DumbFunnery

Recently the old ball and chain and I made our way to Europe for a two week trip (11 sightseeing days). It had its ups and downs, and I’d like to share some of our adventuring about because it’s fun for me to recall the trip.

We flew from Denver to Munich, via Toronto, on Air Canada. Air Canada was nice and I packed in a lot of movies – Suicide Squad (awful), Batman v Superman (not good but not as bad as the anti-hype train painted it), Deadpool (enjoyed it but a little awkward to watch on an airplane), the latest Jason Bourne movie (enjoyable mindless action) and Sarah Prefere Le Course (French Canadian movie … enjoyable but the ending was one of those that just happens). Maybe others? I don’t know. I also have no idea which ones I watched on the way there vs the way back, it all sort of blends together.

Two days before our trip began the incident in Berlin where a man drove a truck into a Christmas market happened. That was an awful event and some families will forever live with grief because of it, and some people’s lives have been brutally cut short. On a selfish note, this led to heightened concerns and worries for my wife and I. I don’t think I tend to be an unaware traveler, but I took screen shots of all the embassy locations before we left, and tried to stay very aware and think of how I would exit any place as quickly as possible. My wife was worried about Christmas markets (something we wanted to see as part of our trip) and I was worried about trains (they are just so easy to get on and off with however many bags you can carry and no checks of baggage contents).

Thankfully, our worries amounted to nothing and we had no death threats that panned out.

 December 21/22

We left on December 21 in the morning and arrived on December 22 in the morning (hello confused bodies). We made our way to our hotel (ignoring my fears above, I love how prevalent and easy to use trains can be) and promptly took a much longer than we meant to nap. We woke up hungry, tired, and excited to see a little bit of Munich. But mostly hungry. And tired.

Our coats donned we headed to a coffee shop we had noticed while walking from the train station to the hotel – Coffee Fellows. I was all prepared in my head, “zwei kaffee, bitte, und uh … zwei … brot?” We wanted coffee and bagels but I had no idea how to say bagels, pointing is an international language, but also English is fairly international. My American brain can appreciate that.

I think only twice in the whole trip did I stumble through German (Munich, Lucerne in Switzerland and Vienna in Austria all speak German). I knew that I probably didn’t need to worry about learning German, I assumed I would need my 2 year old vocabulary at least a handful of times, but I didn’t even need it that much.

Our hotel was not far from Marienplatz, where a big Christmas market, Chriskindlmarkt, was located. We left from our quick meal and headed there. It was beautiful. St. Michael’s Church (St. Michael Kirche) with a huge, beautiful tree dominated the view. In front of them were temporary booths – nice looking, wooden temporary booths (a leap above the carny kind of temporary booth). I took picture after picture trying to capture how beautiful it all was – the shining ornaments hanging from booths, the smell of the gluhwein (a spiced, warm wine – sounds gross, tastes warm and occasionally delicious), the beautiful buildings, the upbeat and happy and kind mood that surrounded us.

We wandered from stand to stand, taking in the sights, picking out items to come back and buy later (a more difficult task than we realized, because finding the same booth was not always easy). (For more pictures of the beauty of the stands, go here to a previous post.)

For dinner we popped in a restaurant, Ratskeller, and enjoyed some incredibly delicious traditional German food. Oh yes, my friends, I miss that. And the beer. Oh such tasty beer.

December 23

We slept in late, later than we intended, and ended up getting coffee, juice, and a breakfast on the go from the train station. (I had a vanilla croissant … all the little bakeries there are wonderful – I don’t want to stereotype, but I think Europeans have bread at a higher level of deliciousness than most.) We boarded a train and headed to Dachau. From the Dachau main station we hopped on a bus to get to the site of the concentration camp (for future travelers – basic tip, follow the tourists).

I won’t spend much time recapping the visit to the concentration site because I don’t think I could do it justice. I will say two things, though.

One is that it wasn’t as depressing as I thought it would be. We arrived and walked into a building which has large poster after large poster full of facts. By the time you finish walking through that building your brain is inundated with information. To me, the Holocaust Memorial in Boston is more moving and depressing (the glass cubes with the numbers on them and a few quotes) because it is so stark. I think that creating a museum that is both informational and impactful is challenging, but I felt like the amount of data took away from the sadness of the place and what it was once used for. After walking through that building we walked around the grounds and you can easily visualize just how many buildings were there, stuffed with people suffering such incomprehensible cruelty, and that was powerful.

Thought two came before the trip. I began thinking about how Germany has concentration camps that are internationally known places to visit, to wonder at, to be disgusted by, and to learn from. I can’t think of an equivalently known slavery museum in the United States. It seems like that could be a museum that would be powerful, and important in teaching people about history. This could be my own ignorance and there very well may be a museum that serves just such a purpose, I just know that I have toured an old plantation or two and it was not built around showing slavery but the architecture of the plantation itself.

After the Dachau tour we had lunch at a little café in town and then I wanted us to walk to a castle. We got there at 4:05 pm to discover that it had closed at 4 pm. Dagnabit. It was a foggy day that was ripe for mystery laying behind every corner, which made the walk back to the train station seem a little more discombobulating.

Back in Munich, we rested at the hotel for a bit before heading out to once again marvel at the Christmas markets (talk about a switch from Dachau). This time we went along a different route to see different booths, and we stumbled on a beautiful decoration which ended up causing us countless grief (a large wooden scene – trip lesson #1 – when you buy a whole bunch of stuff at the first destination of your trip, MAIL IT HOME! Instead we lugged it around which was less than delightful). Somehow, the wooden decoration appeared to survive the trip, so that is good.

We had dinner at a Pizzeria, which was actually a very upscale looking Italian restaurant. I guess the word pizzeria does not mean chill pizza joint like it does here. The food? Ok. The beer? Oh you know it was delicious.