Munich/Dachau

So I'll start with Munich, and then end on the depressing note...

First of all, I would like to mention that last night I got carded. In Germany. Where the drinking age is 16.

Yep.

But it didn't turn out all bad -- the woman trying to card me didn't know English, so she enlisted the help of some guys sitting nearby to translate for her, so I knew that they knew English, so I had people to talk to. I was at this beerfest thing, which I absolutely can't do justice to in writing. But I'll try. First, imagine a big school cafeteria, just a room full of long tables lined up against each other. Now imagine that someone replaced the little milk cartons at that school with liters (that's right -- I said liters) of 12-percent-alcohol beer.

It was pretty great. There was a band playing German music, and about 15 percent of the people there were dancing on the tables and singing. A couple of girls were doing this elaborate swingy dance, and a little old man joined in, and they just went along with it, swinging him around between them.

Anyway my two new friends turned out to be this really nice gay couple, one from Germany and one from France. The one from France said that most people in France hate Americans, and that it's not just an isolated thing like the faction of the U.S. that eats freedom fries instead of french fries. He said he was surprised I didn't figure that out after three days in Paris. But I kinda did. I just hoped maybe I was running into a lot of mean people, but that it wasn't the norm.

I accidentally started an argument between them when I mentioned that I'd gone to Dachau. The French one had really wanted to see Dachau, but the German one didn't want to go at all because he didn't want to think about it. His argument was that other cultures and nations aren't forced to constantly relive their predecessors' mistakes, so it isn't fair to make Germans relive it. I think it's amazing that there's still so much guilt there, even two generations later.

The argument got pretty heated I think (they apologized and then started arguing in German for a few minutes), but I think it ended up OK because at the end of the night the German one bought the French one a chocolate heart to wear around his neck that said, "Someone loves me" (in German, of course). He also bought me a chocolate that says "Someone's thinking of me," but the French one said his chocolate was better and we traded. So now I have a chocolate heart saying, "Someone loves me" from a gay German guy. It's pretty great.

Now Dachau...

The front gate the prisoners all had to pass through on their way in says, "Work will set you free," probably part of the guise the Nazis put on for the media who toured the facilities. But the tour guide said it could have also been just to taunt the prisoners.

The rooms were really amazing to see... the furniture inside the rooms is actually a re-creation, because after the war the rooms were used by non-prisoners and spruced up. After the those people left, former prisoners said they had to change it back. So there were three different types of rooms: the first was what the rooms were like before the war started. It had three levels of beds, all spaced out. The second type of room, right after the war started, had the same beds, but pushed together in pairs so they could fit four or five people in two beds. They also eliminated the ladders leading up to the second and third levels. The third room was all bed. Just a bunch of beds all pushed together with no space in-between. People just piled on top of each other, with no room to breathe or anything.

The gas chambers there were all set up, just like the ones in Auschwitz and the other death camps, but as far as anyone knows, they were never used in Dachau. No one's sure why. But they did use the incinerators, which were in the room next to the gas chambers to make for easy access. In front of the incinerators were hooks mounted along a strip on the ceiling. They used to hang people there, right next to the incinerators, and then they could just drop the bodies into the ovens.

I'm not sure what else to say about Dachau, except after that I can't imagine what it'll be like in Warsaw and Auschwitz...

So I'll jump back to Munich for a minute. Before the drunken night (and it was a very drunken night -- two of those massive 12-percent-alcohol beers will *kill* you), I went to the Pinakotheke Modern. The Pinakotheke actually has three different museums, but I got distracted on my way there by another museum with all this gold and then spent too much time in the Pinakotheke Modern and then it was closing time. So I didn't do everything I wanted to. But the modern one was really interesting -- it was mostly modern art but not all (they had a Rembrandt exhibit and a Picasso room). It also had a lot of weird shit, like a room full of flourescent lights with a warning on the outside to only stay in there for five minutes or wear sunglasses. I'd like to know who stands in a room with a few flourescent lights for more than five minutes. Then there was one artist who had at least two paintings with dogs sliced in half. It was very strange.

On that note, I'll sign off. Right now I'm in Brussels, and in two days I leave for Bruges. After that, Amsterdam, which I hear has (among a few other things) a cat museum.