Day 18: Dachau and Cologne

Today, we finally made it to Dachau. And then it was Dachau and I couldn't deal with it. I've taken classes about the Holocaust, I've read books and seen museums in different countries. I've even been to Yad Vashem. Something about being in an actual camp, the very first camp I've been to, was overwhelmingly sad.

I thought about the first museum here in Gemany I visited that mentioned the Holocaust and how surprised I was, how I hadn't even connected this amazing country with all the things I like and admire with that unspeakably horrible chapter of history. And there it was, just innocently staring at me from a glass case. A yellow star that marked someone "other." Not only other but sub-human, dirty, worthless as a consequence of genetic background. 

Honestly, there is no way to explain how I felt walking the camp, seeing the bunks, smelling the lingering dirty human odor that seeped into the walls of every building. There were tourists everywhere, which I'm normally annoyed by. In this case, I was perversely happy because of how hard it was to walk around and read the placards. That means people are learning and taking time to preserve history in some small way. Every selfie I saw spread a specific and important message: this place is significant. The struggle and life lost here will not be forgotten. The spirit of this place and what it means to those who were lost and those who survived will be carried by at least one more generation.

A grave marking the ashes of the unknown prisoner

The door to the Jewish commemorative monument

 I was struck by how easy it was to get to the camp from the main train station. They no longer have a line that runs directly from the station to the camp for obvious reasons but the bus took us there in ten minutes. I haven't heard so much English spoken in quite some time. It was different to have to sensor myself from saying things I wouldn't want others to overhear or immediately understand. But the camp is right in the city and functioned the same way when it was active as a concentration camp. There were letters in parts of the museum about how excited everyone in the city was for the local economy because a camp would definitely revitalize it. That made me a bit sick.

We walked everything for about three hours and finally made it to the end, where there are monuments from the Catholic church, a Jewish monument, and a Protestant one that is specifically dedicated to the principle of reconciliation. I was most interested in the Jewish monument so that's where most of my pictures were taken. Honestly, it didn't feel right to take photos of most of what I saw. Disrespectful, some how. There was also an Orthodox church past the main three that was built by survivors in memory of the Russian political prisoners interred at Dachau.

This statue stands right outside the crematorium, by the graveyard

 After Dachau, we went to the train station to get on the next train to Cologne. The train took about five or six hours and was announced by the most enthusiastic German man I've ever heard. He practically sang the upcoming stops. Eventually, we made it to Cologne and after a minor problem with finding the right direction for the tram, we met up with our host, Felix. He and his wife Midori are very cool youngish intellectuals. He's German and she's Mexican and they met through couch surfing, which is totally awesome. They have a lot of books and made us dinner and talked with us for a little before giving us the wifi code and going to bed.

Only two more days to go. Tomorrow, we're going to walk down to the Rhine, find an English book store so I can have something to read on the plane and also the train ride back to Amsterdam, and explore before coming back at around seven to cook with our hosts. Good night, faithful reader! Until tomorrow!

Maria

Day 17: Vegan festival and Dirndlen, galore!

As promised, here are the last few pictures from Prague and Vienna!

My joy at discovering the top from a Kinder egg.

Don't you want to go to this party? Or throw an identical one in the States?

So after blogging until 3 AM yesterday, I understandably woke up a little late. We went to the city center area to find food and found an enormous vegan festival instead! It was amazing. They had all sorts of literature, samples, and vegan swag to give out. There was vegan ice cream and vegan doner kebabs and grilled cheese and super hard core vegan bands playing. It was awesome.

Vegan MANIA! There are many of us. We may be frail and malnourished but we are many. Just kidding, vegans really take care of their nutrition.

This guy raps in a cage from the perspective of suffering animals. In English. Why hasn't anyone else ever thought of this? I didn't catch his name but he was pretty good.

 After checking out the festival, we went to the train station to go to Dachau but the train was delayed. Considering it would take at least another thirty minutes or so to actually get into the town and the memorial area closed at 5, we decided to go tomorrow and spend the day in Munich, itself. We went back to the festival, looked around at some of the historic buildings, and I tried on a couple of Dirndles. Of course I ended up buying one because they're adorable and a must-have for Oktoberfest.

Unfortunately, we didn't notice any more people singing Hotel California, but there were at least twelve bachelor/bachelorette parties going on. All the members were in varying degrees of intoxication and undress, which is directly proportional I think. It's some kind of ritual people do because there were quite a lot. The bachelor/ette always seemed to have a wagon filled with random stuff and one member of the party was invariably filming everything with a sour look on his/her face. It was pretty entertaining to watch.

A pretty building in the city center

This is a cello trio doing an all-musical arrangement of "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica. Yes, this is Germany. Jealous?

 Finally, we went back to the hotel because it started to rain and we were both still tired from yesterday. We booked a hotel in Amsterdam for the last night in Europe, which is in three days. I can't believe how quickly the time flew by! Soon, I'll have to re-join the real world and stop being misunderstood by well-meaning foreigners trying to sell me things. As much as I miss being a normal person with responsibilities and my own bed, this kind of travel is invigorating and fun. At least I have a few more days of adventure left.

The plan for tomorrow: check out, grab breakfast, and go to Dachau. After that, hop on the train to Cologne and meet with our last hosts, a couple consisting of a German man and a Mexican woman. Casey has been emailing them and says they seem nice. Hopefully, they have wifi but the hotel in Amsterdam does so there'll be at least one more post from me before I come back.

Tschuss,
Maria

PS: You didn't think I'd leave you without a picture of me in my ridiculous German outfit, did you? For shame! Enjoy the cheesiness below with the full knowledge that you'll be seeing it in person come September and October.

Days 13-16: End of Prague, Vienna, Day 1 of Munich

Hello again! It's been quite a while, how are you? Yes, this is not an interactive medium of communication, I am aware. Since you last heard from me, the tragedy of travel tragedies occurred: my computer's battery decided to die. The computer now refuses to work unless it's plugged in, severely limiting the amount of time during which I can write and blog and things. That doesn't slow down pictures luckily so there are still plenty of those but that's why there was such a long hiatus between posts.

Let's begin where we left off: Prague, where it is either intensely hot or very rainy.

The first thing we did was finally visit the Astronomical clock, which was harder to find than I remember. We walked through strange winding streets until we found a street with Kafka's face on it. Casey was about to lead us on past it but I remembered that the square with the clock is in the same place as Kafka street so we found it and took a picture, which is below.

We didn't go up the tower because it cost money but instead walked around the square, where there was a group of Bohemian dancer/musicians in funny outfits and an electric accordion duo that played some super metal music.

 Also in the square is a large cathedral, which was pretty and cold inside so we liked it. The crappy little museum I remember in the house where Kafka was born is no longer there. Instead, it's now a cafe with an overpriced menu, which seems fittingly depressing for a tourist city.

In Prague, all restaurants are named after famous Czech people

We found a post office and did some more souvenir shopping, where I ran into another Russian shop attendant and got another tragic life story about immigration and how it is to live in Russia. People are always surprised when I speak to them in Russian and tell them I live in America. They invariably ask how I got so lucky and what it's like to live there. I don't know how to respond. I mean, everything is great in the States. I always have enough to eat, I have a stable job and income, a place to live, a car, a University degree. I work for all these things but the quality of my life is probably higher than someone who works in a shop selling crystal souvenirs to tourists from all over the world day in and day out. 

I don't want to sound judgmental or rude but the shop attendants tell me themselves that their lives aren't great. They talk to me about their families that are still back in Russia or Ukraine or Belarus and tell me it's better to live in Prague than in Russia. The guy from the shop on day 12 told me he lived in Boston for a year when he played hockey but he injured his knee so they shipped him back to Russia. He said Prague is like an antique. I love the city so much and I can see where he's coming from with that description. In the years I've been gone, though, the city has definitely changed. Maybe I didn't notice how much it catered to tourists before or maybe it started to more in the last few years. Either way, the increased amount of tourism at least means the city is useful and the landmarks will be preserved for a while. Also, it means people fleeing Russia have a place to go and rip off rich tourists from America, so that's something.

After that, we went back to the place we were staying and relaxed for a while, then went back out and Casey finally got his pigs' knees. The place where we ate had a very Czech menu. I ordered something that looked like it had no meat in it on the menu, garlic soup in bread, but when it came out, not only was it soaked in cheese, it had bits of meat floating in it. I ate a little of the bread and drank a lot of beer, then we found me more beer and vegan Chinese food. Asian is a consistently good option in foreign countries for reliably decent vegan food. We stayed up talking to the guys from Mexico until one or two, then went to sleep for an early train the next day. We checked out by 10 and made it to the train station with a lot of time to spare but still missed our train to Vienna because for some reason it switched platforms while we were waiting. The information lady was rude but gave us the next train's information so we played cards for four hours in the train station and avoiding buying anything bigger than a single shot of espresso each.

The train to Vienna took about 5 hours, most of which I spent reading because it was too late in the day to sleep. We made it and our host picked us up from the train station, where we found more coffee and a little bite to eat. He took us directly to a French table where everyone was practicing their French and I realized just how much my French has declined in the six or so years I haven't kept up with it. 

I also realized pretty much everyone in Europe is bilingual and all the interpreters go to Vienna. It made me a little ashamed I haven't been able to learn a foreign language aside from Russian. I speak bits and pieces of a lot of different things but a real conversation is so far beyond me, it's funny. To be a truly well-rounded person, I think it's important to speak another language and go through the process of learning the entire world over again with different signifiers. I could've probably made a lot of new foreign friends had I kept up with my French and been in the same situation in Vienna. Our host, Andreas, speaks French, a few dialects of German, and English fluently. His other guest, N., speaks Berber, Arabic, French, German, and English. Casey is learning German. I know bits of a lot of different things but only really know Russian and English. It's time to change that.

After an extraordinarily long day, we made it to Andreas' house by midnight and had to be up at five the next morning to go to work with him. I was unhappy to say the least to be awake at five and out of the house by six but we had a heroic amount of coffee and a nice, long day in Vienna because that night, Andreas had a German language table we didn't go to and stayed out until 11 again. There are pictures of all of this but the wifi in this hotel room is quite slow and it's very late so they'll have to wait for a later post.

We went to St. Stephen's cathedral and did the catacombs tour, which cost 5 euro and was worth every penny. We saw the ancient burial chamber of the Hapsburg emperors, the more modern tombs of the bishops and priests, and a couple of bone rooms for legitimate burials and well-off plague victims. It was super cool with skulls stacked on humeri and assorted broken fragments. The guide was a very funny Austrian with a belly and glasses. Best line of the tour? He jollily announced in the burial room: "You know Maria Theresa? The empress? We have her guts. Urn number 34. They used to pickle them in shnapps." For most of the later Hapsburgs, the church only kept the guts because the bodies were mummified and buried. Another church got the heart, brains, and other organs. So each of the Hapsburgs is buried in 3 different places.

Then we shopped some and got ice cream. Mine was vegan, thanks to an excellent gelato shop with that option. We shopped more and went to Donauinstel, a man-made island in the middle of the Danube river, for a long, leisurely walk in the sunshine and lunch. The river is quite blue, particularly considering it's in the middle of a very industrial city, and there were people swimming, walking dogs, and enjoying the day. I remembered people swimming in the Vltava in Prague as well but I'd trust the Danube over the Vltava for cleanliness. Also, there were a lot less paddle boats and you don't have to pay to use the public bathrooms, though the bathrooms do have outdoor showers that trickily disguise themselves with a button that looks very similar to the button you have to press to get the doors to open on the train. Word to the wise: do not press the button. Even though it may look like it opens the bathroom door, it doesn't. The button definitely turns on an outdoor shower that will soak and embarrass you in front of anyone who may be watching. Ahem.

After the island, which took most of the afternoon, we went to see the emperor's old palace. We found a large park and some vagrant hipsters juggling hats, walking slacklines, and playing with extremely large yoyos. After walking the park, we went back to the city center, where we had a nice dinner at the same restaurant where Andreas' French table had been. I had gnocchi with the best pesto I've ever eaten. It was literally the best thing I've tasted in my life. Casey ordered bratwurst. I can't speak to the quality of the meat, which he assures me was excellent, but the potatoes that came with it were cooked perfectly and the saurkraut was amazing and warm. Then, we went to a cultural festival in the middle of the city. It's technically a movie festival but it was playing some weird 60's or 70's band called The Electric Light Orchestra on a giant screen. The music wasn't awful so I started dancing and that cleared the area where we stood fairly quickly. Austrians don't seem to be very big dancers. Finally, Andreas was done so we met him near St. Stephen's again, went back to his house, and I went to bed. Casey stayed up to practice German and we woke up at 5 again to leave for Munich, which brings us to today.

The train to Munich takes about 4 hours and we were on the early train because of early wake-ups. I slept a little bit. The train was a O-bahn zugjet, which is a small private Austrian company's answer to train travel. Even 2nd class was ridiculously comfortable and very luxurious. I read some and when we got into Munich, we went to find the hotel. Instead, we found some helpful Georgians (from the country not the state) who pointed us in the direction of the tourist information place and asked me why I didn't have children yet, being 24 and all. It was nice to speak Russian but I was way too tired to have that conversation with random strangers in Munich on 5 hours and change of sleep.

We found the hotel, where check in wasn't for another hour, so we got some coffee and shopped for a little. This area of Germany is where Oktoberfest happens so there are dirndles everywhere and I'm seriously considering buying one. Okay, I don't have much space in my bag and they're expensive, but it would be a perfect Halloween outfit and everyone needs a poofy German peasant dress for Oktoberfest, right? Totally. I thought so, too.

This hotel is in a building that I think used to be a university and it very centrally located. I think it used to be some kind of college or school because instead of one door, every room has two--an outer one and an inner one, which locks. Each room also has a sink and mirror but there's only one toilet per gender and a communal shower for the floor, which is strange but we have some privacy and it's nice to not worry about anyone else for the first time on this trip. We went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant--surprise, but it was pretty good. I'd just never thought of ordering beer with curry before I came to Germany. Then we walked around to see if we could find a grocery store or some kind of corner store for snacks for tomorrow. Instead, we found three street performers in a row, all singing "Hotel California." I don't know what Germany's obsession with this song is but by the second one, Casey and I were giving each other looks, and the third one made us laugh so hard, people were looking at us like we were crazy or drunk.

That about wraps it up. I'll try to get another post out tomorrow but as I said, the wifi is spotty at best and pictures take HOURS, literally. The plan is to try on dirndles, possibly buy one, and then go to Dachau because I can't go to Germany and not visit a camp. It'll be tough but necessary.

Until tomorrow,

Maria