I Love Bavaria! 3.11.10

I love Bavaria! The people, the culture, the towns, the mountains, the castles, the beer, the strudel! Honestly, I think I just had three of the best days of my life. The strudel alone made it a fantastic weekend, but coupled with everything else, it was truly exceptional.

As I mentioned in my last post, I traveled to Munich alone this weekend, and I am pleased to report, I am well suited to travelling solo. Even though I am an introvert, it can be a little intimidating to spend upwards of 72 hours on your own. Though I was on my own, I never felt alone. It’s a pretty cool sensation and I recommend it to anyone willing to try it.

Tuesday morning, I took a tour of the city center. I had taken a similar tour in Budapest a few weeks ago, which was great, so I had high expectations after spending a day with Adam. Micháel definitely met those expectations. A charismatic Irishman, Micháel was able to rouse chuckles from the bellies of more than a dozen tourists ranging in ages from young to well-traveled as he guided us through the cobbled streets of Munich. I love these tours because I don’t just see the sights that a city has to offer and get a little bit of history along the way (which I would probably miss if I did it on my own), but I also get an opportunity to meet people. On this tour I bounced around trying to start a conversation with a few different people, but at the coffee break (Starbucks? Really? There was no other coffee house in Munich?) I sat down and spoke with a group of Australian tourists, first about their travels and later about politics.

Though I’m sure I’ve been advised against talking politics on a first date, I often find myself discussing them. Politics are a great topic in my opinion because it’s something that many people feel very strongly about so I can get a lot of enthusiasm from someone relatively easily and am able to find out a lot about someone very quickly. In this case, I found out that the Family First party in Australia is too extreme for Aaron.

And just like that, a friendship was born. As soon as Aaron opened up, I kind of stuck by him. When the tour ended, Micháel offered to take us to a restaurant nearby that offered traditional Bavarian plates for good prices. Before I get to that though, some of the places I saw and topics discussed on my tour: Kristalnacht, Viktualienmarkt, the history of the beer gardens, Marienplatz, the legend of the Devil’s footprint and Frauenkirche, origins of Oktoberfest, the new (old) town hall and the old (new) town hall, and the world famous Glockenspiel to name a few.

Of all the places and stories we heard, I think my favorite was in the Frauenkirche. Munich has a troubled history as the home of Hitler’s Nazi party and the capital of the Third Reich and it is something with which they deal to this day. One consequence of this support was that near the end of WWII when the tide of the war was swinging in the allies’ favor, Munich was bombed heavily. Many structures were badly damaged, but, as Micháel said “the only good thing Hitler ever did,” the Nazis knew this would happen and before the bombings started took photos of every inch of the city. So, when the dust settled and the war ended, reconstruction of Munich possible on a level completely different from other parts of Germany where new structures were simply built on top of the old ones. Munich now retains an old town feel that many other German cities lost after the war. So how does this relate to the Frauenkirche? The church too suffered badly from the bombings and initially the city did not have enough money to fund its restoration, so private doors helped to pay for it, including the Jewish community. On the roof of the church there are now insignia of every donor and for the Jewish community there is a menorah. The Jewish contribution was to repay the debt to priests of the church who before the outbreak of violence had taken documents and religious artifacts from the synagogues and hid them in the church risking their lives in so doing and when the war ended, the church returned everything. I thought that was a pretty great story, though, Micháel definitely delivered it much more eloquently than I just did. Sorry.

Another historical factoid that I found interesting: whereas in many medieval towns, Maypoles were used for a religious celebration, in Bavaria, they also served as signposts for businesses in towns (think of the signs on the sides of highways letting you know where you can pull off for a McDonalds or Best Western). Munich, as the largest city and the center of commerce (ever since they rerouted trade routes through the city by burning down a bridge upriver and constructing their own) justifiably has the largest Maypole. It is really quite impressive and at each of the six levels of industry represented on the Maypole, beer is the focal point (so typically Bavarian).

The tour ended at the Maypole and three of us, Aaron, Joe, and myself, joined Micháel for lunch. I ate a healthy sized portion of Wiener schnitzel in a mushroom sauce with a local wheat beer (it’s called Weiss, how was I to say no?). Over lunch, I got to know Joe, Aaron and Micháel a bit better. Micháel moved to Munich about a year ago to be with a girlfriend, though they’re no longer together, and Michael is actually planning to move to Dubai soon to be a professional pilot for an airline. Meanwhile Joe is a fellow American. He is in the National Guard and is from Louisiana, though is now living in Florida I believe. Aaron, a dreadlocked Australian pseudo-“metal head”, opera-singing traveler, was the most fascinating character to me. He has a natural energy that radiates from him such that I found myself hanging onto every word he said. I got to spend a bit of one-on-one time with him too because he offered to let me use his photo cord so that I could off-load some of the pictures on my camera (I forgot mine in Prague) saving me the hassle of having to worry about filling up my chip (which I ended up doing anyway ending my trip with space for 2 more photos).

In Aaron’s hostel lobby, we met an Austrian rapper in town recording his album. He goes by the name TMC 186 and though I haven’t had a chance to give him a listen yet, my curiosity is piqued. Wearing a crisp white pair of Air Force 1s, an blue and orange Adidas track jacket (zipped up to the top) and a black on black New York Yankees hat, this fellow, who’s given name I never caught, was dressed to the T in MTV fashion. On the one hand I thought it was interesting just how strongly America’s influence could be felt in Europe. I know the urban apparel trend followed is not exactly a counter-culture or poorly represented in the media, but still, to see TMC dressed exactly like any rapper on in the middle of the last decade would be (when Nelly came out with Air Force 1s) was a bit of a shock. Of course, when he said his favorite rapper was Cam’Ron that he was kind of like an Austrian Dipset, and that he liked the “punch-line style” of rap best, it all made a little more sense. To each his own, I suppose. Back to the actual point of this story though: that I even had this conversation with TMC at all was awesome. It’s a conversation I wouldn’t have had and an experience I would have missed if I had been traveling with friends and not alone; that’s food for thought.

Around 4, I said goodbye to Aaron temporarily, as we agreed to meet up again at 6 for the “Beer Challenge.” It should be noted that our tour guide said explicitly that the beer challenge should not be thought of as a “sloppy bar crawl.” Instead, Sandeman’s New Munich Tours provides cultural information about beer culture in Bavaria while frequenting three different beer halls. It was definitely the way to bar hop. I had one beer at each bar even though we stayed for an hour at each stop before ending back at the hostel and I even got to eat some strudel in the middle, which improves any night. I learned a Bavarian beer hall song on the steps outside of a church. I saw a table of Bavarians dressed in lederhosen, leg warmers, hats and the whole “get up” including crests and hats! My friend Alice, an adorable little Australian, tried to surreptitiously take photos of them over her shoulder but her clandestine activities were quickly discovered. As retribution Alice was “forced” to sit with them where they fed her fox sausage and almost tricked into picking up the tab for the entire table (when they slipped the coaster with their beer count under her drink).

After we left this beer hall, we ended up at one more before ending the night at the hostel next door to my own. In the hostel, Stacey, who had been keeping an eye on us all night trying to determine who would be awarded with the prize of a free tour (essentially rewarding the social butterfly of the night who took fullest advantage of the evening) nominated four finalists: Alice, Aaron, Dave and… myself! Taken aback that I was even considered initially, upon reflection it may not be a surprising. I may be quiet when I am not in my comfort zone, but early on in the evening, the people on the tour had helped me feel quite comfortable with them: Hallie and Jo, two delightful Australian ladies, talked with me like an old friend, I joked with Dave, an jolly Irishman, and asked his opinion on Boondock Saints (he hadn’t seen it, but I assigned it to him as homework), Nicole lived in Minnesota (working at the Mayo Clinic) and we talked about how great Minnesota is, etc. and so even though I was clearly the youngest of the group, I felt at ease nearly immediately. I was plenty content with even being in the running for the award, and I didn’t want a competition of sorts in which I could be embarrassed, so I started a chant in the hostel for Alice. It is not that Dave or Aaron were undeserving, I just thought it was awesome that she had sat and chatted with the table of Bavarians in the beer hall. In short order, I had the entire tour chanting and cheers-ing Alice’s name and all around making a rukus in the bar and Stacey handed Alice the award. Success.

I found myself collapsing, exhausted, into bed after a great day around two.

When I woke up in the morning, it was right around nine, and I knew I would miss the 9:15 departure to Füssen with Stacey (who was leading a tour to see the castle, Neuschwanstein). Undeterred, I prepared myself to face the day and made my way to the train station to find a later train and make the tour on my own.

I made the next train to Füssen, so I was only an hour behind the tour. The train from Munich to Füssen is around two hours, so nothing to extravagant and I arrived just before one in the afternoon. I hadn’t eaten yet in the day, and with my stomach grumbling, I ventured into town to find some food. I looked at a few different restaurants, finally settling on a little deli where I bought a bratwurst and a schnitzel. I brought my lunch back to the bus station and ate while I waited for the bus to arrive and shuttle me up to the foothills below the castle.

In the shadows of the castle an even smaller town is nestled into the hillside. With the feel of a ski town mixed and imbued with a Bavarian essence, the attraction of the village was undeniable. I finally succumbed to the force of the town and bought myself a hat (thanks Mom and Dad).

Feeling mightily prepared for a hike into the German Alps, I started my ascent. The path up to the castle is paved and easy enough. Since the floor was flat, I could lift my eyes and take in my surroundings. The forests on both sides were old and rich. Tree trunks shot into the sky in straight lines and only more trunks obscured my vision – the canopy resting 20 meters above my head at least. The region had also experienced a recent snowfall, so I saw my first snow of the season. Even though there was snow on the ground, the air was warm and I found myself shedding layers as the day wore on. It was like skiing in the spring: wonderful.

I have no idea how long the hike up to the castle took. That was part of the beauty of this day trip: I had no agenda. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to accomplish, but refused to establish an itinerary. Even my return to Munich was up for debate and I had four different trains that left from Füssen to choose from.

Since I was hiking alone, I had a lot of time to myself and could just take in life. More than once, stuck by the beauty of my surroundings, I reflected on how fortunate I am and how great my life is. One thought that kept reoccurring, and filled my chest with pride, was a sense that I was following in the footsteps of my uncle, Johnny, who traveled to New Zealand years ago and returned with stories and photographs. I know I’m not in New Zealand, and I can only hope to have stories and photos to rival his, but still, it was a growing up moment for me when I realized that I no longer had to dream about the day that I would travel the world, but was actually experiencing it. It’s a weird moment when you realize a dream (formulated or abstract) that you’ve held on to since you were a child, but not all together an unpleasant one. In fact, I found it quite rewarding. So, thank you Uncle Johnny for the inspiration.

I finally made it to the top of the hill and walked around the castle. It is in fantastic shape for a structure built hundreds of years ago. I can also understand why Walt Disney would use it as inspiration for his Disney Palace, it’s setting is majestic inspiring hope and wonder desire.

When I decided to head back toward Füssen, I made what I believe to be one of my best decisions thus far on the trip – I walked. Only the manageable distance of 5 km separate Füssen and the town of Hohenschwangau (where the castle is) and there’s a paved path along the road the entire way with relatively simple to follow directions. Still, I grew tired of the path from time to time and wandered into meadows and onto farmlands. I think I finally understand what my brother finds so appealing about the outdoors. Though I will admit, I was pleased to sleep in a bed at the end of the day, I can see a trip in our future and hope he is still amenable to the idea.

Finally arriving back in Füssen, I had an hour to spare before a train would leave to return to Munich. I had a delicious, if rushed, dinner at a restaurant and stopped into a souvenir store to buy a pin for my hat before running to the train station. The train was scheduled to depart at 6:05 and when I arrived at 6:04:59 the train was already pulling out of the station. The conductor saw me however and taking pity on me, stopped the train to allow me to board. I was greeted by friendly jeers of “dumm kopf” by a group of locals to which I smiled and thought how fortunate I had been. The jeers had apparently been quite loud however, because as I navigated the train to find my seat, I met a young woman who turned to me, smiled, and said jokingly, “So you must be the dumm kopf.” I reveled in the moment before falling into a deep sleep.

I arrived back in Munich around 8, and when I got back to my room in the hostel, I was surprised to see people in the room. Turns out they were Americans, spending the semester in Switzerland, and traveling to Munich for the weekend. We got to talking and again, I found them very friendly and willing to talk. After a bit of chitchat, they were heading out to dinner and a night on the town and I asked if I could join them for dessert (I had some strudeling to do), the agreed and off we went. We went to the Hofbraühaus and met up with three of their friends who had already commandeered a table in the back of the hall. We talked and joked for several hours before I had to call it a night and return to the hostel to recharge my batteries.

Being Friday night of Halloween weekend, I wondered what my friends were doing to celebrate the holiday and felt a little home sick wishing that I could be home with them. This is a fairly common theme for me even though I’m having a great time and am quite aware that I am meeting people I would never have the chance to interact with under “normal” circumstances. I guess sometimes even great things have drawbacks. Still, I know that this time away is not detrimental to my friendships, not the good ones at least, and I’m hoping it will even strengthen them in the end by diminishing my need for constant contact/interaction (though email and Skype are not helping me there…).

Random thought: remember when email wasn’t a word recognized in a dictionary and it was electronic mail? Crazy how fast the world changes.

On Saturday, after having checked out of my room, I tried to return my lock that I had rented from the hostel to receive my deposit, but since I needed to keep my bags locked up in the back lockers for the day before I got on the train I found myself out of the 7 euro due to me. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that I had completely exhausted my cash that I had withdrawn on Wednesday, my American Express is not accepted everywhere, and the cherry on top, I had “reached my weekly maximum withdrawal” on my check card. So… I ate a rice cracker for breakfast/lunch.

Now, with a good five hours to pass before my train departed from the main station, I walked around the city. I stopped first at Theresienwiese, Therese’s Meadow, the meadow that held the marriage festivities between the Bavarian crown prince Ludwig and Therese of Saxony in 1810 and today is the location of Oktoberfest. I missed Oktoberfest this year, and at this point, the field is a giant (de)construction zone, but it was still fun to see if only so that I could have a sense of the scale of Oktoberfest.

From Theresienwiese, I walked to the other side of the city to see the English gardens, an enormous urban park. The park was beautiful, but my favorite part was the artificial wave in the stream that runs through the park inspiring, at all times of day, surfers to grab their boards and hit the waves in the middle of Munich. When I arrived there were seven men with wetsuits on taking turns on the waves and quite a crowd had gathered to witness this peculiar phenomenon.

About twenty minutes after watching the surfers my stomach grumbled angrily at me demanding food, so I made my way back to the hostel. On the way though, I stumbled upon the shopping district of Munich and was equally impressed with the arrangement of courtiers and jewelers as I was with the cars that lined the streets in front of the stores. One particularly memorable stretch had an Audi S5, a Rolls Royce, a Jaguar, (a Mini Cooper,), a Bentley, and a Mercedes.

When I finally got my money for the lock deposit returned to me, I promptly bought a Döner Kebab and a baguette for my first dinner (my second one would have to wait until I arrived back in Prague).

The train ride back to Prague was a really fascinating one. I shared a cabin with two very friendly Czech women from Plzen, who, as soon as I helped them lift their luggage into the racks, became very talkative. After making small talk for a little while, I asked them if I could interview for my Czech class. The obliged and I began with questions about the typical Czech and their neighbors.

They commented about how the typical Czech likes to have a garden at which point one of the women launched into an anecdote about a Czech woman who married an American. The details were obscured in translation, but from what I understood, when the husband visited his wife’s hometown of Plzen and they walked in the surrounding region he was so surprised by the gardens in which vegetables were grown to the point that he took videos to show to his class – he was a professor of ecology.

These women thought very highly of Hungarians too, clearly favoring them above any of their other neighbors. Calling them clever and likable, they told stories about how a Hungarian had worked with Einstein to discover refrigerators – I have not yet had time to check the facts of this tale, though I doubt its legitimacy. They also credited a Hungarian with the discovery of dipping sweet cherries in chocolate – a dessert they called Cherie Amore. I suspect much of their admiration of Hungarians stemmed from the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which they spoke of with a great, almost personal, pride.

When the conversation transitioned to life before and after 1989, they had interesting insights about America. During that conversation the women mentioned how their uncle had fought in WWII with the allies and that without America “there wouldn’t be freedom in Europe.” They appreciated America for weakening communism and were grateful for the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union; however, these days they found themselves significantly more critical of America especially with regards to the Taliban. It seemed to me that they blamed America for the Taliban and their radicalized movement. This analysis is not unfounded if you look at America’s early support of the Taliban against the Soviet Union providing monetary support and military training, but is a critique not often heard in America.

The women also mentioned how upon visiting China, George Bush, who was president at the time, criticized China for their poor record on human rights referencing Tiananmen Square, but Obama did not say anything on the subject. One woman said explicitly that she “agreed with Fidel Castro” when he said, “Obama is a good idealistic young man but he lives in a world where his dreams are not realizable.” I don’t think I’ve EVER had a conversation with someone who explicitly agrees with Castro.

The women also contended that America, the land of the free, is not free at all. Instead the society is dictated by the desires of the gun industry and the military-industrial complex. Drawing again upon personal experience, one of the women told a story about how one of her friends had gone to school at Harvard in the early 1990s, married a Harvard trained doctor (though he himself was also not American), but had to leave because she could not continue to live in a society in which she did not feel free. They emigrated back to the Czech Republic, her home country, and have lived in Plzen ever since. I have heard criticisms of America as not being a land of the free before, even Tocqueville mentions it in his work Democracy in America, but I can’t say that I have ever felt “unfree.” Maybe I’m fortunate, or maybe I’m naïve, but I consider myself quite fortunate in the perceived opportunities afforded to me by my family, community, and country. On another note, the tale shared by the women highlights another issue that is often referred to in the papers: the export of education by America. It used to be the case that individuals educated in America would remain in the states, but this is increasingly not the case and these women had first hand experience with this phenomenon.

The most interesting component of the conversation about life before and after 1989 was how their views of communism and the west contrasted starkly from the younger generation with whom I have also asked. Nearly everyone I’ve talked to has the same set of stock answers: communism was hard and people were poor, there were long cues to buy everything, but life was simple, everyone was secure, everyone had a job. What was different this time around, however, was that these women had grown up under communism. It was what they knew. That is not to say that they liked communism – as I’ve already mentioned, they were quite proud of the Hungarians for their rebellion in ’56 – but that they defended it in a way that the younger people I’ve talked to have not. Never explicitly complimenting the communist regime, they muted their criticism in an interesting way that I can’t describe. They also found many more faults with a free market system than the younger generation who had never worked under the communist structure. In their minds, the free market results in a rat race to a pot of gold. I got the impression that it was their opinion that the open market compelled people to abandon their morality in their pursuit of riches.

I know there are Americans who criticize aspects of the open market, that the discrepancy between the rich and the poor is too large, that our government should do more to help the less fortunate. I know this because I am one of them, but I have rarely heard someone espouse anything but conservative economic theory. Conservative here is not a political term, but academic and refers to a general faith in the market. And yet here were two women from Plzen, having just returned from a trip previously prohibited to them, proposing the merits of a structured economy with a focus on equality.

Our last topic of conversation is one close to my heart: I asked them what their opinions were of the Palestine-Israel issue. I tried to frame the question in order not to bias them or indicate an answer that I would want to hear, but still, I think they suspected that I had a hidden agenda and this was anything but an innocent question (I mean how often does someone you just meet ask you your thoughts about the issues in the Middle East?). Before answering they insisted that I share my thoughts first, and so I delivered what I believed to be the most political answer possible, in that I mean, that I said a few things without saying much of anything. I still wanted to keep my cards close to my chest and see if I could get something out of them that would be valuable. In the end I succeeded in a very interesting, and quite frightening way.

The women said that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was not really a problem that should exist and that it is a consequence of colonialism – a European created issue. Of course, with this as the starting point, the perspective of the Israelis is never going to be good, and true to form, shortly after they referenced the land as Palestinian. This means that Israel is an occupying force and that if the Jews were to just leave, the problem in conflict in the Middle East would be resolved. These women, who were not overtly anti-Semitic, justified the continued attacks on Israel and Israeli citizens by labeling Israelis as occupiers, as the issue. They didn’t say Israel was at fault for so and so and listed grievances, but simply being there. That was what I took from the conversation. I was shocked.

I didn’t make a big scene – I still had a few hours on the train with these women – so I politely ceased conversation shortly after and retreated into my thoughts.

I think that just about sums up my weekend in Bavaria. Wonderful, smooth, and fun. The only downers were the end of my conversation with the women on the train and losing my sunglasses case somewhere in Füssen.

Sorry about the slight delay in getting this posted. Missing everyone.