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".