86F in Berlin today. Is it humid, you ask? Why, yes. Yes it is. This place is basically a giant bog to begin with. Tomorrow it’s going to cool down to 81F and RAIN. Yay! Elliott left for Bavaria this morning to visit friends who are stationed there, so I am staying home today, drinking radlers, packing for my trip to Munich tomorrow, and trying to work on my papers but really just listening to horror podcasts and falling into a wikipedia hole.
I am writing a song called “Every German Has a Cello”.
Also, I don’t want to go to Munich tomorrow. I’m hot, I’m tired, and I am actually starting to meet people I want to hang with here in Berlin.
Only in Deutschland:
1. Having to decide what to wear to Dachau while packing.
2. Having to choose which of your 500 scarves to pack for Munich.
3. Being excited for a split second because you actually saw the last name “Frankenstein”, so you reach for your camera… and then you realize it’s on Stoppelsteine* and that makes you feel really icky inside for giggling.
4. If I hear “When the Saints Go Marching In” one more time, I am going to lose my shit. Even Nina Hagen played it. WHY? What is your obsession with this song, Deutschland??
*”Stumbling stones” are brass tiles placed on the sidewalk in front of buildings that have the names of Jewish people who had lived there who were murdered in the Holocaust.
You know, nothing makes me realize the difference between “traveller” and “tourist” more than encountering a large group of Americans on the train to München yammering like geese, holding up everyone trying to get to their seats and then loudly informing me in English that I need to move but cause she reserved that seat and I don’t want her sleeping on my shoulder. (Non-reserved seats are cheaper, but if anyone reserves the seat you are in along the way you have to move)
To recap:
1. LOUD
2. No regard for anyone else
3. Doesn’t even attempt a word of German, and continues to speak to me like I should understand her. I had a German magazine in front of me and hadn’t say a word of English.
4. Not only is rude in the way she tells me to move, she adds an aspect of physical threat to it. Because she thinks she can sleep on my shoulder and I will just let her??
Fucking embarrassing rude ass Americans. Stop bringing down the curve!!!
Reasons Germans Rock #789:
Me: *trying to ask the nice young DB man in broken German if there is a place to plug in my phone since the battery is dying*
DB Man: *looks confused, reaches into his bag and pulls out his own personal phone charger without a second thought and tries to hand it to me*
Seriously, the guy was offering to let me use his phone charger. Without batting an eye. Can I just marry the entire country and have its little Deutschy babies?
Shrieking Chinese Baby meant I had to move closer to the Americans. I hate them so much. That woman is sitting there, eating Dr Pepper twizzlers and drinking white wine AT THE SAME TIME, reading a tour guide of Paris (wtf?) And talking UNNECESSARILY LOUDLY about how “ya gotta watch out fer pickpockets and don’t fergit ta haaaggle at the market BLAT BLAT BLAT”.
Dude, I’m asking for asylum.
EDIT: WHAT IS VERSAILLES??? WHY ARE YOU GOING TO FRANCE????
EDIT: She just described Versailles as “ya know that place where Marie Antoinette ate cake. It’s really gaudy.” *EYE DAGGERS*
Munich: been here less than 6 hours and I’ve already fallen in love with the place, met a Bavarian salsa dancer, and had my first currywurst. Tomorrow is booked solid!
If I had had half a brain, I would have started a blog called “breakfast buffets of Germany”. Because I will miss the German idea of breakfast when I go home. And the weird techno easy listening music they play.
Went out to explore Munich, however it was totally a Seattle-style rain all day so I couldn’t take many pictures. I was perfectly in my element, but after a couple hours it began to suck constantly being cold and wet like a stray dog. I got to film the surfers on the Eisbach (the voice you hear answer me is Freddy, a guy who offered to give me a quick tour of central Munich). Please note that is is pouring rain, freezing, and that water is coming right out of the Alps. These guys are honey badgers. Pics etc when I am not so tired.
I am having more fun in a Munich laundromat with a group of strangers than seems reasonable.
I just spent an hour in a laundromat in Munich with a Moroccan chef, a 70 year old Bavarian woman whose mother is 92 and can still walk around the Englisher Garten, and a Romanian couple with a tiny toddler who was obsessed with saying, “HALLO” to me. The Moroccan guy and the older woman had to help me with my wash because the machine ate my money. They completely volunteered the second they saw I was having a problem (they also forced me to speak German AND complimented me on my accent, which is dreadful but it was nice of them to say so). I think Bavaria is too nice for me, I feel the same sense of being too “stand-offish” here that I get back home. Berlin works for me because I tend to be a loner. But still, I have met more people in Munich in 2 days than I have met the entire time in Berlin, and they are all SO EXCITED about what I am studying. Hell, I even played with a toddler today.
Sigh. I think my foot is infected. Munich is great, but I don’t think I am going to get to see much of it while I am here. I can barely get my shoe on this morning. Grrr.
You know, I might be hobbled by my stupid foot, but I am sitting in a hotel room in Munich listening to Joy Division and texting with the funny BMW guy about stupid stuff because he’s stuck at his family’s house bored too (it’s a holiday today, Corpus Christi, so family dinners are required). And that is still a pretty rad day overall. However, I need to venture out to eat. Hope I can find some food before my food gives out, I am starving.
Finally left the hotel room to get food, and my foot is holding up ok so far. However I forgot to bring my afternoon pills again. That’s the second time this week I’ve don’t that. I never forget my pills. I was smacking myself in the head for being stupid, and then I realized why I keep forgetting them.
I don’t feel sick anymore. For the first time in 10 years, I feel normal. I’m not taking my pills, because I don’t have any pain right now.
That’s a bittersweet revelation.
Omg! I FINALLY figured out why Munich freaks me out! I kept wondering why I had such a weird feeling dread here… until I realized I keep expecting the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to come around the corner.
I have officially met The Most German German in the History of Germaning. He was also hilarious as hell.
Him: “I vant a leetal pikkie.”
Me: *drunk as hell at Hofbräuhaus* “what???”
Him: “a leetal piggie. You know, oink oink! I sink das George ist a gut name for a piggie…”
Me: *attempts to speak German *
Him: “oh, don’t do zat…”
Me: “what?”
Him: *deadpan* “2 out uf 10 points.”
Me: *bitching about something*
Him: *totally serious and oh so german* Oh you vill be dead one day, none uf dis vill matter.”
***
So, I sort of had a “date” last night. And yes, my husband knew about it, you gutter heads! I used social media to find someone willing to take me around and show me the sights. So on the left you will see Christoph, The Most German German to Ever German in the History of Germaning (even though he’s actually Bavarian)
His first words to me were a stern, “You were waiting in the wrong place.” Note that I was early, and so was he, and he found me anyway.
He kept lapsing into uncomfortable silences (Germans do this thing that Americans don’t, called “not talking unless you have something to say”)
I asked him if he liked movies or music. He said “I like silence.”
I asked him if he watched tv and he informed me he only watched political shows and documentaries.
The only movie he knew was “Nell” with Jodie Foster (literally, he’s never even seen The Wizard of Oz)
I asked him if liked his job at Bosch. He said, “I am German. Unless I hate my job I will keep going to it until I die.”
His idea of a “short walk” was 2 km one way.
He kept going on about how he wanted a donkey, a “piggie”, and a chicken. Maybe a goat, because you can’t take a cow to the market.I honestly have no idea what that was about. By that time I was completely drunk.
He told a story about being in the parking lot of a Piggly Wiggly in New Bern NC (of all places) where he thought this crazy woman was going to kill him. The best sentence I have ever heard a German utter, “I tought I vas goink to die in front uf dee Peegli Weegli.”
He was actually totally sweet, hilarious, and a perfect gentleman, but true to form with German humor I could never tell when he was kidding or not.
Wow. So Bavarians really do wear lederhosen. Totally serious.
Went to Dachau today. It was hot as hell, and the sole of my foot was on fire, but I think that is a perfectly acceptable state to be in when you go to a hellhole like this. I was wandering around looking at things, deep in thought, when I passed through the crematorium and into a small brick room with a very low ceiling.
Yeah, I’d wandered into the gas camber by accident. I was not prepared for that room. I’d honestly kind of forgotten it was there.
I can’t even begin to tell you what a horrible room that is. I’m not going to get all “new agey” on you, because I don’t think that it takes any amount of belief in the supernatural to accept that this room is one of the worst places on earth, and you feel it the moment you set foot in there. The place was crawling with obnoxious tourists who had been (as usual) treating it like a kind of grim Disneyland up until that point. Nobody stayed in that room for long. You couldn’t. I could see other people having the same icky body horror reaction to the room. It’s claustrophobic, it smells weird, and even just having 10 people in there on a hot summer’s day makes you feel like it’s overcrowded. They put 150 in there at a time, which would have been literally as tightly packed as physically possible. And if you know what Zyklon B does to the human body… I can’t even imagine. I saw one man outside, crouching down and holding his head like he was going to be sick. I thought I was going to be sick. I went around the building and hid in the woods for a few minutes and cried.
On the way there, there there was a young girl sitting next to me texting on her phone the whole ride. A woman came up to her and asked her (in German) if she lived in Dachau. The girl said yes, and the woman asked her directions to some store she was trying to get to. The girl told her and we continued on. A we approached the camp, I craned my neck to see if it was my stop. The girl noticed this and slide out of the seat so I would be able to get off when the stop came. As she did so, she looked at me directly in the eyes (which isn’t something people really do here, not even in Bavarian) and gave me this sort of sad smile, as if to say “I know why you are here, and it’s ok.” Every German I have talked to about the war uses words like “obligation” and “duty”. I think I am starting to understand why.
You know you have been Germanized when you laugh so hard at an article about how stupid PEGIDA is that you almost spit your huckleberry strudel pastry that you bought at the Rewe in the Munich Hauptbahnhof all over your laptop while texting your Bavarian friend about beer.
WOW. Thunder and lightning in Munich. That is some of the most amazing shit I have ever experienced. It’s HUGE!
Auf Wiedersehen, München. You are by far the most romantic city I have ever known. I wish I had more time.
This is Landsberg am Lech, a beautiful town with a sad history. My grandfather was here during the war and saw things that stayed with him for the rest of his life. I couldn’t come all the way to Munich and not come here. Waiting for the train back to Berlin, sad to say goodbye to Bavaria.
Things I hate about riding the train in Germany:
1. Waking myself up snoring and knowing that everybody hear that.
2. Tug of war over the window shade with the guy in the seat in front of me.
3. Non-German children. So loud.
4. American tourists who act like they own the place. Stahp it. Just keep your voice down, watch the people around you, and stay out of everybody’s way. If you are confused ask someone, they will gladly help you. And learn to fucking say, “Entschuldigen Sie bitte, sprechen Sie Englisch?” I mean, if you are going to go to a country at least know how to politely ask someone if they speak English in their own language. It’s one damn sentence you lazy, ignorant slug.
And don’t loudly complain about how disappointed you were that more people in Munich weren’t wearing lederhosen and dirndls. It’s not Disneyland, they aren’t there for your amusement.
Ahhhhh. Back in Berlin, döner in hand, but this time instead of a radler it’s a Augustinerbräu Lagerbier Hell in honor of the lovely people I met in Munich. So good to be home…
This week was a bit of down time. I wasn’t feeling well, weeks of arduous (for me, anyway) physical activity, the need to catch up on my studies, and a sick roommate slowed my progress down considerably. To top that off, my first visit to a concentration camp took the wind out of my emotional sails to a surprising degree. Of course, I started the week celebrating International Worker’s Day, which was possibly the drunkest I have been in 15 years, but was an amazing night.
J’accuse, Ben Kohn. Now pardon me whilst I spend the rest of the day dying in a dusty corner like an old moth. I vaguely remember staggering around Kreuzberg drunk as hell being obnoxious Americans… I think we danced… I might have hit on a German cop (or I dreamed it, not sure)… there was a French guy…. I took the U-Bahn home by myself because everyone wanted to keep drinking and I just couldn’t. I was so drunk I couldn’t sit upright waiting for the train… there was a harmonica player on the train… I managed to get home just fine and without incident, and nobody harassed me. Achievement unlocked.
I don’t really have anything I could possibly say to make the gravity and horror of a concentration camp make sense to anyone who hasn’t been to one. It doesn’t even make sense once you’ve been to one. This place is an unholy despair factory designed by sadistic brilliance. And right now I am sitting at a mass grave, in pleasant neighborhood listening to the autobahn and the blackbirds whir and chirp in the background. They built the modern police training barracks next to the camp. As a warning. This is what happens when authority goes unchecked and brutality takes the place of protection. This is a terrible place filled with the memories of terrible acts that illustrate how far that can go in the blink of an eye.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, Oranienburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
***
Today’s trip to the concentration camp has left me feeling pretty fragile inside. It was so much worse than I imagined it would be. It isn’t the same as reading about it. It’s so much more visceral standing where tens of thousands experienced cruelty and pain none of us will ever know. I genuinely loathe the idea of people suffering such unimaginable atrocities, to the point where I can’t shake it. I always assumed this was normal, but after watching people runaround the camp with their selfie sticks and then talk about where to go for lunch on the bus afterward, I don’t know anymore. I felt sick and horrible the whole time, like there was a stench in the air but you couldn’t smell it. I had to force myself to take pictures because I knew I would regret not documenting it. I sat for a really long time at the mass grave and didn’t even realize there were tears in my eyes. Is it stupid to get that emotionally worked up about anonymous people who died 70 years ago? I don’t think so. Someone has to mourn them, and anyone who remembers them is most likely dead by now.
Toilets, Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, Oranienburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
*** This place had a sign out front that said, “the most beautiful concentration camp in Germany” and I was really perplexed that that would be a bragging point. And if this is what a beautiful concentration camp looks like, I’m not sure I want to see the “shithole” version. And I think that was the worst part, getting into the heads if the people who were there. How could you survive that? When the war was over, what the hell did the guards do? NONE of the guards at Sachsenhausen were convicted after the war, they just went on with their lives. I mean, these people were someone’s parents, grandparents. “Gee daddy, what did you do in the war?” “Well, son, I drowned homosexuals in toilets and tricked over 10,000 Soviet POWs into getting shot in the neck. We had a great time!” Seriously, how can you live with yourself? I hurt someone’s feelings and it haunts me for years, can there really be that many psychopaths out there?
In researching a song for my hiking and drinking song class, I found one called “Ein Vogel wollte Hochzeit machen” (A bird wants to have a wedding). I tried to learn more about it on Wikipedia, but according to what I could translate, the page mostly seems to be arguing about how birds can’t actually get married and a blackbird and thrush can’t mate because of biological incompatibilities. Or something….
To sincerely paraphrase Stevie Nicks: O, Deutschland. You are the poet in my heart. Never change, never stop.
An Study of the German Forest in Song, Myth, and Folklore
