Leaving Stockholm Airport, I had the splendid gift from the Nordic gods to get food poisoning - from an Irish-Red-Sox themed bar no less (the gods are never short of irony). So, I entered Budapest after a grueling day of flights, layovers, and airplane bathrooms, and I left Budapest with the same problem - the flu. Take congestion and exhaustion, add in a little season change, and there you have a Hungarian flu. Probably another message from the Universe telling me woaaaah slow down, buddy.
Bratislava, Slovakia
Unfortunately, because of whatever sickness I had, I endured another grueling day of travel from Budapest to Bratislava. Bratislava was the perfect place to be sick and recuperate.
After a few days of nothing but my bed, I felt well enough to sneak in a three hour excursion that ended up being a hike, complete with views of castles and a "historical trail" full of information to absorb. I would have made it longer, but after the fresh air and the physical effort, my bed was calling once again.
Vienna, Austria
Whether I was still recovering from being sick or not, I had to make it to Switzerland from the eastern border of Austria, and I had to do it by Sept 25th in order to meet my mom. For that reason, I kept chuggin' along. I had one full day in Vienna, and it ended up being only 3 or 4 hours of exploring the city.
When I entered Vienna, I had hoped for memorials, and history, similar to the way that Budapest represents its past. Rather than that, the history seemed somewhat suppressed and the city is just as metropolitan as any other. In fact, it was like walking around Fifth avenue - teenagers looking only at their phones, and people bumping into me left and right without even a glance to see if they shoved a wall or a human being. It also smelled like horse maneur.
If I had the time I might have fallen in love with the city. But I started to feel ill from the congestion, and had to cut my visit short.
Salzburg, Austria
Salzburg was a whole-nother story. After being bummed-out from Vienna, and being sick, I arrived in Salzburg ready for anything thrown my way, and healthy once again.
LIFE IS BACK
I had an idea of the hikes I wanted to do around the city, but not knowing if I would be capable, I decided to ditch the idea of a day-long hike in the Austrian Alps and instead do a biking tour. And not just any biking tour - a Sound of Music biking tour. Not only was the Sound of Music filmed in Salzburg, but it was filmed in the town and original locations of the real Von Trapp Family Singers.
On the tour, we road through the Marienplatz gardens where the family sings "Do Re Mi." We went outside of Salzburg to a park where "16 Going on 17" is sung in the gazebo that is now kept there. The gazebo was locked and closed to the public - too many Americans jumping around on benches, imitating the movie, and twisting ankles. Even the actress in the movie twisted her ankle during the filming of the scene, what do you expect?
We went to the fountain where Frauline Maria begins singing "Confidence in Me" and we road our bicycles up the dirt road where she skips and runs with her guitar as she approaches the fence of the Captain's house. We went to the convent where all of the convent scenes were filmed. The same place as the original events, where Frauline Maria had pledged as a novice nun, and the same convent that she and the Captain later were married in. (Not that big gaudy church in the movie.) When I entered into the convent to look around, it was quaint with wooden panels, and a beautiful large organ. It was even dark, as if nuns might be lurking in the shadows. Suddenly, right as I was heading to the door, the sunlight shined through the window above the entrance, and at the same moment behind the organ where they could not be seen, a choir of nuns began to sing. Really. It was as if beautiful angels were just out of sight, watching over us, singing praise with us. Their voices started like a whisper and grew louder, but still so soft and gentle. Like a mother knocking lightly on her child's door after tucking her in for sleep, and then whispering into the dark "I love you, goodnight." I listened for a moment and then just as suddenly as it came, the music stopped, and my tour moved on.
Outside of the convent my tour of 10 sat overlooking the city with the Alps in the near distant background. We gathered round our guitar-playing guide and sang a few songs from the movie together. It was like being around a campfire with old friends. The picture below was our backdrop.
Afterward, we road to the lake that the children fell into (in the movie) - learning that it was one of two buildings used to make the movie magic of the Von Trapp Family home.
During the days of the real Von Trapp family, the home was owned by a well-known director, Max Reinhardt. This is significant, because on the same night that the Von Trapp Family escaped Austria and Nazi occupation, so did Reinhardt. Coincidentally, it was the last night before all transportation out of Austria was cancelled in order to keep people from trying to evade Nazi rule. Unlike the movie, however, the Von Trapp family did not walk over mountains to get to Switzerland. Firstly, because the mountains they would have walked over would have lead directly to Germany, since they are already on the Austrian/German border and the Alps are all that divides them. Secondly, the family actually took a train to Italy, and then flew to the United States. Max Reinhardt also sought refuge in the United States. I don't know about Max, but the Von Trapps have all (or mostly) died and been buried in Vermont.
I think the story itself is interesting. Compared to other stories I've heard about the Holocaust, and Nazi occupation, it doesn't appear as though - in the beginning - anyone knew that the Nazi's were bad news bears. But if there are stories of people escaping before the rule began then I suppose the proof is in the pudding.
Dachau, Germany
Interestingly enough, despite all of the negative press about U.S. involvement in foreign affairs, the United States is heavily praised for being a key player in ending the Nazi regime and freeing any survivors of the Holocaust. We really were the liberators. I always thought it was some sort of propaganda taught to me in school, but no, this time we were the heroes. Now, I suppose that role has sort of gone to our heads since FDR was president... Things are different now.
Dachua is a city where the first concentration camp of the Nazi party was built in 1933, almost immediately after Nazi rule was imminent. Propaganda literally made Hitler. Without it he would have been an eccentric and invasively annoying Austrian with radical views about worthiness and being German.
I couldn't stay at the camp more than an hour. It was the sort of place where, you would walk into an empty room and think what was this? A closet? Then you look around and all there is is this lonely torn up plaque on the far wall that says "This was where they kept the bodies" and a little picture next to it of piles of corpses.
A lot of the information in the camp was the same stuff I've read a thousand times in history books, and learned in the several Holocaust/Genocide courses that I had taken throughout my education. I liked the amount of information there was about all of the dozens of different sorts of people who went through the camp - the emigrants, political prisoners, catholics, priests, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews, homosexuals, Roma & Sinti (known as gypsies), and a few others I can't recall off the top of my head. There was information on every ethnic group that had stories of people traveling through Dachau or dying during the war - Greeks, Italians, Polish, etc. They all had their own symbol that the Nazis used to identify them, the black triangle, the pink triangle, the purple one, the triangle with a dot, the one with a line, the two triangles interlocking, the blue triangle, or a yellow star. Not necessarily a star that was meant to be the "Star of David," but a mockery star. Under every group description of their experience at the camp it said, "they were particularly harassed and tortured" for the reason that they were there. Every group. It's possible, that the only group treated semi-less inhumanly were the Catholic priests that were prisoners. They were allowed privileges to lead prayers and services, even have sacramental wine, until one day in the early 1940s the privileges stopped.
It seemed that Dachau was the organizing place before people were shipped out by trains to other camps. It housed over 6,000 people in bunk beds made of wood that were three beds high, a twin bed length of space, 20 beds back-to-back, and only one ladder on the end for everyone to climb over each other to use. Tuberculosis had a terrible outbreak for a few years during the rough winters in the 1940s before liberation. That was one of the reasons so many people died during the Death Marches when Nazi's tried to escape. Well, it was a brutal winter so if they weren't already sick with TB then they got sick, and as soon as they stopped moving or running with the group they were shot.
One thing I saw at the camps, that I thought was cool because of my Orthodox Christian upbringing, was the Russian Orthodox Memorial Chapel. If you want to lose the sentiment and get real, it was more like a log-cabinish-church-shack. I couldn't get in, and it would probably fit 3 average sized people. But from the locked gate I could see in the dark room the icon over the altar (traditionally it would be an icon of the Virgin Mary with Jesus, or Jesus triumphing over evil through the Resurrection). In this chapel, it was Jesus - in the same position as if he were triumphing over evil in the image of the Resurrection - next to him are two watch towers with gates held open by angels, and behind him is a sea of sick prisoners' faces. It was a sea of the saints and martyrs and sufferers and innocents who were killed in the Holocaust - in their striped pajamas - standing behind Jesus the Triumphant. Now, I'm not sure if there is a juxtaposition here, knowing that the majority of deaths during the Holocaust were Jews who don't believe that Jesus is the Triumphant. And I know that nowadays Holocausts are happening around the world because some people believe radically in the message of the Bible and misinterpretations of Jesus' teachings. Thankfully the current Pope is working really hard to end those radical stigmas.
The icon brought me to thoughts of unification through prayer and suffering, but it also brought me to sadness of the current division and murder of people around the world because of religion, stigma, and judgments. Anyone with a brain knows that all of the main religions of the world are supposed to be centered on love - but I suppose that love for your beliefs while facing enough trauma and stigma for it, can lead to radicalism. I feel such compassion for those people. I want so badly to show them love.
So, take it as you will, but the icon was something I had never seen before in all of the churches I had been in. At first I felt confused by it, and then realizing that it is a prayer for all of the sufferers of the Holocaust, and for all of the people who made them suffer, I felt it to be truly touching and an attempt at unification and light through the darkness of tragedy.
Of course after my hour at Dachau, I had to get the hell outta there. It's nice to have the choice to leave and to say "No I don't feel like something making me sad today." I'm grateful for that choice. Back then there was no choice for the prisoners except for within their souls - and the Nazis broke it however they could. Imagine that? The only hope you have left is the love that you keep deep in your soul. The only happiness you have left is kept snug inside you for no one else to see because if you showed it you would die by your enemy, or be criticized by your friends - there is no reason to be happy, give up. But we can't give up on life, no matter our blessings or our sufferings, once we give up we deteriorate and all is lost. And if they lost hope, when they were already sick or dying, then they may as well have made the decision to die. Imagine if that were the better alternative, rather than torture, starvation and sickness. Man, I really admire anyone who can keep hope through any struggle. Resilience is only a beautiful thing because it means maintaining hope in the face of tragedy.
Munchen, Oktoberfest
After a quick day trip to the DokumentationCenter in Nuremberg to see the home and stomping grounds for major events in the Nazi party and to walk around the city, I headed back to Munich and to the Oktoberfest.
Now, I had never planned on going to Oktoberfest. It wasn't until I was looking for a hostel to book in Munich that i realized, because of the prices, that it was Oktoberfest. So I stayed in Dachau and commuted an hour to Munich for a few days. I didn't see much of the city, and I wasn't interested either. What more culture was I going to get than to learn the ins and outs of Oktoberfest? One of the oldest and hardiest traditions of Germany.
Some thing I learned: Leider hossen (which are leather suspenders attached to leather pants/shorts) for men, and dirndls (which are traditional styled dresses) for girls, are a must. And if you don't want to be recognized at all as a tourist, then enter with some real leather leiderhossen and a checkered shirt, or a real dirndl, a wool hat with a feather sticking out, and a pre-bought beer. Golden. I only managed the wool hat with the feather. Real leiderhossen and dirndls can be hundreds of Euros, although the fake ones can be around 40Euro they look more like Halloween costumes.
The "tents" that everyone talks about, I imagined would be hundreds of small canvases with bar stools and lines out around the corner waiting to get in for a pint. What I got, were 6 tents, each the size of a cathedral, made of wood bolts and screws like Noahs arc, with thousands of wooden benches inside, bench to bench (backs touching), a central bandstand, no lines at all, and serving only liters of beer. Beers as big and as heavy as my 8lb head!
The sort of beer was according to the tent I chose, and I even sat at a table both days that I was there. The tents take three months to build in preparation for Oktoberfest - all designed differently and made to be fairly attractive.
Huge, right?
Now, keep in mind, I hadn't planned on going to Oktoberfest, and I don't really fancy myself a drink too often. Particularly since I've been traveling alone, I have been a sober-sally for the past several months. But who is going to go to Oktoberfest and not have a beer? or two? or three?
Two years ago, when I went to Berlin, I drank the most amazing beer I ever had. A bottle of Augustiner Brau. I had never seen that beer since then. I learned that it simply doesn't exist outside of Germany, and for the past two years I have dubbed it a favorite. Low and behold, what is the national Munchen beer only two tents in from the Oktoberfest entrance? Yeah, well Augustiner Brau tent was my home for 4 hours that night.
I made friends from Morocco, California, Germany, and Australia. People started feeding me drinks one after the other, and I learned a lot of interesting unwritten information about Oktoberfest.
1. The Prost song. I don't know what it's called, I don't know the German words in it - but what I do know is "prost" means cheers and when it is played by the band in the tent (every 20 minutes) everyone clinks their glasses and sings along.
2. By the evening everyone is standing on benches, and seating is not necessary or available.
3. During the day people sit, eat, and socialize, and aren't drunk quite yet because its before 6pm. During that time a person can take a chugging/skulling/drinking-your-whole-beer challenge. To do so, they stand on their bench and drink their beer. About a quarter of the way through, people start to notice - the band stops, and everyone in the tent is watching, cheering, and taking videos. It can be sort of like in old movies when, the outlaw enters the saloon, and everyone stops to stare and all you hear is a distant glass shattering in the background. If the person taking the challenge is unable to finish the beer, then they must dump whatever is left in their glass on top of their head - or at least appear to aim for their head as they dump it over their shoulder (most likely getting everyone around beer-covered). If they fail to do the dumping, then the audience will boo - not only that but they will throw things. And these people are drunk so they will throw whatever they got - a shoe, food, a menu. Some tents don't allow this on account of regurgitation, and foolish young people.
4. There is a record for how many beers a waitress can carry. I hear its 26. These are liters of beer in thick heavy glasses. My wrist hurt after holding one for twenty minutes. The most I saw a waitress carrying was 16. I can't imagine how buff her arms and sore her wrists are by the end of Oktoberfest. Some of the waitresses wear special handguards for support - the dead serious beer carriers.
5. Food on a spit is whats up. They have Ox, Quail, Chicken, Lamb, Duck, Goat. Noah's entire arc.
6. Being drunk is okay. Even welcomed. Making friends is natural, and laughing at yourself is necessary. Going alone to Oktoberfest is not totally taboo either. People asked me why I was there alone, surprised and sometimes even taking pity on me. But, they were asking me weren't they? So naturally I put on my creep smile and thought, well gee, thanks for asking... friend. No, just kidding. But it was so easy to make friends! Just like any bar where peoples' inhibitions are lost, left, or leaving. All you gotta do is say "hey," maybe throw in a "where are you from?" laugh at something together, and then keep drinking. I am surprised that I didn't meet more lone-travelers. I'm also surprised at the amount of times "where are you from?" was asked before "whats your name?"
7. It's literally a parking lot turned into a theme park. There are rollercoastera, and other crazy fun rides. It was bigger and better than Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire.
8. There are families and children there. Its not just alcohol lovers, or curious travelers, or party hardying 20-somethings. Theres fun houses, magicians, comedians, log flumes, and all kinds of other kid-friendly stuff.
9. Germans come from all over. It's not some tourist taboo. This is a cultural thing that we tourists get to have the privilege of joining in on. As far as I could tell, Germans don't really mind us joining in either, and they definitely outnumbered us foreigners. Drink! Be merry! Willkommen zum Deutschland!
10. Oktoberfest is totally worth more than the stigmatizing beer-fest party. What other party do you know that closes at 11pm? It truly is a cultural experience, a bringing together of people using a substance that gives most people the illusion of happiness and openness. Authentic food, authentic traditions, authentic people. Its warm and fuzzy and yummy, and drunk as hell. Yeah... its a party. But then... life should be every now and again.
Prost!
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