Maison de l'amerique latine and Les Miss

Friday night was wicked!!! Our Mexican friend H had a bunch of us over for some home cooked Mexican food, and it was DELICIOUS. Mexican rice and two tortillas, one with meat, cheese and some kind of gravy, the other was a little drier with peas and carrots and ground beef, washed down with some beer. It was really nice because H invited a bunch of his flat mates to the dinner, so there were twelve of us packed around the kitchen table, laughing, smoking and drinking beer (I wasn't smoking, don't worry) while H bustled about in his cute little apron getting everything ready.

Then a friend of mine had invited us to the Maison de l'amerique latine, so we headed out on the tram. The Maison turned out to be this lost little thing behind a grated door next to a gay bar. We walked in and it was this tiny room filled with people smoking and dancing the salsa to the music blaring from some unknown origin.

A few of my friends from Puerto Rico collectively taught me to dance the salsa, as we slugged back 2 euro beers. My favorite part of the night though, was when this guy busted out his flute when the music had turned off for a few moments, and everyone started stomping and clapping to the flute and dancing.

It was one of the most genuine and fun nights I've had so far in Strasbourg.


Then today we headed out at 8:15 to Champagnole, where the Miss vs. Censeau game was held. It took 4hrs to get there (not all that far from Dijon), so I spent most of my Sunday in the "mini-bus". We lost miserably 0-40, but I still had a good time regardless, as it was my first entire game playing prop, and I felt that I did pretty well considering the prop opposite of me weighed in easily at 200 lbs.
(I'm the one lifting Boubou from behind... Boubou is the jumper)

I loved the French tradition afterwards, because though we didn't have a chug off or buy each other beers, the hosting team had set up this huge spred of cake, dried sausage, cheese, baguette, quiche, pasta salad, yogurt, you name it. So we mowed down on that for a while and the feasting continued in the "mini-bus" as people pulled out bags of chips that I hadn't even seen on the way up, and home made madeleines and brioche. Needless to say I pigged out.

I've noticed that France (or maybe Europe) has this huge sharing culture that is pretty much absent in Canada. As if in North America we've become so individualized that everyone kind of looks out for themselves, whereas here people share everything, from buying you drinks at the bar to eating that last mouthful of food on your plate, or (this actually happened) bringing baguette and dried sausage and a few bottles of the Beaujolais Nouveau to share amongst your team mates after a practice. I like it, and I really hope that when I go back to Canada (for good) that that part doesn't go away - though it's a lot less give and take in Canada, the equilibrium would be off. We'll see, maybe I'll start a revolution.

My Grades

So far, here's where I stand. These are the results of my partial examinations.

Compréhension orale: 17
Expression a l'orale: 16
Compréhension écrite: 13
Expression écrite: 14,5

These are marks out of 20, but not to be confused with the American grading system (where 15 out of 20 is 75%). In France it goes like this:

18-20: basically impossible (Wikipedia says, "Congratulations")
16-17: very good (tres bien: TB)
14-15: good (bien: B)
12-13: satisfactory (assez bien: AB)
10-11: pass (passable)
0-9: fail (insuffisant)

I basically need all AB's to get all the credits from this year. I know guys, the comprehension ecrite is looking a little low - but don't worry people!!! It was only because I read the text before reading the questions and therefore didn't have enough time to answer them all before running out of time. Je vais mieux gerer mon temps la prochaine fois.

Home

This week almost every night I've dreamt that either I was home or that I was for some unexplainable reason my family was in France with me.

I'd like to think that I've mastered the home sickness that reduced me to a blubbering pile of jelly that first week in Strasbourg, but apparently my subconscious is rearing its head with the approach of Christmas - and home.

What is home sickness anyway? In French they call it, "avoir le mal du pays" (literally "pain for your country") and I never really understood in movies why people sometimes would rather stay with their people than be with the one they loved or explore a whole new world. I kind of get it now, but its too hard to explain... like being completely comfortable in your own skin, that's what being in Canada for me is like. I think no matter how long I was here, I would always feel like an outsider, constantly comparing what's better and worse in this country compared to my own.

And what is missing people? At first I thought that missing people was merely the fear that they (or you) would change while you were gone. Maybe there is that, but maybe its missing the comfort of being with people who've known you forever. That feeling of perfect happiness in your own skin.

When we were at Vimy they have a line that runs through the path to the monument, the divide between French and Canadian soil. I savoured the moment before stepping over. And though it was just as cold and miserable outside, though logically I knew the divide was merely a formality between governments and on a piece of paper, for some reason standing on Canadian soil was comforting for me. Like standing on a little piece of home.

I never believed in that stuff before. How can you miss an entire country? But being in France has made me a patriot. I have never felt more like a Canadian than I have this year in Europe. It has grown from a nationality to an identity.

France vs. the Pacific Islanders

Last weekend I went to the rugby match with a few girls from my french team

(they're "my" team now because people shove me and kick me in the back of my legs to make me fall a bit between drills, which is - as I have observed - an expression of affection on this team. Though I am somewhat more used to the ruffling of hair or the odd clap on the back, I have whole heartedly embraced this form of endearment, and therefore consider myself part of "l'equipe".)

between the French rugby team and the Pacific Islanders (Samoa, Fidji and Tonga) at the Stade Bonal in Sochaux (at least, that's where I think the stade was, because I really didn't pay attention as we drove up in the Miss's "mini-bus").

France won with a final score of 42 - 17 (I had to look that up).

Highlights of the game:

• a player from the Pacific Islanders was red carded for being clumsy and swinging his arm while running, effectively clothes-lining and knocking unconscious one of the French players (whether it was intentional or just plain clumsy/stupid is arguable)
• crowd went nuts when another clumsy Islander elbowed a French player in the eye while they were both jumping up to catch a kick (I was glad that he wasn't carded because in the slow motion you could see they just weren't giving each other enough personal space and the Islander was bigger so it turned out to be an inevitability really...)
• Sebastien Chabal was subbed on. Dubbed "l'homme des cavernes" ("the cave man") because of his beard and long hair, he's been a French favorite since the World Cup. I loved him because he's a lock and his first real play on the field was to dump tackle the Islander's #8 at like 70 km/hr.(I love this photo because even though Chabal looks like he's going to eat it, you know the baby's just like "Weeee!!!")
  

Even though he's this big name in the French rugby world, I was kind of bemused at his playing style. The guy would mostly saunter around the field while the other young, clean shaven members of his team zipped around. Then he'd arrive, basically at the last minute, for a ruck, sweep it clean and the cycle would continue again. Then every once and a while he would smoke someone, as if he'd been building up the energy during all of that sauntering.

Anyway seemed like my kind of game. I just have to learn to dump tackle Chabal style.

All that to say that my first professional rugby match was AWESOME and really fun to watch and that I'm excited for my licence to come in so I can play and see what "les meufs" in France are made of (verlan for "les femmes" or ladies/women/girls whatever).

Les Rugbymans: My Bungles with Rugby in the French Language

Let's face it, rugby is kind of hard to understand even when you're talking in English if you don't know the lingo. It kind of comes with it's own side language.
This post is a summary of the amusing French version of Rugby-lingo that I've been picking up over the past few weeks...
.....and my team back HOME thought I was a space cadet. Les Miss must think I was dropped numerous times as a small child.


Rugby English/French Dictionnary:
Positions
"Les avants"

• (1,3)Prop = "pilier"
• (2) Hooker = "talonneur" (I initially thought they were talking about the 8 man, and was thoroughly confused for about two practices...)
  
• (4,5) Lock = "deuxième ligne" (literally "second row"... boring... I wish my position was something cool like "massacreur" or something)

I hadn't really learned what the flankers or eight man are really called, but I cheated and looked on wikipedia, so I guess I'll tell you (its uber confusing).

• (6,7) Flanker = "troisieme ligne en aile" ("third row on the wing" which is really long to say!!!)
• (8) man = "troisième ligne centre" (you guessed it, "third row centre")

The backs is even WORSE. They're called "les arrieres" or "les gazelles" (which is an imagery I very much enjoy).

• (9) Scrum half = "demi de melee" (a brutal and literal word for word translation of "scrum half", god french can be so awkward sometimes...)
• (10) Fly half = "demi d'ouverture" (I would NEVER have guessed this, and didn't know that that's what it was called until just now, you can imagine how hectic practice can be when they're yelling shit like this)

Then it's just "les centres" (basically inside and outside center), "les ailliers" (wingers) and the simplest of all "arriere" (fullback).

Everyday Terminology
I'll probably add to this as my vocabulary grows, and as I come across more amusing and confusing ways of saying regular things.

For example:
Scrum translates into "melee" which for me brings to mind scirmishes and battle, which is, I guess, a pretty cool way to look at it.

In the scrum, "One, two, three, DRIVE!!!" becomes, "Un, deux, trois, FLEXION!!!". Maybe its just me, but even when you translate it just isn't the same.

Or, "Clear the ruck!!!" becomes "Deblaye-le les filles!!!", a verb I usually associated with shoveling.

"Jump on the ball!" becomes "Avale le ballon!" ("swallow" the ball).

Paris

So this is part two of my out of order breakdown of what I did for the long weekend. Just so we don't get confused, these are the dates:

Sunday, November 9, 2008:
Catch the train to Paris, am reunited with Coralie for the first time since our highschool exchange 5 yrs ago. She shows me most of the big sites of Paris in a whirlwind tour. We crash at the apartment at 6pm, utterly exhausted.

I watch a tv show on bridge jumpers in a small Mediterranean city. My first time watching tv in months - justified it to myself because it was at least in french. Started watching "The Never Ending Story" in french too, but was too tired, and realized that when you aren't 9, sometimes the unveiling of the plot seems like it's taking forever... which is I guess kind of fitting, considering the title of the movie...


What I saw that day:
**I had like no batteries for my camera that day, so unfortunately not a whole lot of photos

L'Arc de Triomphe (from a distance)
le Grand and Petit Palais
Quai d'Orsay
Musee d'Orsay
the Eiffel Tower
Centre Pompidou
the Louvre
la Cathedrale Notre Dame
Shakespeare & Co
the Latin District
Hotel de Ville

It was cool to see all that stuff, but I'm definitely glad that I'm going back (for sure) at the end of the year with Granpa, because I'd love to actually go into the Musee d'Orsay and la Cathedrale Notre Dame, and take my time learning about the historical meaning of the buildings like I did in Munich, and see what I missed on my initial race through Paris.

Monday, November 10, 2008:
Coralie had class this day, and I was own my own. It was kind of nice to do everything at my own pace. I spent most of the day at the Louvre. I spent basically my whole visit in the painting sections. My favorite was the "Peintures francaises grands formats", where the canvases towered over you, sometimes as tall as a story. I got to see all the paintings from my Art History class, and it was so cool. I bought a really nice book at the gift shop - Louvre: 7 siecles de peinture. I could have gotten it in English, but getting the french version seemed more fitting. Like it would always remind me of my year on exchange.

Was pretty wiped when I got back, though really proud of myself because I successfully got from Coralie's apartment in the 11e arrondissment to the Louvre (1er arrondissment?) through the metro system without getting lost!!! Felt really cool to be in control like that even though I'd only been in the city for a day.

Anyway we hung around the apartment for a while resting, haha, then headed out to Montmarte that night for dinner (I took her out to thank her for putting me up). Saw Sacre Coeur and Montmarte, then we went to Pigalle so I could find the cafe that the movie Amelie was filmed at. Was pretty interesting to walk through the red light district of Paris at night. Kind of like what I image Las Vegas must look like except instead of flashing lights advertising casino's they're neon signs for strip clubs.

Scribbles from my diary on the tram...

*** Check for update on Project Pastry***

"I am colour vomit. I'm sitting on the tram on my way to rugby practice with my green/orange/brown coat and the scarf Meme knit for me around my neck. It looks like colour exploded all over me in this city of black trench coats and brown tweed, but I don't care."

"Thoughts from today:
While narrating my own life at lunch I wrote mentally in my head that I was "relishing" my pickles and the pun never really left me.
....
Today I could but smile as I realized my french sociologie de la famille et de l'ecole prof who's hands shake so bad sometimes he can't flip through his notes had pressed leaves stuck all in his papers - as if he collects them. The thought of this portly man with a grandfather's smile who thinks that feminism is dead stooping to pick up a choice leaf for pressing amuses me.
....
A man in the tram today with a shaved head but white stubble and yet wearing young people's clothes... he was wearing glasses so I couldn't see his eyes. An albino in Strasbourg?
He had great style anyway.
.....
Got a long message from Meagan and one from Andrew. Made me feel good that I haven't been forgotten.
....
I ate all three of my meals alone today. Does that make me anti-social or pathetic?"


I know you're all probably wondering about my trip to Paris & Vimy (I am so egotistical to think that anyone who occasionally peruses this thing hangs on to my every thought and adventure, but then I guess blogs are a kind of virtual narcissism to begin with...).
I will try my best to actually type it up, but I hate when these blogs get so longgggg...
I will start from the very end, so that when you actually get around to reading them, they will be in order.

Vimy Ridge: November 11th, 2008
You can just see the monument on the ridge in the distance. We used it like the landmark it was to get to the Memorial site.
The following is a tale of adventure and excitement.

11:52 am
(ish, come on, I don't know what time it really was)
Got in at the station in Avion. Being a holiday, and a small town, the streets were abandoned. Not even the train station was open.
Met up with a group of Canadian guys also headed to the monument. Set off for that white spec in the distance.

Sometime later...
Hiked along highway for a time, then decided to cut through the fields. Definitely an interesting choice as the fields were mostly mud. Thanked God many times that day that I had changed out of my leggings and flats and into my sneakers and raggedy jeans at the last minute that morning...

The cool thing about trudging across the French country side was that you kind of got a feel what it must have been like for those soldiers, almost a hundred years ago. I was carrying my 30L backpack (which is NOTHING compared to the what, 70lbs bags they had to slug around?) and even then the wind was pushing me around (it's very windy in Vimy). Having your shoes get all clumped and heavy with mud... marching off to battle?! It must have been pretty shitty. And the marching would have been peaches compared to living in a trench for two weeks...
About an hour into our mission across the Vimy country side we found this little Canadian cemetery, and it was actually a really moving moment. Everyone kind of split up and wandered around this cemetery, in awe and disbelief - almost all the gravestones were of soldiers our age. I saw as young as 17, as old as 32, but the majority were age 20, 22, 21. I have never even booked my own plane flight, and these boys were in a foreign country, handed guns and told to kill human beings? A hard thing to wrap your mind around.

We kept humping for a while and then it started to rain. That's when we decided to find the highway again and try hitchhiking to the site. After a few excited minutes of taking photos of poppies growing by the side of the highway, we caught our lift. She was my stereotypical French woman, driving one of those old little cars (like in the Bourne Identity) and smoking a cigarette. I sat in front and one of the guys hopped in the trunk and she drove us all the way to the site, dropped us off, and went back with a bigger car to pick up the rest of the group. I couldn't get over how nice she was.

It was really cold and windy up there, but the monument looked really pretty when the sunlight hit it, like it was all lit up. There were names all over the sides, completely covering the lower walls, of all the soldiers' whose bodies had not been found.
It was around 2 pm when I realized my train was at 5:30 and that it had taken us almost two hours just to get to the monument. So I headed back on my own this time, through the "Vimy foret dominale" (sp?) and worried about catching my train, and whether I was even going in the right direction.
Decided to hitchhike back down to the train station, and thus met a really nice Quebecois couple living in Paris and a dad and his daughter that dropped me off right at the station...
.... the only problem was that I was at the station by 2:45pm, and that the whole town around me was closed.

Hung out at a small cafe for a while (coffee makes the hunger go away, the French don't really eat breakfast, so I had a few madelaine's that morning, and a piece of stolen baguette and cheese that the guys had taken from their hostel), and then just decided I'd wait at the train station until my train came through.

To Be Continued...

Screw Molly Ringwald...

If I could choose any celebrity that people would tell me I look like, I'd choose Carla Bruni (model and wife of Nicolas Sarkozy - talk about your trophy wife!).

Sorry, I lied, first, I would want people to say P!nk, but Carla is definitely the second person I would want to be compared to.

Barack Obama

I couldn't help but be relieved this morning when I walked into my class room this morning (late) and the name "Barack Obama" was written on the chalk board, above all our grammar corrections. A pretty nondescript way of learning about the results of the American election, but I still grinned from ear to ear.

After being in Munich and Dachau I kind of saw how little turn of events can change the world - for good or bad. I have a good feeling about this. And who doesn't?

Even those who hate him have to admit that he has spurred the United States on. This election there were record highs of people voting.

How can you help but get excited too, when you see videos like this on the net?
Things are going to change.



Whoever wrote that speech should get a medal. It's poetry.

La Toussaint con't...

"Ma philosophie du rugby se superpose à ma philosophie de l'amour : quand on aime on donne avant de vouloir prendre. En rugby j'ai plus donné que pris."

Serge BLANCO (International français)

He's right. It just worries me that maybe I'm too selfless as a rugby player and too selfish as a lover.
I had rugby practice last night. The team (they're not My team yet) whined because we had to do sprints. I was too busy thanking God that they hadn't heard of 200 m sprints in France. They call me the "anglo-saxon" or "canado" or both mixed together. I hope the "canado" sticks, because there's another Sarah on the team and its confusing enough to play in French without people yelling your name for no reason half the time. The British girl (Sarah) asked me what they called me on my team back home and when I said "Ovaries" she laughed a bit awkwardly.
My calves started seizing on the stairs.

Anyway, back to the sejourn in Germany...

Friday, October 31st, 2008

This was a pretty fun day. We mowed down on the all you can eat breakfast at the Euro Youth Hostel in Munich, and snuck a few things for dinner. Met an obnoxious girl from New Zealand who bashed America for 10 minutes straight. To my horror I found out she was a primary school teacher. The only nice thing about her was that she thought I looked/talked like Molly Ringwald ... if that's nice, I don't even know. I'm vain enough to still like it when I get compared to someone famous.

We were going to go to the Spieleugmuseum (a toy museum) but the place looked tiny and cost like 13 euros, so we left.
Next I tried on a traditional german dress (though I think they were usually a lot longer) at an overpriced second hand clothing store. The outfit would have cost me like 80 euros. I was tempted, but then realized that I would only be able to squeeze two Haloweens into that baby, tops, before I wouldn't fit anymore.
Not worth it. Plus, who wants to wear the same costume three years in a row???

Then we went to the Münchner Stadtmuseum, which was a huge disapointment, mostly because they had this pamphlet on a Disney exhibit that totally SUCKED in real life. Listen to how cool and scholarly it sounds;
"This fascinating, multimedia exhibition offers surprising new insights in the imagery of master storyteller Walt Disney (1901-1966) ... few people realize how these movies are deeply rooted in European art and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the juxtaposition of original drawings, paintings, figure models and film clips produced by the early Walt Disney studio(1928-1967), with paintings and sculptures by German Romantics, French Symbolists, Victorians or Surrealists, this show reveals concrete relations between popular and high culture, between literature and film, as well as between American and European art."

LIES!!!! In fact, this description is so different from the exhibit that we went to that I wonder if maybe there was another room hidden away somewhere with all the figure models, paintings and sculptures by the Romantics, Symbolists, etc. All I saw was a video clip showing how the background art in Sleeping Beauty was based in midieval art (which was totally cool) and a few drawings (mostly background drawings from the aforementioned film).
There was also this really freaky puppet exhibit that I actually kind of got lost in, which freaked me out, because some idiot decided it would be a good idea to have motion detectors that set off some of the displays... In an endless hallway full of creepy PUPPETS?!?! Needless to say I almost shit my pants a few times when King Kong started moving, and a puppet severed head started coughing up blood and yelling gurgly things in German (which is actually a really scary language when something is yelling gurgly things with blood spitting out of their mouth).

....SHUDDER......

thennnn we visited the treasury at the Residenz (the palace where Ludwig I, Maximilian and Ludwig II all once lived). I have never seen so many sparklies in my LIFE. And you knew if they were real or not because the AudioGuide handset was straight up (told ya whenever something had used to be a big juicy ruby but had been replaced by a garnet and whatnot). Believe it or not there were only like 14 rooms but it took us close to two hours to get through it all. Shelagh left then to go check out the big soccer Stadt, while I continued on to do a tour of the palace itself.

After that we met up at the train station (while I was waiting for Shelagh a 70 year old German guy asked me out to drinks, which was both priceless and deeply disturbing at the same time - how do you respond to that? you can't just blow off a 70 year old man!!! So I just smiled nicely and said, "No, thank you").
Then, tired and freaked out because we had thought our train schedule was buggered, we finally got on the train - but it was rush hour so we had to sit in the door area. I didn't care to be honest, I had a foot long veggie sub with chipotle southwest sauce (which in Germany is called simply "Mexican") smothered all over it calling my name...

The End
of our Toussaint vacation,
or at least,
as much of it as I feel like writing without feeling like it was all a documentary.

Ugh travel journals are good and bad, because on the one hand you write in it when there is no computer, and it helps you remember the things you saw and did - but on the other you feel like you're repeating yourself anytime you try to document the trip.

Thank god for blogs. I'll just refer everyone here.

La Toussaint

Grooving to "Fleur de lille" right now by Parov Stelar. Would be awesome cruising music, I recommend it to y'all.

Also of note: Shame on you who have not been following the comments rule!!! Axel and Ute have been KILLING you guys on the comments (Hahah thanks you two, the last few have made me chuckle). Shame shame to the rest of you. I don't expect you guys to read my blog all the time, but I actually wrote the most blogs per week during that one stretch when everyone was commenting. Motivator and whatnot. SO FOLLOW AXEL AND UTE'S WITTY COMMENTING EXAMPLE!!! Or just a happy face will do if you're shy ;) I'm not picky, just demanding.

So I was in BAVARIA for a week baby!!! It was AWESOME.
Here's the break down:

Monday, October 27th
Got on the train in Kehl at 8h05 and rode for about 4hrs until we got to Munich, then another 2hrs to Füssen. We found our hostel okay, but had to kill like 3hrs until the front desk opened, so we explored the town for a bit... and discovered that there really wasn't that much there (we actually went to the Tourism office a day or two later to see if there was anything to do that night, and he said, "Well...you could go for a drink." and then when we asked what there was to do in the surrounding area he told us there was nothing to do if you didn't have a car. Hahaha talk about an easy job). No but to be fair it was raining and gross and apparently in the summer there are awesome bike paths and hiking trails and stuff, we just came at a bad time of year...
So we grumpily trudged around Füssen with our bags in the light drizzle, but were revived by a 2€ combo of a milchkaffee and a slab of cake (2€?! it made my day). Finally we humped our way back to the hostel, and were super relieved to find that blankets were indeed provided as we had opted not to bring our sleeping bags.
Was in bed by like 21h30.

Tuesday, October 28th
As it is written on the first line of my travel journal "HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATRICK!!!". Hope it was awesome buddy. You still need to message me and tell me about it!!!

We took the bus to Hohenschwangau that day after a hearty breakfast of thick German bread (god I hadn't realized how I missed the bread I had eaten at Axel and Ute's until I ate it again) with jams and cheeses.
It was really misty that day, and we didn't actually see Schloss Neuschwanstein up on the mountain until half way through our guided tour at Schloss Hohenschwangau. It was cool actually, because my first glimpse of Schloss Neuschwanstein through the mist was from the window of Kind Ludwig II's study window, where they still had the telescope set up where he would supervise the construction of his fairy tale castle. Kind of fitting really...
The kind of crappy thing was that we weren't allowed to take photos inside the castles, which is really a shame because they were MAGNIFICENT. I'll tell you my favorite things about each castle though.
I love the swan motif that was so richly used in both castles (the "schwan" in both castle names is a bit of a hint). At Schloss Hohenswangau there were two swan waterfountains, as well as fresco murals depicting scenes from the saga of the swan knight Lohengrin (the €2 guide book I got has already proved to be invaluable, as I would never have even remembered that), and at Neuschwanstein there were life size porcelain swans that were actually used as vases (they were beautiful), carved metal doorknobs in the shape of swan necks, and in the King's bedroom there was even a metal swan on his washstand that supplied running water from its mouth into the basin below it (thanks to a source higher in the mountain, the whole castle had running water).
My favorite thing at Schloss Hohenschwangau was the King's bedroom, because the whole room was a painted mural basically, of naked women swimming or something (you can tell the guy was never married, who gets naked women painted in MURALS in one's entire bedroom..?), but the cool thing was that where his bed was against the wall, they had painted a tree, and kind of curved up so that it seemed like the boughs were hanging over his bed on the ceiling, and on the ceiling was painted the night sky. The coolest thing was that he had gotten them to carve out some of the painted stars and even a circle hiding in the branches of the tree to be the moon, and would have an oil lamp on the floor above, shining down through the little holes (sounds like a fire hazard, but whatever).
My favorite part about Schloss Neuschwanstein (funnily enough) was also the King's bedchamber, because though he only used the castle for like... 6 weeks or something, he had these amazing murals painted on the highest panels of the walls depicting scenes from Tristan & Isolde. I thought it was kind of sad and fitting that this man who had never married had such a tragic and romantic love story painted in his most private rooms.
That was definately one of my highlights of the trip, and I'm glad I got that guide book because I couldn't take any pictures of all the cool things there.

Wednesday, October 29th
Caught (or should I say ran to) the 8h05 train to Munich and wandered towards Marienplatz in the city's downtown. Were lucky enough to find the guys from the Free Tours group, and ended up taking the free walking tour of Munich, with a somewhat crazy Scotsman.

Here's a video of one of the other Free Tour guides explaining what the figures that move during the Glockenspiel's ringing represent. I tried to film the figures but it's so high up you can't really see - plus Trevor did a good job of making it interesting.

So on our tour of Munich we saw the Dom (Frauenkirche), the old and new town halls, Sankt Peter, the Hofbräuhaus (famous beer hall), Maximilian Straße (the rich district of Munich where stores like Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuiton, Rolex and others can be found on the same street), and Odeonsplatz (where the Theatinerkirche, Residenz and Feldherrnhalle are located).
Our guide was a little eccentric but he knew alot of history, and would point out little random plaques and stone blocks around the city that I never would have noticed, and explained how they were commemorating this person or that group for standing up against the NSDAP (the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei = Hitler and the Nazis). That's something I really liked about Munich. Their history was all out there. I thought the city was really in tune with its past, and instead of hiding it or being ashamed, they've got memorials and commemorations and rebuilt everything that was destroyed, as if to say, "This is what happened, this is how we remember what was lost, and this is how we've moved forward together". It's a really rich city that way.

Anyway it was suuuper cold that day (I was wearing two sweaters as well as my winter coat) so we were really relieved/excited when our tour guide showed us this little hole in the wall bar after our three hour tour where you could have all you can eat Bavarian stew and a beer for €6.

I'm so tired of writing.....

Thursday, October 30th [disturbing content, read at your own discretion]
This was a really long day.
We caught the 8h05 train from Füssen to Munich again, and after checking our bags into the Euro Youth Hostel in Munich we headed for Marienplatz to go on our guided tour of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial.
Shelagh and I ended up staying there for 5 hours. Needless to say I was listless, numb and drained when the lady finally came up to us and told us they were closing for the night.

"May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 - 1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defense of peace and freedom and in respect of their fellow men." (Written on the huge stone memorial that stands in front of Dachau's gates, after you walk under the twisted metal that reads "Arbeit macht frei")


This is the only photo I took at Dachau.


I can't explain what I saw, what I was thinking as we walked through the former concentration camp. I'm not sure if I even should. But I haven't been able to write it down for myself yet, and I think that impression needs to be written somewhere, so that I never forget it. And for those of you who might not get to go, I think you need to know what it was like. I'm not going to rehash the entire experience, I'm only going to describe little pieces, the moments that were the most intense for me.

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As we stood outside the building that held the second crematorium and the "showers" I balked at the door. My first instinct was to ask Shelagh if she would hold my hand as we walked in, but I pushed the thought aside and stepped in by myself. It was just an empty white room, the room where it was explained to everyone that they were to shower. I stepped through a few more doorways, I don't remember how many, all I remember was the gas chamber. Again I balked at the door - you had to step down into a brick room, where there were no windows, only two holes where the "doctors" would shove in the Zyklon B, and a few lights in the ceiling. I remember standing under a "shower head", in that dark, brick room. Knowing that countless before me, almost 65 years ago, had stood waiting, looking up as I did... and that they had all died. I was standing in a room where bodies had once lain everywhere.
It was in the next few rooms that the ovens lay. I stood, fixed, in front of one of the ovens, trying and failing to imagine a human body being pushed inside. From somewhere far away I heard (or did I read it...?) that they would put them in two at a time. I just couldn't see how they would fit.
It was when I read the plaque on the wall at the very end of the building that something crumbled in me.

"Toi, qui viens dans ce lieu de souffrance, recueille-toi et songe à ceux des nôtres qui ne sont pas rentrés au pays, tombés au Champ d’Honneur pour la paix et pour la Belgique." 29 mai, 1955
("You, who have entered this place of suffering, remember ours who never returned to our country, who fell in the field of honour, for peace and for Belgium.")

I know people use that expression a lot, but that's how it felt, like the last bit of reserve I had was gone. I hadn't cried at all until that moment, but I cried many times after it. It just kind of hit me then how many people died there, which was for many of them a foreign country... far from their families, their people, with no hope of ever seeing their homes again.
I think it was at that moment that I really comprehended it all. That I was standing in a building built and operated solely for the dead. That in the very room that I stood, human beings had been hung from the rafters, only to be burnt to ashes in the ovens smouldering before them.
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It was so hard to see it all the way it must have been, it all seemed so surreal, impossible, a thing of nightmares. I've read so many things about the place, but standing there in the middle of the roll call square, I couldn't help but just see a vast, grey field, speckled with white buildings. Rooms were just rooms, empty, with the paint peeling, or filled with bill boards of photographs and history.
I think that's one of the biggest things I took back with me from Dachau, was that it was just so inconceivable, even standing in the middle of all of its horror - how can we blame those who couldn't, who wouldn't, believe what was really going on there, they who had never even stepped foot inside the place?
I'm not making excuses for those who let this come about, but what I'm trying to say is that I finally understand how humanity is capable of such monstrousities, the slow process that Germany underwent starting with the First World War, the desperation and poverty and suffering that they went through as a people, that forced many to turn to a radical like Hitler and the NSDAP, and how they suffered under him with the rest of Europe. Everyone was to blame, and yet no one could have foreseen the chain of events that brought about the horrors of Dachau and the other camps.
The words written on the Jewish memorial at Dachau struck me the hardest. They say,
"Give them a sign of warning, eternal one! The peoples should learn that they are mortals.".
Take from that what you will. I see it as forgiveness, as understanding. Yes there were monsters at that camp, but many of them were a product of the terror of the time "...they are mortals".