more things we did in Europe...running out of creative titles

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Over the course of the trip so far, I have compiled a list of books a mile long that I need to read, and about a half a mile's worth of movies to watch. Everyday we stumble across more history and fascinating events and rhetorical questions that need answering and attention. In the past two weeks we've visited Munich, Prague, Krakow, and Berlin. Like in university, the more I think I grasp the more I realize I don't know about the world. Therefore when I go home I need to have no job but instead merely read books and learn new languages and discover things. A viable career option? I hope so.
Munich was a step into another world. Every stereotype we've ever heard of relating to Germans (liederhosen, huge steins of beer being clinked together, and a general rotund cheerfulness) is solely a product of Bavaria. It is such a wonderful place to be, because people seem to love to party and drink and eat and hang out, but somehow it seems so wholesome. So many men in hats and buxom ladies carrying 6 huge steins of beer at a time....it's definitely a different world. We purposely avoided Oktoberfest, and after hearing from approximately 15 early-20s-aged boys that Oktoberfest was AWESOME - they lost all their stuff and couldn't remember ANYTHING, it was EPIC... we were very pleased to do so. However, I'm pretty sure Munich has a huge party everyday (braühaus?!) and Oktoberfest is just the party for the tourists. After we arrived, we went on a free tour of the city (usually one of our first moves in a city, and always worth it to get our bearings and figure out how we want to spend our time there). We saw the major sights of Munich that way, and learned a lot about German history - Munich was the area where Hitler got his start so it was really interesting and crazy to be in places that held so much intense history. That night we saw a different side of Munich and went on another tour that claimed to be like wine tasting, but with beer. We were warned that it wasn't a pub crawl, it was more for learning about beer culture, and NOT to get drunk. LIES. When beer comes a litre at a time, things get messy pretty quick, for Susan and me anyway. It was a lot of fun though, at least for the first 2 or 3 beer halls I can remember.
Another day in Munich was spent at Dachau concentration camp, which was decisively the most horrifying day I've ever spent. It was an experience that I would never want to remove from my life, but it was definitely awful and difficult and disturbing, to see places and hear of events and see evidence of things that should never have happened, but somehow did, in the not so distant past. Once again this is something that I should not pretend to know much about, but the day at Dachau did give me an experience that nothing else ever could, and it's something one just can't really feel until going there. After 5 hours at the camp I wanted nothing more than to leave, and to see my family and friends and cuddle up in a blanket and be comforted. and from that idea I was forced to confront the fact that so many people were put there without their families, or the option or even the hope of a warm blanket or any comfort at all, and they certainly had to spend more than 5 hours there in worse conditions than those I experienced or could even imagine. I will never understand how this happened, how people survived it or anything about it, but I feel like it was a very necessary and moving experience to have.
The day after our trip to Dachau (since we were paralyzed post-excursion), we visited the beautiful English gardens of Munich which were totally idyllic with a sea of fall colours, a lovely rushing river, and a plethora of bustling walking/bike paths full of cute families and elderly people. Later we celebrated our 6-week "travel anniversary" with a night out at a couple beer halls with our newfound friends from Montreal and Switzerland, which was a lot of fun and a great way to wrap up Munich.
The next day on our way to Prague, we decided to make a small detour to Bayreuth, to see Wagner's Festspielhaus, probably (or certainly?) the most acoustically perfect opera house ever built. You're not allowed to go in without a tour so we wandered around Bayreuth for 3 hours until the next tour. Once the tour began, it became obvious that we were the only members below the age of 50 and the sole non-German speakers. We thought there might be a translation book, as there is on many tours, but there definitely was not...so we sat politely through 50 minutes of explicit detail (or so we assume) of the mechanics of Wagner's Festspielhaus, attempting to look interested and oohing and aahing at the appropriate junctures, taking cues from the other members of the tour. It was pretty cool though, to be in the Festspielhaus (which has approximately a 10-year waiting list to actually see an opera), and to go in the orchestra pit and backstage - to be in spots that were occupied and designed by Wagner, as well as super famous opera singers. We enjoyed our time there, though we don't know anything whatsoever about whatever might have been covered on the tour. It sounded interesting though, judging by all the nods and impressed mumbles that were going on.
When we arrived back in Nürnberg, our transport hub, we were moments away from missing our bus, after being moments away from missing all 3 of our trains during the rest of the day...it was a harrowing time but eventually we were safely on our way to Prague.
Our arrival in Prague commenced our self-made Opera-Fest 2010. We saw 3 operas in our 4 days in Prague, one at each opera house, which were all W ONDERFUL. The first opera was on a Czech national holiday, and we saw Rusalka by Dvorak, a Bohemian composer, so it was nice to experience some Czech nationalism. The next evening we saw La Traviata, and we spent a delightful Saturday afternoon at Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, which was performed at the opera house where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni in the 1780s - again, crazy to be in a place where Mozart had been, hearing Mozart performed.
When we weren't at operas, we spent our time wandering around Prague, seeing the sights, and trying several local beers (all great - I'm hoping to avoid being one of those people who returns to Canada and says at a bar, "ooh, but do you have any CZECH beer/HUNGARIAN wine/GERMAN beer/POLISH vodka/insert other fussy liquor request here...I just CAN'T go back to CANADIAN liquor since I've been to EUROPE...you simply MUST go....etc., various insufferable phrases"). Unfortunately for us, Prague is quite a romantic holiday haven, so there were a lot of canoodling couples to contend with..but we powered through. We toured around Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, several gardens on the "other" side of the river (including the Palace Gardens which had a tree garden including a Canadian maple! woo Canada pride!), Vyserad - an area of medieval ruins which included the graveyard of Smetana and Dvorak (we totally nerded out with the music stuff in Prague, it was awesome), the Jewish quarter, and the old town including our nemesis, the astronomical clock. When we were in Munich, our tour guide told us that the Munich glockenspiel, a clock on the Neues Rathaus (new city hall) that does a little song and dance routine every hour, was the second most disappointing tourist attraction in Europe (though we found it delightful) - second only to the Astronomical Clock in Prague. Since we defiantly found the glockenspiel so charming, we figured we had to see the astronomical clock, which is located in the main square in Prague. We spent 4 entire days in Prague, and never once succeeded in witnessing whatever happens on the hour with that clock, no matter how hard we tried. One day we waited in the square for a full 35 minutes before the clock was scheduled to do its thing, but once it started we realized we were on the wrong side of it - we came around the corner of the clock tower just in time to hear everyone ooh and aah and begin to disperse. Not meant to be.
Our final evening in Prague, post-opera and beer, we boarded the train to Krakow. Unfortunately, this was a somewhat terrifying and extremely restless trip for me as it's notorious for thieves (though we had absolutely no problem) and we were woken from a fitful sleep by the conductor tapping on our door saying that our tickets were not valid in Poland. I had visions of their kicking us off the train in rural Poland at 4 am, but instead they just took a credit card for 57 PLN (which meant nothing to Susan or I at that point but we were willing to pay anything just to get to Krakow unscathed... but really only means about 6 euros each). Overall it was not a great rest. Krakow, however, was beautiful. We joined the homeward march of the hardcore Halloween partiers at about 7 am, through a city full of huge mounds of fallen leaves and beautiful architecture. Apparently Krakow was virtually untouched in World War II (architecturally speaking) so there are still many beautiful old sights to see there. After a nap at the hostel, we headed out for breakfast followed by a walk around the main park in Krakow, looking out over the river. It was unseasonably warm during our time there, so at the beginning of November we were outside in our t-shirts and wishing for sandals! It got up to 20° which was a welcome respite from mittens weather. That afternoon we met with Susan's friend Trent for the ensuing week. It was nice to have a fresh perspective - an oh my goodness, we're in Europe, look at this architecture, look at this really old stuff, this is amazing! Susan and I have become a tad blase about such things after about 2 months in Europe so it was good to be reminded that it is pretty amazing here. With Trent, we did 2 walking tours of the city, one of which was more historical and architectural, while the other was focused primarily on Jewish history in Krakow. Both were very interesting; the Jewish history tour was obviously a lot more moving, particularly when we saw the former Jewish ghetto, which was only in use from 1941-1943, from when all Krakow's Jewish people were herded there until they were sent to concentration camps further east in Poland. There was some discussion about tourists' lurid fascination with concentration camps and World War II in general; apparently sometimes it can be seen as sensationalist and as though tourists are just visiting these camps and sites just to check it off on their list of to-do's in Europe...Susan and I were fairly appalled by this point of view, particularly having just visited Dachau and having such a moving experience there - it seems impossible that somebody could bear witness to these atrocities and be flippant about it, but apparently it happens. We heard this from more than one local person, plus saw a piece of art that bemoaned the attitudes of tourists on this matter. I still find this idea unbelievable. It is simply haunting to be in these places and see these things, and I don't know how anyone could find it otherwise. Anyway, once again I shouldn't be the one to expound on this subject but it was quite affecting.
November 1st was All Saint's Day, which I have heard about but never witnessed, and I now wish we celebrated this holiday in Canada. From what I understand, it's basically a holiday to remember and honour the beloved people from your past who have died. Everyone in the country, on the same day, flocks to cemetaries and fills them with candles and flowers to remember their loved ones. In general I have noticed a lot more attention and dedication to passed loved ones here in Europe, and a lot more honesty about death which I really value.
Much of the rest of our stay in Krakow was consumed with...consumption. We had to try perogies, potato pancakes, Polish beer and of course Polish vodka. Everything was great as one might expect. Honey vodka was a particular favourite. We visited some cool bars and nice restaurants. As well, on our third day in Krakow, we visited the salt mines. We went 130 m down into the earth, from which people have been mining salt for over 100 years. It was really interesting and had some charmingly kitschy displays complete with lights and music. There is also a full-on underground chapel which includes a life-sized salt statue of Pope John Paul II. Our tour guide was simply lovely and spoke in a smoothly rolling Polish accent which decreased to an arresting whisper at the end of every sentence. We learned a lot about salt mining, including the unequivocal realization that we will never become salt miners. This was confirmed by the elevator ride back up out of the mine, when the elevator stopped and started a couple times with some pretty hefty lurches...I was painfully, acutely aware at that moment that we were 130 m down and the salt mine went hundreds and hundreds more meters down...down this elevator shaft. Somehow I had become separated from Susan and Trent for the ride up, as well, so it was rather terrifying. However, we made it out alive and grateful.
Wednesday was a travel day, from Krakow to Berlin. We decided to take the more economical bus option, on which we were treated to 3 movies, dubbed in Polish: Prince of Persia, Sahara, and Cop Out. Classics. It wasn't that bad though, and we made it after about 11 hours to Berlin.
Berlin was a city it was instantly easy to be comfortable in. It feels quite western, the way Canadians think of the term (multi-cultural, big cups of coffee, lots of English on signs and menus), but with about 60 percent more tolerance, 90 percent more people speaking German, and hundreds of years more history. Once again we took a walking tour, which was good to acquaint us with the major sights and the major historical points.
It's so shocking for us as Canadians to see things that are really old, really historically intense, and often really palpably emotional. Of course in Berlin there is not only World War II history to contend with, but also the East/West divide and the era of Communism. So often in Europe, there have been things that I've heard of or read about in a cursory manner, but actually looking at their existence in real life is a totally different story. It's always particularly shocking to see things that have happened within my lifetime, but even things that have happened 100 years ago or less are oftentimes too close for comfort. Although the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it and the events surrounding it still seem like very recent history. Berlin is chock-full of monuments, statues, buildings, and memorials that don't allow people to forget or overlook the city's heavy history in the past 100 years in particular. It's fascinating and wonderful to see the honesty and fairness with which people deal with the past they happen to belong to - another good lesson to take back to Canada with me.
We left the hard night-life to the young'uns in Berlin, which is indeed a pity but we feel the need to carpe the diem a bit more than the noctem. We did however check out a couple of clubs which was fun - so often there is no difference between a club in Europe and a club in Canada (everyone's there for the same reasons, which you can probably guess; it's just that in Europe the decor is probably cooler and the club doesn't close at 2 - things are barely getting started by then), but in Berlin we did check out a club that was hosting people of all ages (like 18-55ish), all givin'er on the dance floor to German pop music. There was a huge variety of fashions and a marvellous mix of dance moves, and just a lot of things that I don't think you would see on your typical Saturday night out in the prairies. Unlike our roommates, we got home before 10 am, but we had a good time nonetheless.
Our final night in Berlin was spent at an opera, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which lasted for SIX HOURS. It was amazing and wonderful and fabulous..but 6 hours. Charmingly, many well-dressed elderly people bought pretzels at the 2 intermissions (that pretzel guy must make a killing during opera season - as Susan said he must especially jump for joy when he sees Wagner on the season calendar). Unfortunately, there were no surtitles on our €12 seats so we didn't exactly know what was going on...this seems to be our theme with Wagner events...but the music was beautiful, the orchestra was fabulous, the staging was impeccable, and the singing was unreal. So it was worth it.
I'm sorry for the merciless length of this blog...I applaud you if you're still reading it...and will tell about the rest of our German, Dutch and Belgian adventures the next time.

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