Munich, Germany

If you didn't know, Munich is known for two very important, and completely unrelated, things.. Beer and Hitler. While we were here we pretty much dove right into the culture and learned about those two things. It was the perfect mix of history, personal growth, meeting some great people, and drinking a little too much of that golden frothy stuff. Overall, I can almost say without a doubt that Munich has been my favorite stop thus far. It's an amazing city with some spectacular history that they have accepted and are growing from.

We arrived mid afternoon and immediately were told all about the tours they do, and what we needed to see and do. We decided to just start off full speed ahead, Munich style. So, after getting cleaned up we joined in on the beer hall crawl. If you don't know, a beer hall is a HUGE open (or closed) area full of singing, dancing, eating, beer drinking by the liter, women running around serving you in lederhosen, and really just a fun time. So, we did that, and we had a great time. The night started out with a group picture, and as we are all getting together you glance over and see one of the guys has decided to get completely naked. No idea why.. He ended up nearly kicked off the tour (highly obnoxious guy). Luckily, we did meet some really fun Australians (I think), had a good time, and other than a fun incident with a kid from Texas (or Florida not sure) who wouldn't shut up about FSU, him being such am awesome guy in law school (obviously better than everyone else)...he did the two things you never do to Courtney, one, call her a traitor to Alabama (if it hasn't been mentioned, she is a die hard, to the core, Alabama fan...she is at Auburn for school and nothing else, we've learned to just not talk about it). The second is call her stupid (or in this guys case a stupid idiot undergrad). I still don't understand why he decided he needed to even talk to us, but he did, and we ended up leaving the the last beer hall a little early with one of the guides because we were so annoyed with it all. But, minus those two guys (and the creepy guy that tried to hit on Courtney and ended up getting kicked off early cause he was just that outrageously creepy) we had an excellent start to Munich.

Our first full day we decided we wanted to take the tour out to Dachau, and I'm very glad we did. It's really difficult to explain the feeling there, and put into words how you feel as your tour guide is telling you stories for nearly 4 hours. Stories, that's what it seemed like he was telling us. Some of it was so outrageous I found it so hard to believe, it sounded as if he was just making it up. But, no, all true. I learned a lot about the general history of how the entire Nazi party and Hitler came to be, and was amazed at how much I didn't really know. A mix of not being told all of the details and me just not being interested when I studied about it in High School (history never really interested me, I'm such a hands on person and a very visual learner..reading about random dates and facts was always my least favorite thing to do). But, having someone tell it to you, like a story, as you're standing there just completely overwhelmed by everything he is saying to you but trying to take in every word..that's when it's interesting. It was an experience. Quick history lesson, because I didn't know all of this, and finding it all out makes you wonder to yourself what you would have done. Hitler was member 55 (they labeled it 555 because they started counting at 500 to make them look bigger) of the Nazi party (before it was actually that) and when he started in the early 1920's, had no followers. But, he was an excellent speaker, and in a time when one US dollar was equal to 4.3 trillion (or somewhere around there) German mark, and people were jobless, homeless, and starving to death.. It was easy to listen to a man who said he was going to fix it. And said what all the people thought, that WWI wasn't Germanys fault, and signing the treaty of Versailles, taking full blame and financial liability for the war, never should have happened. One of the most interesting things was the several times Hitler came very close to dying, 10 years before he came to be what we know him as today. At one march in Munich, his bodyguard dove on top of him, taking 11 bullets in the back, and none going through him. There is a lot more to the story, but I'm not here to give a terrible history lesson (terrible because I can't remember all the details sitting here on the train). Point is, with the state of the Country, and following the depression hitting Germany in 1932, it wasn't hard for hitler to gain followers (obviously at this point he wasn't telling them anything about concentration camps, gas chambers, etc). So, a couple more details later, he ends up in charge. And you think to yourself, if I was in that situation, would I be listening to him..and believing him, and wanting him to fix all of my countries problems? Because at this point he was pretty much just like a presidential candidate saying all the things you want to hear. 

As I'm sure everyone knows, this is when it all started. He converted an old artillery factory outside of Munich, in the small town of Dachau, to a place to "re-educate" those who did not follow his ways.. Aka all the political leaders and the followers that opposed him. It then turned into the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals (and hearing the criteria for "homosexual" was pretty interesting)... And eventually became what I thought of when I thought "concentration camp." but even then, if you opposed Hitler and tried to fight back, you were going into a camp. You didnt have to be a jew, and you definitely didn't have to be German (i had no idea how many countries had their people brought to these camps...could you imagine not even being able to speak the language? One of the first things these people were taught in whispers late at night was how to count to 25 in German.. So when they were getting basically whipped and having to count they would survive... Because if you lost count they started over...and you couldnt survive many more than 40 hits) So again, you wonder to yourself, would you just shut up and ignore what was going on... Would you raise your hand when told and follow Hitler? I have no idea what I would do.. But I also don't think that a lot of people outside of the camps realized how bad it was inside (I sure didn't, until 2 days ago). So a lot of questions were raised in my own head...one of the biggest was how can people be so sick and deranged, that they can do these things to other human beings? I mean, thats part of the reason the gas chamber came about in the first place, they needed to make it as dehumanizing as possible, because even the SS guards were psychologically broken down. That's one of the biggest, and sickest, things we learned about. The countless ways to psychologically torture the prisoners. It started with a huge no smoking sign right after they have lost all of their possessions, or the coat hangers and shelves for stuff they didn't have. Even the pockets in their pants that they couldn't use unless they wanted to get beaten and possibly killed. It just went on and on, and our tour guide was as straight forward and raw as anyone could be. As I'm standing there tying to digest one thing he has just said he says something else...and you really just can't believe it.

As I'm sitting here going on and on I realize I'm rambling a bit. And it's because I have no way to explain what we learned and experienced there. It's something I think everyone needs to do. As our tour guide the next day shared a quote she loved with us: "the whole world is like a book, and those who do not travel only read one page" ....there is just so much to see and experience and learn. 

But that was that, and after a semi somber day we were ready for a siesta and another night in Munich. We decided to go to a beer hall for dinner because the night before the food looked so good. It was us and our new friend/room mate we met and did Dachau with and it was our big spending night on food. We all had our big beers, amazing meal (I had a sample platter with all kinds of amazing authentic Bavarian food..not even sure what it all was) and then even got dessert...yum! We then just headed back to the hostel for the night, met some very interesting guys road tripping down to the exit festival from England. They were pretty crazy, and ended up getting slightly obnoxious, so we went to bed when they headed out for the night. 

Our second full day we went on another free walking tour. We got really lucky and had a spectacular tour guide. This woman was spunky, witty, full of information, and very much loved sharing all of it. She began with "90% of the answers to questions on this tour will be beer" ..and she wasn't kidding. It was a mix of history of the city and it's love for beer, and then the history of the Third Reich and Nazi Germany. Again, learned a lot. More than I can share here. One of the most interesting things is how the city of Munich has decided do it's memorial to the people involved in that time period. Instead of having one huge monument, that often doesn't get seen for what it is, a place to remember those who died and a place to learn what happened and learn from it. Well, in Munich they have 122 small memorials. Sometimes you aren't even sure what they are. They are there to raise curiosity so that the person that sees them takes it upon themselves to figure out why it's there. we had two pointed out to us. The first was simply a little plaque looking thing that said something like "here stood so and so's building up until 1938" and when you look it up you find out that on the terrible evening on 1938 when nearly 12000 Jews (in munich alone) were taken from their homes in the middle of the night during crystal night (can't remember the German spelling, and apparently now it is not called that by the Germans). Anyways, a father and his 17 year old son were taken and sent to Dachau and the 17 year old would be beaten to his death there. The second monument, and my favorite was a small golden line in the street down a side road. It represents the side road people began turning down to avoid a plaque Hitler had out up just in front of this road with the 15 (plus 5) Nazis who had been killed in a march they did. There were 2 guards at the plaque, and if you didn't do the Nazi arm raise as you passed, you would be beaten and taken to Dachau. So, people avoided it. But, eventually it became obvious, so they out guards in this side street. And people knew this, and knew that if they were stopped going down that road when they could have gone straight they would be beaten, possibly killed there, if not sent off. So, the golden road that stopped in the middle of the road represented the end of the road for so many people who chose to stand up against Hitler and The Nazis. 

We also covered a lot more than just that. We got some very good, and entertaining, history. Did you know the current pope is Bavarian? Apparently Bavaria cares about two things...Beer and The Bible. Its the most Catholic region in Germany...and on Sunday the only thing you'll find open are the churches and beer halls. The pope also has his favorite beer shipped to the Vatican every month or two... It also happened to be our tour guides favorite beer. Also, a lot of the buildings are actually only about 40 years old, but they look a lot older. They look older because the people of Munich knew during WWII they would be bombed, so they took a lot of detailed pictures of the buildings. One of the churches we saw, has a cannon ball stuck in it from WWI...it's there because a man knew it belonged there and when they found it he told them it was part of the original building, so they put it back in. Many random facts later and the tour was over. We ram back to the hostel (because it was freezing and lightly raining) for another siesta. 

Our last night we decided to go out with a few friends we made in our room. We had dinner and watched Murray lose to Nadal, them head to hofbrauhaus, one of the oldest and biggest beer halls in Munich. We had a blast, I ended up heading home after with one of the other girls and Court went out to the university area to check it out. One of the craziest things that happened was when I wasn't even there. Apparently on the way home at 3am there was a guy playing music in a plaza and he played a song they all knew and sang..so they tried to tip him. Well, he handed the money back and said he doesn't take money from Americans and thanked them for 1945. Think about it, if that's not moving I don't know what is. 

Munich has the lowest crime rate in all of Germany, and the streets are so pedestrian friendly, you feel completely safe walking around at night from hall to hall. It's tradition and history mixed with the new age. Who wouldn't love it?