Going Multicultural Monday, May 24 2010

16 November, Monday.

Even Rome has its bland days. Today was such a day, nothing more than merely Evil Philosophers, the frantic writing of an Ancient Rome paper left too long, and a harrowing night spent in the bowels of the JCU basement with Thuy and a glaring architecture-studio style light. I won’t curdle your brain with the rest.

17 November, Tuesday.

One out of three classes? Yes please. Brit lit and Italian were both occupied by paper writing, leaving Mystics as my one haven of intellectual advancement for the day. At night was our first cross-cultural JCU event, Indonesian night! I, along with Hugh, Marcelo, Roberto, Thuy, Katie, and Genie, I think, walked with the degree-seekers to an elegant Indonesian restaurant where the tables were set into plateau-like steps of carpet with low, cushioned seats in large strips around them. The music was trippy electronic stuff that added to the haze of our half-starved states, helped along a little by Katie and Thuy snagging a bag of chips from the cart behind us. After a painful wait, we were released like famished lions onto the delicious buffet assortment of spicy rice and chicken and shrimp dishes in savory sauces, which were scarfed down in shamefully short time. After that, we proceeded to obliterate the raffle, collecting between us a couple of candle holders, free drink coupons, and the prize of the night, an eight-euro bottle of maple syrup with equally pricey pancake mix. Score.

Leave a Response »

 

Legacy of the Emperors Monday, May 24 2010

15 November, Sunday.

The Hofburg palace, former winter residence of the Austro-Hungarian emperors, was our stop today. Though less impressive in its simple, classically inspired pale stone architecture than the spindly spires of Neuschwanstein, it has a certain imposing quality to it. It curves around Heldenplatz, commanding a view of two important faces of the city and staring down the main boulevard. Inside, we saw a little too much of the imperial silver and cookery collection and were saved by a trip through the posh imperial chambers, richly guilt and upholstered in damask and plush and silk. The highlights was a tour through the life of Sisi, the empress Elisabeth. A withdrawn but beautiful woman, her life was a tragedy from her marriage to emperor Franz Joseph, and ended with an assassination. The diamond star hairclips for which she was famed surrounded the museum, and her death mask was an eerie ushering back into the sunlight.

Starved at this point, we made our way down the winding streets, utilizing a little bit of German to find a quaint café where we someone secured a reserved table and had the best cake I’ve ever eaten. Salivating for more substantial food, we took the waiter’s recommendation to a restaurant down the street where we gushed over schnitzel, beef stew, and hearty rye bread. Sadly, a little more souvenir shopping and a last stroll down the picturesque streets was all we had time to manage. In another few hours, we were out of our hostel and on our flight.

Leave a Response »

 

Early Christmas Spirit Monday, May 24 2010

14 November, Saturday.

Yes, I happen to be back in the States now. But thanks to my detailed notes and clutch memory, the Roman adventures will continue! So let us go back, and pretend that I’m still writing this from the 14th of November. Right? Right.

The day dawned much too early, so once we left Katrina and Caitlin in Prague and hopped our train to Austria, we all fell asleep in our compartment, no matter how beautiful the rolling hills of the Austrian countryside—yes, Sound of Music fans, it really does look like that. Once we arrived, we found ourselves running very unhappily for our train on the Bann to our hostel (thankfully our little bit of German came in handy here too) and following a group of chatty Brits to the Wombat hostel. Without our camel packs, we were free to walk the streets of Vienna—clean stones lined by Victorian white-walled buildings, a view out of Mozart’s time. St. Stephen’s cathedral was our first stop, a gorgeous gray stone gothic with a roof tiled in shifting shades of blue, green, and purple, like the underbelly of a sea dragon crowning walls carved in the usual gargoyles and effigies. Outside in the square, lights hung in the shapes of chandeliers and stars signaled the coming Christmas season. We ate our delicious Austrian sausage (mine was something delicious with cheese in it) and listened to calming German shouts of the Austrian activists protesting the fur stores.

As the sun fell, we walked to the Christkindlmarkt, the hallmark of the Viennese holiday season. Just outside the city hall, whose windows were lit and numbered to make a giant Advent calendar, the platz glowed with Christmas spirit. The trees, netted in huge lights in the shapes of hearts, angels, and snowflakes like fairylights, looked like star-studded dandelion puffs or animations out of Kirby’s Dreamland. They lit paths clustered with miniature log cabin booths hawking every imaginable ware, from glass ornaments and spiced apple cider in commemorative cups (of course I bought one) to handdipped chocolates and fluffy wool ski caps. A cheery oompah band provided the soundtrack, in addition to the voices of about a thousand locals and tourists that we pushed through, happily sipping our cider.

After a much needed nap at the hostel, we finished the night with a tram ride around the whole of Vienna, breezing by such sights as the Danube, the opera house, and the little food stands where we desperately purchased, of all things, Chinese noodles. By the time it was dark out and we returned, it was time for bed.

Leave a Response »

 

City of 1000 Spires Wednesday, Jan 6 2010

13 November, Friday.

Looking back at the date, it accounts for our bad luck. But despite our setbacks, we all fell in love with Prague. The hostel breakfast was unsatisfying but it was food and free. We ate quickly and headed out to the lobby to meet Brian, our NewPrague tour guide, of the same company as wonderful Sonja of NewMunich. Brian was a nice guy from the states studying in the Czech Republic, and looked exactly like Genie’s friend Kurt Reister. On the walk from the tram to the main square, we saw Jiri drive by, coincidence enough. Then we hit the square for a whirlwind history lesson on Prague and the Czech Republic, which made our hearts cry for the poor abused city. After a long struggle even to become a country, it and Prague were continually invaded. One man, known for his “badassitude” according to Brian, cut off his own arm to prove a point about the invasions. The Catholic church once razed Prague after the Hoosite religion was founded there, the Germans won it in a treaty with the indifferent Allies, and just as it was recovering from World War II, the Soviets snatched it up. Not until the 80s did it win its independence.

After watching the astrological clock with Brian’s Sonja-like dry narration of its lackluster animated figures, we headed to a popular bagel shop for bagels, delicious garlic soup, and cheesecake. Then we spun through the Jewish quarter, mostly destroyed during the war but for the old synagogue. We saw the opera house, taken over by one of Hitler’s most trusted advisors. When he asked Czech workmen to knock down the statue of Mendelssohn, the Jewish composer, that stood on top of the building, they were confused. They got to the top but there were many statues of composers there, and they didn’t know what Mendelssohn looked like. So, being too lazy to go down and find a picture, they used the handy cultural lessons from the Germans, which told them that the Jew should have the biggest nose. They knocked down the statue with the biggest nose and it shattered when it fell. It was only later that the broken statue was discovered to be not Mendelssohn but Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer.

At the end of our tour, we learned how the people of Prague, yet again forsaken by the Allies, were caught in German clutches near the end of the war. America refused them help because they were right over the invisible line drawn to demarcate which cities the Americans and the Soviets would each liberate. Unwilling to wait while the Germans continued to sack them, the people of Prague overtook the radio station and sent out a message of revolution. They held the station against 30,000 German troops for many days. But they were running out of ammunition and the Americans still refused to help. The change came when a group of Russian mercenaries who had defected from the Soviets realized the danger they were in. When the Soviets did come, they would be captured and sent to Siberia. So, they ditched the Germans and left their weapons for the people of Prague, who were able with their small numbers to drive all the Germans out of Prague in exchange for safe passage. And the mercenaries? Well, they sought mercy and confessed their crimes to the Americans, who turned them over to the Soviets, who sent them to Siberia. Karma’s a bitch.

After our tour, Cindy wanted to pay for the full castle tour but the rest of us wouldn’t spare a full four hours, so we split up. The rest of us walked towards the Dancing House, by a famous architect known only to Adrian. On our rather out-of-the-way way, we ran into a park filled with eerie huge statues of faceless babies as well as a gorgeous wall, the Imagine wall, dedicated to John Lennon and graffitied over with pictures and messages from years of visitors. And people think I’m strange for keeping a Sharpie in my purse! After passing a bridge full of locks left by lovers, inscribed with all sorts of sentimental messages, we finally saw the Dancing House from the bridge, but time was running low. So Adrian headed to the house with the promise to meet us at the Jewish museum while I, Katie, and Genie raced by tram to the castle on top of the hill.

We were too late to enter but that was alright, because we enjoyed a spin around the Disney-like grounds and were in time to enter the gorgeous Cathedral, a Gothic edifice filled with beautiful sculptures and paintings from Prague’s long history. The cathedral took so long to build that it is the only cathedral in the world whose carvings on the outer surface include men in business suits, the final architects. From the top of the grounds in the vineyard, we enjoyed a hilltop view of Prague, city of one thousand spires, with its gorgeous buildings and river gilded by the setting sun. We could see the famous Charles bridge, awash with craftsmen selling paintings and baubles, and the huge Metronome, placed on the hill where the largest statue of Stalin ever built one stood; now, the Metronome drags back and forth, symbolizing the time lost and the time that can still be gained.

We had one last stop, the Jewish museum. Unlike the museum in Munich, which requires a mandatory scanning and background check to enter, it is a small building butting up against the Jewish cemetery, a small walled-in space, the only space for Jews to be buried for many years, with so many layers of graves upon graves that the cemetery is its own hill. The old synagogue is part of the museum. It is rumored to house an old golem, built by the rabbi to protect the Jewish quarter, and destroyed when it went on a rampage. The museum itself houses a collection of art by Jewish children in the camps. One Jewish woman, an artist, saw the depression of the children and ran secret art therapy sessions with any scraps of paper and materials she could find, hoping to alleviate the children’s depression. Instead of drawing gruesome horrors as one might expect, most children drew their homes. With all their records destroyed by the Nazis, and many of them killed in the camps, these drawings are, for many of the children, the only evidence that they ever existed. Hoping to see this, we reached the gates of the museum, only to find that our tour guide had given us the summer hours, and it had closed an hour before.

Dejected, we met up with Adrian and did a little souvenir shopping, then bought our tickets from Prague to Vienna (or our tickets to Prague as Genie said, before the confused ticket lady corrected her). Then we returned to the metro where we forgot to validate our tickets and, picked out as tourists, were caught by the metro police amidst a crowd of ticket-less and giggling Czechs. We had to pay 700 koruna each and, after this next misfortune, went frustratedly to our hostel to meet Caitlin Kelley and Katrina. Cindy had met people on the castle tour and was planning to dine with them. The five of us went to a bar recommended by Sarah and the others, but it was too touristy for our tastes and we just had snacks there. We ran to the clock, which Katie and Adrian wanted to see, but following Adrian’s directions managed to lose Katie and Caitlin. We all hit the square after the clock was done, but were comforted by delicious potato pancakes and sausages from the street market. Then, again on the advice of the girls who had been to Prague before, we sought out a bar where we thought to find the best hot chocolate ever. The door was closed and we struggled with it for ten minutes before a man exited and we entered to find all the people inside staring at us, amused. They continued to stare while we went to the bar, ordered our hot chocolate, and left, again having trouble with the door. No wonder they laugh at Americans. The hot chocolate was mediocre but the night was beautiful and we walked through the streets to a little bar where we had drinks and talked. There was a Halloween mask on the floor to the bathroom that frightened Genie and a sketchy little dance club in the basement. Once out of koruna, we ran to the last tram of the night and just caught it back to the hostel, ready for an early train to Vienna. Despite all our misfortunes, we were in love with Prague, and were sad to be leaving.

2 Responses »

 

Does Anyone Speak Czech? Wednesday, Jan 6 2010

12 November, Thursday.

After just a few days back in Rome, it was already time to jet around the world again—almost. I went to class in the morning and took a nap with Thuy in the student lounge during lunch, then suffered through someone trying to disprove William of Ockham, and Conty, in Mystics. Impossible. With a slice of half-finished pizza, I rushed to my Italian test, which was ridiculous as usual. Then, Genie and I literally ran most of the way home to pack and grab Katie, Adrian, and Cindy. We lost Cindy on the train and managed to grab her just before Termini, where we caught a bus to the airport, populated by other JCU kids also coincidentally going to Prague. Genie’s hair gel exploded in her bag so she, Adrian, Katie, and I added some texture to our hair in the security line before rushing to our flight. The plane was short and before long we were in Prague, surrounded by Czech signs. After picking up our koruna, the local currency set at something like 250 koruna to 10 euro (not as great a rate as it seems, when a bottle of water is 80 koruna), we hopped on a bus that we thought went to the city center.

Fail. The bus dropped us off at a metro station somewhere on the outskirts of the city. The other JCU kids, armed with their hostel map, headed off onto the streets, while we went to the metro station and headed to the main station. A man there who spoke little English told us what train we needed and we took it, only to find ourselves more lost than ever. After a frightening race across the six lane highway, we stopped at a gas station for water and hopefully directions. Just as we were going to give up and return to the metro, we ran into a young Accident Assistance worker named Jiri (yirzhi) gassing up his car. We offered us a lift and, desperate and exhausted now that it was almost two in the morning, we squished into his car. He wanted know why we possibly wanted to come to Prague, what we thought about Obama, and whether his English was alright. We finally reached the hostel several hours after we had planned. Jiri dropped us off and told us that his job was to find accidents and get help for the people involved. We thanked him and checked into our hostel, where we got our own six person room for the eight person price—score!—from a long-haired Czech guy for just 500 koruna, or 20 euro. The room was awesome and we were so exhausted that we went right to sleep.

Leave a Response »

 

Vampires, Papers, and Techno Jams Wednesday, Jan 6 2010

9 November, Monday.

We were up early and exhausted for the train to the airport, where I was able to purchase the last of my souvenirs. The flight was quick and we arrived home early, where I was welcomed home with a few loads of laundry before it was time to head to class—on the wrong bus, which I was thankfully able to rectify. The class on Mandeville was a bit draggy and, being exhausted as I was, it was difficult to pay attention. At night, everyone else was missing in action so Katrina and I made a delightful dinner of sausages and vegetables for ourselves and then stayed up late doing homework.

10 November, Tuesday.

I headed to Brit Lit as usual for a wonderful class on Yeats, on of my absolute favorite poets. I worked on my Ancient Rome presentation in the library over lunch, where I found Vince, doing the same thing, to commiserate. Mystics was wonderful as usual, with a long off-topic debate about the rightness of removing crucifixes from Italian public schools, an exploration of mysticism, and a few thousand questions from confused students about nominalism. Unfortunately, it was followed by Italian. Fortunately, today we learned real grammar and new constructions! Unfortunately, that was followed by more paper writing. I had a break for Indian food with the Katies, Thuy, Marcelo, Nate, Roberto, Jenelle, and a few others, which was delicious but dreadfully spicy. Then it was another half hour of paper work, a dull bus ride home, and the treat of more homework.

11 November, Wednesday.

The 492 bus was ridiculous this morning, seeing as we somehow lost Roberto but managed to pick him up on the bus, after following Vince to a bus stop that didn’t exist and racing to the real one. My presentation on the Pantheon went extremely well and Hansen hardly interrupted me at all, so I was much calmer as we toured the inside of the Pantheon and took a frigid spin through a number of other temples. Katrina cut out early so I had a calzone at our favorite place by Largo Argentina with Roberto and Vince, then spent the rest of lunch break planning my Notre Dame schedule for next semester. Evil Philosophers was mildly interested and I spent the time after at home, studying and doing homework as usual. Dinner was special, since Chrissy’s parents and their travelling priest were in town. They made us all loads of pasta and appetizers and it was fun eating all together. At night, a group of us headed to Testaccio, a distant part of the city with rows and rows of dance clubs.

Me, Hugh, Marcelo, Genie, Thuy, Katie C., and Adrian headed to the 23, which we took all the way into Testaccio, but a little too far. We spent the bus ride singing, with breaks for Adrian to tape Real World Medag. I was supposed to be a vampire hunter seducing Hugh in order to learn his vampire secrets, but we ran out of tape after Katie’s tearfully scripted interview about her lost love. We asked directions from a variety of people and finally found our way to the heart of the club district, a little afraid of being mugged. The first club was a techno joint where we danced for near an hour before deciding that we needed a change. We ran into a pub crawl and followed them to a club called Coyote. Most of them were obviously trashed, because when the bouncer asked us to see our wristbands as part of the crawl, one of the guys yelled, “It’s okay, I accidentally cut off all their wristbands.” Smooth.

Thankfully, we had enough girls to get in. There were few people dancing at first, but the music was fun and modern and by the end of the night, the floor was packed. There was a crazy Scottish guy who befriended Adrian and Thuy and tried to life Adrian over his head, which we caught in time to stop. We left after four straight hours of dancing and a near run-in with a transvestite and ran after the 10 bus, only to find out it was going the wrong way. We waited on the corner for near an hour (the guys told us to flash some leg for the trucks that passed) and the bus finally came. Adrian and Thuy fell into the back seats, jolted by the bus taking off, and we took it to Ottaviano, from which we walked to the twenty-four hour pastry shop for snacks before heading back to the Medag. Best night ever.

Leave a Response »

 

Munich’s Finest Product Wednesday, Jan 6 2010

8 November, Sunday.

Today was a small snag on our thus far exceptional trip. We had planned to do all our souvenir shopping today, not realizing that, in Munich, Sunday really is a day of rest. Not a single souvenir shop to be seen—a tragedy for Marcelo and his quest to purchase leiderhosen, as well as the rest of us and our souvenir dreams. After several unsuccessful attempts to locate a shop, we admitted defeat and climbed up the tower of the Kirchenfraeu for a glorious view of the city, mist over red roofs and surrounding green fields. Mass was starting inside the church, so we headed to a pastry shop for phenomenal strudel served by two very sarcastic shop owners, and then it was onto Nymphenburg palace, which Cindy quickly claimed. Built by Ludwig I and inhabited by most of the following kings, it is a modish, opulent building with brightly painted walls dripping in gilt moldings. One room houses the Hall of Beauties, a collection of paintings of beautiful women (or so they should be) collected by Ludwig, rumored to be portraits of his mistresses. Our day ended with a stop to Olympico park, where the infamous Munich Olympics were held, with its walk of stars (a Hollywood style line of cement slabs featuring such greats as Metallica and Elton John), vast swimming pool, sadly closed trampolines, and, best of all, souvenir shop!

After a quick but delicious dinner at Hauptbanhof, we met up with the NewMunich crowd for the Beer Challenge, an educational beer hall tour. We received our free beer while we listened to a few beer facts from our loud and somewhat obnoxious tour guide, then headed to the Lauenbrau Haus for our first beer. We learned about the Beer Purity laws, which limit the ingredients that can be used in Munich beer and also define the difference between the delicious Munich offerings and their disappointing exported counterparts. Over half a liter of Lauenbrau split between me and Katie, we chatted with the three Brazilian girls on a several month holiday around Europe. Then it was a stop to the main Augustiner house, where Genie and Katie and I sat talking to the Canadian guy Andrew and the Brazilians. We sat out the Edelstof, no matter how good it is, in anticipation of the Hofbrau. On the way there, our guide taught us a beer song in the square, then it was time for the Hofbrau, the royal brewing house still owned by the state. We sat with a kind German youth named Heinrich who was on his second liter of beer and completely unaffected, as well as with another woman on the tour whose only desire was apple cider. While the oompah band played traditional songs, we talked and laughed over a few liters of the best beer in the world (the Dunkel, or dark, for me, of course) and then headed back to the hostel bar for more Augustiner and a free shot off another German delicacy, Jager, done bomb style of course. At the hostel bar, we talked and laughed with the other people on the tour, all young people travelling around the world from America, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and many other places. Then, it was time for bed.

Leave a Response »

 

Castle of the Swans Wednesday, Jan 6 2010

7 November, Saturday.

We were up a little late today after our marathon yesterday, so we had to rush to our train, which ended up coming twenty minutes late—a truly unusual occurrence in the painfully prompt German transportation system. Since our train arrived twenty minutes late, we missed our connecting train to Fuessen. We learned too late that we could have made the next one if we had stayed on the same platform, but by the time we learned the platform from the ticket office and ran back, the train was just breezing away. Curses. So, we took a little stroll around the tiny town of Buchloe and ordered some coffee and some bread for Marcelo. Suppose I should have mentioned that it was me, Genie, Katie Z., Cindy, and Marcelo on this journey. Anyway, after an hour we caught our next train and sat in a compartment with a little German girl, who was listening to her iPod but still laughed at all the ridiculous things we were saying in our starved, tired states. Finally we arrived in Fuessen where we caught a bus up to the mountain, then caught another trolley further up the mountain to Neuschwanstein castle. After having the best soft cheese pretzel I have ever eaten in my life, and grabbing another for the road, we headed to the castle itself.

Neuschwanstein is a fairytale castle—literally; it was the inspiration for Disney’s fairytale castle. Built by King Ludwig II as a memorial for his deceased friend (and alleged lover) Richard Wagner, it is a grand memorial to Wagner’s operas, situated on a forested mountaintop high above a sparkling lake and rolling green farmland, as well as Ludwig’s bridge stretching across the river chasm. The outside is white stone with a red brick front and high, pointed towers stretching far above the surrounding peaks and pines. The interior was never finished due to Ludwig’s mysterious and young death, but the completed rooms are worthy of a god. Swans, symbols of Ludwig’s favorite Wagner opera, abound in every form, from porcelain and golden beauties to paintings in every room and even carvings on the four-poster bed, a huge wood structure with a canopy carved from dark wood to resemble a forest. The throne room is styled after a Byzantine church, complete with gold mosaics and a one-ton chandelier sparkling with crystals. The passage through the king’s personal chambers leads to a small hallway carved in plaster to resemble perfectly a real cave, complete with a stalactite-studded entrance onto a mountain-peak terrace. Sadly, the sun was near setting and our stay had to end, so we rushed early out of the trippy video on Ludwig’s life.

This left us little time to catch the next trolley down the mountain, so we raced uphill, stopping to breath and nearly collapse, only to reach the first bus when it was overstuffed. Thankfully we crushed into the second one and, with the help of a few cabs, reached the train station in plenty of time—so much that we used the extra money from the cabs to buy a load of German candy and coffee. The trains back were freezing but we reached Munich safely and headed to the Augustiner house (which serves the pope’s favorite beer, no lie) for the best schnitzel and spetzel I’ve ever eaten (a trend) and delightful service from a waiter we are pretty sure was Italian. Unfortunately we reached the Hofbraeu Haus too late to sample the wares, but we paused there for a few minutes to admire it. The hall is huge, full of long heavy wooden tables awash with people drinking, laughing, and intermittently breaking out into loud German songs. No matter; we would return. We wandered Maximillianplatz for a while, admiring the huge shrine to Michael Jackson crowded around the statue of Maximillian, walked past a few pretty, trendy clubs, and then took the U-bann with its 70s style furnishing back to our hostel for bed.

Leave a Response »

 

Wilkommen zu Muenchen Monday, Nov 30 2009

6 November, Friday.

We had an early flight, as usual, and so we passed out promptly on the plane and woke up in the beautiful land of Muenchen! The view as we swooped in to land was of green hills dotted with little Sound of Music looking houses (yes, I know it was in Austria, but they look similar!) and it was flat! After months of hilly Italy, it was a comforting reminder of home. As soon as we got into the airport, we took a train to Hauptbanhof station and dropped our bags at our hostel, then speeded to Marianplatz on the S-bann. First impression of Munich trains? Orderly. Clean. On time. People walked onto the escalator and filed into neat lines on the right if they were standing, and walked briskly up the left side if they were walking. I almost died of joy. Anyway, we hit Marienplatz and hooked up with the NewMunich free tour lead by Sonja, a delightful American-born student with a keen grasp of German and a sharp tongue. As the world’s largest glockenspiel started its tinny song, which has been rendered unrecognizable by virtue of being centuries out of tune, she gave a witty verbal explication of the little figures as they grated around the track (“And lo, Bavaria has defeated France! Every day for 208 years! That must be a record.”) and the little Bavarian knight dehorsed the little Lothingrian knight. Rather than waiting around for the cuckoo bird to emerge and croak a weak note, Sonja described a much more interesting version involving a rain of beer and then pantomimed the real spectacle before leading us into the courtyard of the Rathaus for a breezy history of Munich. We learned that it was founded around a monastery and suffered greatly by “that Austrian painter.”

We then rushed ahead to beat the Spanish (aka get in front of the Spanish tour group) but sadly were second to the Devil’s Footprint, a mysterious footprint in the Frauenkirche (church of our lady). Supposedly, the Devil saw the beautiful church being built and saw how dark it was when he entered, which made him hopeful. He told the architect that he would make him famous but he must not put any more windows in the church, for he wanted it to be dark and gloomy so that the people would worship him there. The architect agreed. When the church was finished, the Devil came back and saw how bright and beautiful it was. He confronted the architect, who told him frankly that he had not put any more windows in; when the Devil had visited the first time, all the windows were already in place, but they had been covered up to protect them from the construction. The Devil was so angry that he stomped his foot in the ground, and the print remains to this day. In actuality, Sonja says, the footprint is the architect’s, but that doesn’t stop thousands of people from measuring up their feet to see if they have the same shoe size as the Devil.

From there, we took a brief spin past some of the other buildings in the area. In one, a cannonball is stuck in the tower; when it was being rebuilt after the war, a man gave the workers the cannonball, which had stuck there before the building was destroyed, and told them that it belonged up there. Another was a beautiful church rebuilt by beer money, naturally, with a little memorial of a menorah in the ceiling tiles to commemorate the Jews who helped reconstruct it. We walked past many of the subtle memorials, of which there are many dozen, which quietly commemorate the victims of World War II; a sign to mark the site of an old successful department store of a Jewish owner, a golden line painted into the stones of Dodger’s Alley, where people would walk to avoid saluting a memorial that falsified in Hitler’s favor the story of a failed revolt, and many more. Unlike Berlin, where the massive memorial has become the place for people to sit on and stick gum to, Munich hopes with its memorials that people will see them and have questions, and perhaps through finding the information on their own, they will actually remember it. We walked after to the Viktualenmarkt, where sits Munich’s maypole. Every town in Germany has one and it is used both to display the trades of the city and for ambitious people to climb. If one town steals another town’s maypole, they can force that town to throw them a party. In the past, this once led to a massacre when the offended town refused to throw the festival. The tradition has not died. Even in 1995, the airport security found the airport maypole missing. Terrified that someone was able to steal such a huge structure out of the supposedly secure airport, they called the city police. There was laughter on the other end of the line. The police, having admitted to stealing the maypole, demanded that airport security throw them a party, and their demands were honored. We learned also of King Ludwig I, who instituted Oktoberfest when his wife demanded more than a measly field as her wedding present and wanted a party as well, and his grandson Ludwig II, who was mysteriously too friendly with Richard Wagner and mysteriously found dead in a lake after being diagnosed mad by a psychiatrist who had never met him, and who incidentally was found dead at the same time in the same lake.

After joke time with Sonja during our break, we recovered her pet (the Ukranian woman in the huge fluffy white hood) and headed past a large church with eight clocks on its tower, where a sign on the door cryptically forbids placing your hands in your pockets. When Sonja asked the old priest what this meant, the priest told her grumpily, “The devil is in your pants and God is watching.” Eep. After, we took a rest in Dodger’s Alley for the story of Hitler’s rise to power, from his earliest days as a traitor and a small-time revolter to the Beer Hall Putzch and the failed revolution that lead to the creation of Dodger’s Alley. The monument that drove so many people down this street was a plaque to the people who had died during this revolution, including three completely unrelated bystanders whom the Nazis styled as pro-Nazi heroes. And what did they claim of Hitler, who had run in terror from the revolt and stole an ambulance to escape? Oh, he just saw a fallen little girl and knew that he could drive her to the hospital faster than the drivers could. After this, we walked to the platform where two lions, one open-mouthed and one close-mouthed, were set by King Ludwig I to signify that people should be allowed to speak against their government. Ironic that it was also the place where Hitler delivered the speeches that stole the freedom from a nation and a people.

Our tour with Sonja was regrettably over, but our historic tour of Munich was still continuing. With Sonja’s guidance, we took the train to Dachau, the first of the concentration camps. The place is a gray, small enclosure in the midst of the Munich suburbs. The road up seems inconspicuous and innocuous, until you see the guard tower and the barbed wire still running along the riverbeds. Inside the walls, only one of the barracks still stands, but cinderblocks mark where the others stood in two long, uniform rows. Inside, the rooms preserve the tiny wooden beds where the prisoners were packed, overcrowded by many thousands of people. The main building, once plastered in huge letters with the lie that obedience is salvation, contains a museum of stories and artifacts, detailing the history of the camp from its creation to house German dissidents through its bloody twists until it was finally liberated. Dotted around are memorials to the dead: a small Russian orthodox chapel, a Protestant church, a Catholic altar, an underground Jewish grotto. On the outskirts is a convent, which existed even while Dachau was active. And then, the most sobering part. Crossing the river, the single muffled sound in the silent space, a path leads to the grove where still stands the crematorium. Silent, sober, we walked through the rooms where the prisoners were showered and stripped, and stood long in the small gray box where thousands of people were sprayed with lethal gas, then passed at last past the brick cremation ovens, with the ashes of many burnt bodies still clinging to the cracks. It was an unreal place and the only emotion that can crack through the silence and the numbness is disbelief, that this could have happened, that this could have been real.

We were not given long to reflect on our visit, for we had to rush back to our hostel to prepare for the opera, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. We ended up running in dresses and painful shoes several blocks to the opera house to pick up our tickets and find our seats. And by seats, I mean that we were in the back in the standing section, for three hours, listening to a Russian opera with German subtitles. Between me and Marcelo reading the subtitles and all of us watching, we managed to cobble together enough to figure out the plot during the intermission. Our efforts were somewhat frustrated by the gay crossdressers who were playing with a blow-up doll at the back of the stage while Eugene lamented murdering his best friend, and did a dance number during Eugene’s meeting with his old love. Right-o. After the opera was over and we were done being muddled, we lost ourselves in the back of the opera house and emerged through a side door where a very confused usher showed us the way out. We found a lovely authentic German restaurant for dinner and delicious homemade wheat beer (I had pig knuckle; so good!) and were seated at a table with two German men, who told us all about sites to see in Munich. By this time it was late and we were thoroughly exhausted, so we headed back to our hostel and fell asleep to our snoring unknown roommates.

Leave a Response »

 

Genie Goes Poof Saturday, Nov 28 2009

5 November, Thursday.

I was up early to make sure I got to school in plenty of time for my seminar in Brit Lit on Sassoon’s “Glory of Women.” It went well, probably since I was too tired to be nervous, and I spent my lunch break in the computer lab doing schedule work and with a quick pizza. Mystics was reading-less again, since the copy shop had worked more mischief and our text was missing from our reader, but Conty saved it with a really good discussion of theoretical physics and its relation to Ockham and Eckhart. Everyone was exhausted and quiet in Italian and it was a mercy to be let out after. Genie, Katie Z., Katie C., Thuy and I went to the nearby bar for Genie’s favorite, capiroskas, and then were planning on dining after.

We waited for Genie in Piazza Trilussa while she went into the Tabacchi around the corner for a bus ticket. When she didn’t come back, we split up to search for her. After forty minutes of no Genie we were worried but had no way of reaching her, so we headed home in hopes to find her there. We met up with some of the others on the bridge and took the busses home. Genie was there, thankfully, in the process of making mushroom pizza, which I managed to beg some of. At night, we set out our plan of attack for Munich the next day. There was a little tension around the apartment, but it was gladly diffused and we all headed to bed for an early morning.

Leave a Response »