GERMANY - Big Beers and Visiting Evil in Munich.

I received an email invitation to stay in Germany from Glenn and Silvia while I was in digesting whipped cream covered waffles and chunks of dreamy chocolate in beautiful Brussels. "Absolutely!", I wrote back, not having a clue who these people were or how they knew me. They had been to my web site and decided to invite me to Munich to experience Bavarian hospitality, beer and chow. Travelers are very open-minded and tolerant people - It's hard to believe that after reading my web site, these two previous travelers would invite me into their home without fear. After a few days of staying with them Glenn confessed to me that he was a little worried about me coming into their home and trashing the place in a drunken stupor. Is that the general gist of my web site? That I'm an out-of-control disorderly drunk that craves to torment and hungers for destruction? Neato.

I arrived by train to Munich and followed the detailed instructions to get to my newest lodgings. It's always a daunting task entering a new country, trying to figure out how to get on a bus, to read the unreadable signs, to accomplish anything without insecurity and anxiety. I stood in front of a U-bahn ticket machine for half an hour in a hopeless attempt to get a ticket. I pressed every brightly coloured button that looked important, but still no english magically appeared to help me with purchasing a fare. The 'Learn to Speak German' compact disc I bought months ago hasn't helped me either. I know how to count to ten, how to say that my passport was stolen, and to distinguish mens and ladies toilets, and that's it. I approached a tourist information counter and after a lot of waving my hands around and pointing at the train stop I wanted on a transit map, I had a little ticket in my hand. So far, in all the European countries I've been to, the doors on the trains and buses don't open automatically, there's usually a tiny button somewhere on the side of the car that opens the door. So for the first few times I just stood there waiting for the doors to part so I could enter, starting to panic, as everyone else entered the train through other open doors. Eventually a smart person behind me would push forward and press the button for me. You would think they would a least have a little sign above the little button, stating to us people with little brains that the little button opens the gigantic doors. I soon became an expert at pressing the hidden buttons, and even was a little cocky and impatient when other first-timers couldn't figure out why the fuckin' doors on the train weren't opening for them - so with a superior traveler attitude, I would proceed to stick out my pudgy finger, sigh deeply, depress the door-opener, and stand there like I was Moses parting the Red Sea. I swear I heard a chorus of harmonizing angels every time I accomplished a train door opening. Then there was Munich. Their trains don't have buttons, they have handles. I fought with the handles - pulling them, pushing them, I was getting a tad pissed off that I wasn't smart enough to get in the train. How the hell do you work these things, I thought to myself, as the time ticked away for the train to leave the station. Again, someone from behind me helped me out, or maybe not helped me, but pushed the stupid tourist outta the way so they would make it on the train in time. I'm always learning the hard way.

I walked about two kilometres from the station stopping to check each road sign carefully, checking each individual character of each word to make sure I was heading in the right direction. German words are huge and have too many consonants and weird letter combinations. I rang the doorbell to Glenn and Silvia's pad and they invited me in for cold beer and hot pizza. They made me feel quite comfortable right away, and the night progressed into drinking great german beer, laughing and listening to their musical collection that is similar to all the nasty music I love. And contrary to what was expected, I never trashed the place, urinated on the curtains, or squeezed off a stinky floater into their aquarium in my drunken stupor. My sleeping quarters was a small wooden cabin, ten paces behind their house, with a cozy bed, many blankets, and ambiance galore. I flopped onto the bed and fell asleep within seconds, my nocturnal unconsciousness filled with nightmares of torture and suffering. It must have been the thick layer of delicious pizza cheese wrenching my bowels into tight knots throughout the night. The next day we enjoyed great big beers that I could hardly lift, and a traditional Bavarian feast in a beer garden a few blocks from their house. Thick blood sausage, big cheese, radishes as big as my fist and salty pretzels the size of my ego - it was a wonderful Bavarian platter of joy. My new Münchner friends knew how to make me happy.

The typical tourist thing was next - load up my camera and maps, tightly folded cash in my right pocket, credit cards deep in my left, and off to the city centre I went. I've become so proficient in pointing and grunting in non-english speaking countries for things that I want, like items off of menus or delectables behind glass display counters. They speak german to me and I nod and pretend to understand. I ordered coffee and a sweet pastry and walked about the place while the sun beamed down on me and tourists started to occupy every available breathing space in Marienplatz and the overpriced café's. I snapped some photos and kept moving. After walking through General's Hall and taking pictures of Theatiner Church and the Cathedral Church of Our Lady, I ended up in the English Garden walking along the never-ending pathways trying not to turn my head towards at the ugly old men sunbathing nude, lying in the middle of the grass. I must have looked a little odd holding my camera with the huge telephoto two-hundred millimetre lens, strolling along in the middle of the park where men displayed their sunburnt wrinkled ugly-bits for all to see.

After burning my retinas and permanently scaring my brain viewing oily naked men, I went to the famous Hofbräuhaus where every other tourist to Munich seemed to be. The Hofbräuhaus is a famous brewery and must-see for all visitors to the city - so the tourist brochures say. I couldn't find a seat anywhere because of all the stupid tourists - I hate tourists. I decided to drink at the other tourist spot across the road, the HardRock Café, and stare at all the other dumb tourists trying to get a seat at the insane tourist attraction, that isn't much more than a big bar full of drunk tourists yelling for the accordion player wearing lederhosen to play more touristy songs. Stupid tourists, nobody really wears lederhosen.

On Sunday I took a train to Dachau, where the first Concentration Camp in Germany, and the model for all the future camps, was built. Well, I tried to go, but ended up standing at the train platform a few stops from Dachau, all alone for forty minutes wondering why the train hadn't shown up yet. Eventually an old man approached and spoke something in German to me. I said "me no speaka da German", and he then said, "the train you are waiting for is out of service - they have a bus waiting just outside the station to go to Dachau". The message over the loudspeaker forty minutes ago said the same thing, but only in German. So I walked quickly out of the station, 'cause running would just be uncool, and stepped onto the empty waiting bus. The bus didn't move for forty-five minutes, with me sitting all alone in the back. Finally the driver came on just before another train pulled up and a load of people joined me. The bus carted me for another twenty or so minutes to Dachau, and dropped me off in the pouring rain just outside the camp. I casually walked towards the entrance and noticed that the memorial site was closing at 5:00pm. I dug into my deep pocket for my cheap plastic traveling alarm clock, pulled it out and it read 5:05pm. "Shit". I casually walked back to the bus stop and waited for the same bus to turn around at the end of its loop and pull up in front of me. The same driver gave me a peculiar look as I boarded his bus again, and I walked to the very farthest seat from him and sat and sulked. "Shit", I muttered again.

The next day I tried again, but much earlier, and I ran to the waiting bus. It was warm and the sun was shining, but that didn't help with the horrible history I was about to submerge myself into. It's an odd feeling standing on the same ground where two hundred thousand prisoners over twelve years were tortured daily, and forty-three thousand were killed. The gate for the only entrance to the camp reads 'Work sets you free' in iron letters. I walked around the roll-call area just beyond the gate where prisoners were forced to line-up and be counted and often had to stand motionless for hours in all weather. A few steps away were the seventeen barracks that housed the prisoners. Each barrack was designed to hold two hundred persons, but as the war continued the barracks were overcrowded with up to two thousand prisoners per barrack. They were forced into horrible medical experiments that usually ended with their deaths. Being injected with malaria, altitude tests, and being lowered into freezing water to see how long one could survive, were a few experiments that killed many prisoners. Then I found myself suddenly standing in the 'showers'. I didn't realize where I was until I noticed the holes in the ceiling, drains in the floors, and translated the german word for shower painted above the metal door. It was a very eerie feeling standing in the same rooms where prisoners were told they were having a cleansing shower but instead Zyklon gas was pumped in. Then I was off to the crematorium. They said the ovens were never used, but they have photographs showing the exterior of the building with smoke coming from the chimneys. The last building I went through was the museum. It was huge and took hours to absorb everything. The museum displayed gruesome images of dead prisoners, some shot for attempting escape, some caught on the electrified barbed wire and some dead from exposure and malnutrition. There was also many pictures and colour film of when the Americans liberated the camp and were horrified at the piled corpses that were waiting to be cremated or buried in mass graves. It's terrible to see what people can do to people, but I was glad I had the chance to visit this place.



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