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- If I could look this good in a speedo, I’d wear one.
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- Doppelbocked
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- Middle Earth
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- The first day of summer?
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- “Work Makes One Free” Entrance to Dachau
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- Former barracks and poplar strip where prisoners shared precious free time
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- Furnace at the crematorium
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- The gas chamber
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- The old and the new
“2080″ – Yeasayer
Guten tag from Germany, Bavaria and Munich. Such contrasts here.
Verdant (and well-zoned) countryside rises to the beautiful, snowy Bavarian Alps ringing the southern border of Deutschland. Munich is a gorgeous, clean city laid along the pure, clear Isar River with beautiful, old church towers defining the skyline. Pure pilsner and hefeweizen floweth freely and cheaply and the people (by and large) are lovely, warm and gracious.
Still, everywhere is the sense that this city and this country gave birth to the one of the most brutal and violent regimes in human history. A visit to Dachau, just twenty miles outside Munich, brings to life all the horrid history and images we’ve grown up seeing from World War II. Walking through the “work camp” you keep asking yourself how it ever came so far. As a soft summer rain coaxed the most beautiful smells from the lush forest, I walked to the crematorium and tried to comprehend the acrid smell that rose so cruelly from its smokestack. It is all truly difficult to imagine, even when you are actually there.
But this country and these people are so much more than that. It is also important to remember how Germans suffered economically and psychologically under Nazism too. The fact that the Germans emerged from WWII to where they are today with a sense of identity, pride, spirit and eventually the respect of the world is a testament to humaityn’s willpower to overcome and transcend. Germans and Jews live here together in peace and prosperity. There is still a tremendous sense of guilt about Nazism here and it must never be forgotten. But it is the past. What we must always remember is that the capacity for such evil somehow lies within all of us, though I still believe our capacity for love is stronger.
OK, enough of all that already.
I am here in the supreme hospitality of two old friends. I’ve walked all over the city and back through many times over; biked around a country lake; hiked to a hut in the mountains for the summer solstice and spent many a lazy afternoon enjoying the serenity of having nothing in particular to do. One of my favorite and most relaxing places in Munich so far — though you might think it morbid — is a beautiful and very old cemetery and park nearby my friends’ place. As the city buzzes around, the cemetery and the river are humbling and calm places to collect one’s thoughts. I go to both often and every time I walk away renewed and more at peace with my impermanence.
Yes, it’s quite a fascinating place, Germany. Plus, it also gave birth to ancestors of yours truly. So, this one goes out to my Grandpa, Adolf…Unzicker!
“A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill” – Jens Lekman
