteen minute tour that took us through the finished rooms of the castle including King Ludwig's bedroom, the throne room, the dining room, the grotto, and a few others. The palace was so cool. King Ludwig's bedroom alone to four carpenters a year to finish. It was crazy. After the tour we went down to the town and ate a quick lunch. Then we caught a train back to town. We wandered around Munich for an hour before we caught our train back to Mannheim.

All in all the trip was amazing. I was incredibly grateful for being able to see Dachau and Neuschwanstein, as well as the everyday Munich person. I would love to go back one day and visit the actual city for a longer period of time. I know that there are many things I still have to see.

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