The Global Guy

Oktoberfest was fantastic!  The beer, the wine, the singing, and of course the women were all in your face kind of amazing.  We had planned on spending most of our time in Germany here, but changed our mind after we found out how hard it was to get accommodation, and also how early the beer tents closed because of terrorism fears (this was only about two weeks after 9/11).  Luckily the wine tents stayed open late for some reason, so we all developed a taste for Reisling.  Most of the evening is pretty fuzzy, which I’m sure is directly related to my getting separated from the group.

We had decided earlier that if we got split up, we’d all meet at a certain place at midnight.  Well, somehow I couldn’t quite located the meeting point, and at about 1 am, I realized that I might be in trouble.  I didn’t have any way of contacting the others, so I figured I should probably think about finding someplace to sleep.  I talked to a taxi driver, and he told me that every place in town was full and no place could help me at this time of the night.  Well, I remembered the hostel in the town of Dachau that we’d stayed in the previous night, and decided to go there.  It was about a 30 minute drive, and was about 2:30 am by the time we got there.  Of course it was shut tight, but in my drunken state I wandered around and finally found an unlocked window leading into the kitchen.  I figured at least it was safe and out of the elements, so I passed out on the floor.  Luckily I woke up early enough to get out of there before anyone found me.  When I was sober I realized that I had Christine’s cell phone number with me the whole time, so I called the guys and they headed over to pick me up.  We were all very relieved that we’d found each other, and proceeded to take advantage of the hostel’s showers.  It turns out that they had all slept in the van the previous night, and had a miserable time.  We decided at that point that one night in Munich was ok with us, and decided to head off to Prague that day.

This was the most sobering part of our entire trip.  I had very mixed feelings about going to this place, but I felt that I owed it to myself, and both the victims and the survivors to experience the horrors of this place first hand.   Of course I’d read about the Nazi atrocities in school, but until you actually see for yourself, you can never fully grasp the evil of what happened here. 

The camp is maintained by a society of survivors who have taken it upon themselves to remind the world what happened here, and to promote their slogan of "Never Again".  There is an excellent museum tracing the rise of the National Socialist party to power, and the beginnings of the crimes that were committed in the name of improving humanity.  Unfortunately this message has not reached everyone it needs to.  When we visited, there were signs on the buildings explaining that a week before we arrived, Neo-Nazis had snuck in at night, and vandalized several of the buildings with Anti Jewish slogans, and swastikas.  No leads had been found to the identity of the perpetrators.

I didn’t take many photos here; because of the atmosphere of the camp it feels very unnatural to take photos while you are there. One feels that they are intruding on someone’s private memorial.

As a going away to the South Pole party, what could be better than Oktoberfest in Munich?  Absolutely nothing I figured, so my housemates Mark, Raf and I all found ourselves on a plane headed for Frankfurt.  Mark had met a girl named Christine on the internet who said that she could get us a cheap van, and we could crash at her place. In exchange, we took her along with us and paid for her hostel beds.  It was a fantastic vacation.  We started out driving down to Stuttgart where Raf had some relatives.  We stayed there for a couple of nights, checking out their version of Oktoberfest called "Volksfest".  It was our first exposure to the food and the wonderful beer that was served in the huge steins.  We also visited a couple of the castles in the area, and toured a local winery.