Day 1:
The trip we had planned since February!! The once and a
lifetime trip to the actual Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany! We had to book it
so far in advance because the hotel/hostel availability runs out quickly for
Oktoberfest. As a matter of fact, I was in a group of 6 that booked rooms and
right after we booked ours, there was no more available afterwards. Crazy,
fortunate timing!
Today was mostly the train ride to Munich. Doesn’t mean we
still didn’t make it fun though… all 34 of the Riva students had the same train
to Munich and definitely made it a good time. We all hung out, sharing stories and playing games. It made the 8 hour train ride go by faster.
Day 2:
4:35. That’s what time my alarm went off in the
morning. Willing myself out of bed, I had to get dressed and washed up for the
day in my haze of sleepiness. By the time we arrived at the Oktoberfest sight
after a short bus ride it was 6am.
The setting was different than I expected. There were so
many more tents than I expected. It was actually like a little town with a main
strip that had tents on either side. And tents technically isn’t the right word
either... they were definitely permanent structures with foundations and steel
supports. But oh it was so cool! When we arrived at 6, I didn’t fully
appreciate it all because I was tired and there weren’t too many people there
yet since we were beating the crowds. Later in the day when I got to explore a
little bit, I got to see how each tent was so different from the one next to it
and designed totally different! There were 12 beer tents in total!
The one we chose to go to was Ausgtiner- Brau! One of the
more popular tents with what the locals say is the best beer (that comes out of wooden barrels
apparently) and a lively atmosphere! The
music is very traditional, and many Muenchner consider it to be the best tent
at Oktoberfest! Before I
get into all that, we first had to get into the tent.
The total wait outside the tent was about 4 hours. When we
first arrived, we were just a handful of people from the front of the line. But as time
went on, it got more and more crowded. And then more crowded... When the
security guard pushed the front back, we had nowhere to go in the crowd of
thousands waiting to get into the tent. It got to the point where I was smushed
in between two guys taller than 6 foot and couldn’t even move my head.
Literally, I was telling myself to focus on my breathing because I could hardly
breathe… I was so smushed my lungs couldn’t expand the whole way. This is no
joke. I had to be in this intense cramped position for about half an hour out
of the wait. It’s funny to us all looking back on it now, none of us had been
that closely jammed together ever before. We survived, but gosh was that crazy!
Then the doors open!! The rush to get inside! (We had 18
people with us so we were trying to fight our way through to get 2 big tables)
And we were successful!! They were back to back, so we all got to hang out the
whole time together!
The inside of the tent was beautifully festive and everyone
around had high spirits! Banners hanging from the ceilings with other dangling
lights and bright colors! The servers were all ready to greet us! And I was so
surprised at the amount of people wearing Lederhosen! And dresses! (almost
everyone was) I didn’t except that because I figured there would be a bunch of
other people from all over the place, but I guess they got their lederhosen for
this special occasion. It was really fascinating to see it all!! In the
center of the tent was a raised platform for the talented oompah band to play!
Beer wasn’t served until noon, so when got inside around 10
I ordered a giant pretzel instead!! It was sooo good and super soft inside! Instead of having beer girls out and about, there were these pretzel ladies with strings of small pretzels wrapped around their heads during these first 2 hours.
To take up the wait time before the beer could be served,
all of us played card games (and I even took a quick 20 minute power nap with my
head on the table haha)
At 11, the parade started!! I forgot to mention, not only
were we at Oktoberfest, we were at the opening day!! So there was an opening
day parade to kick it off, and part of it came into our tent just before noon! There
were marchers, drummers, and a bunch of smaller instruments.
Then noon hit and in the center platform a man
made a special announcement in German and all the people around who spoke
German were so pumped up about it haha (and I had no clue what he was saying, my guess is something along the lines "Welcome to Oktoberfest 2013 in Ausgtiner- Brau!". Then he did the kick off cheer and the band began
to play!! They were so good and from where I was sitting I could see them
really well!
(unfortunately it was hard to get a good picture of them)
Also at noon another magical thing happened: beer! It’s
funny that our server didn’t even take our orders, she just brought us all
a beer. It was simply a known and assumed thing that everyone in Oktorfest
would be drinking beer. And the beer only came in one size, a liter! So
needless to say I definitely paced myself. True to what we heard before, the
beer was really good!
You would think that sitting at a table all day
would make the time go by slow, but that’s incorrect! It went by so fast because
we were having so much fun hanging out together and just taking in all of the
scene.
When it got to be lunchtime for me, I had to flag down our
waitress to order. My dad beforehand told me I had to order one of the local specialty
sausage, so to make papa proud I ordered the bratwurst dish with sauerkraut and
mustard! It was really so good, I definitely enjoyed it!
For the next few hours we just continued loving life there.
At sporadic times, the man who made the beginning announcements would get back
on stage and do “Ein Prosit” cheers! We would all stand up and swing our beer
mugs back and forth! And if anyone was brave enough in the crowd, they’d stand
on their table and attempt to chug their entire liter! Everyone else stood on
their chairs! If he succeeded, then he was met with loud cheers from the crowd…
but if he had to stop halfway through, then he was booed. And seeing all the Lederhosen outfits and beautiful dresses just added to the spirit
of it all! Gosh, it was such a fun time and an incredible atmosphere! Something
I will always remember.
Small groups had started to leave and when it got to 7 I
decided it was my time as well. We had already been there for quite a while. As
we we’re leaving, we got to see the whole atmosphere outside. It had transformed
since early in the morning… I compared it to a big beach boardwalk. It had lots of rides and roller coasters, a bunch of food and sovereign
stands, and so many people. I loved it!
In my group leaving, it was just Emily and I who were from
the group staying in our hostel, everyone else had gone back before. We caught
our bus back and ended up going the wrong direction for an hour. But oh well,
the bus went through the city of Munich so we got to see it while we were on the
bus. By the time we made it back to the hostel, I was exhausted. I quickly
messaged my family back home that I was safe and had an amazing time, and then
passed out for the night. I slept so well!
Day 3:
Our plans for today were in sharp contrast to the previous
day. We got up and had a really good
continental breakfast at our hostel and then headed out to Dachau to see the
Dachau concentration/prisoner camp just outside the city of Munich. Just as we
were walking in there was a small sign that read, “Dachau- the significance of
this name will never be erased from German history. It stands for all
concentration camps which the Nazis established in their territory.” Right then
my stomach tightened, and everything became more real for me. What I was about
to see took place not more than a hundred years ago.
We walked under the opening entrance and on the gate was a sign that read (translated into English) “Work sets you free.” The prisoners believed this, but it was only a lie. There was never any intention to set them free, but just a lie to make them believe so they would work harder.
She then took us to the maintenance buildings and prisoner cells.
Different from their normal barracks, the prisoner cells were for those who the
Nazis soldiers and generals thought deserved extra torture. It makes me cringe
now just thinking about it. Being shot on spot might have been better than what
some of these prisoners had to endure, especially the gruesome pole hangings.
When they were taken into the room to be given their number
(and thus loose all prior identity and belongings) there was a sign.
Translated, it meant “No smoking.” What it literally meant to all them was “You
have no rights.” In that room, I learned that Dachua had a total of 206,206
prisoners in its camp. And that 40,395 of them were Polish. That was more than
any other country. Just weird to me considering I’m 50% Polish and my
whole dad’s side of the family is Polish. Another set of numbers: there were 32,000
documented deaths at this camp. That doesn’t include the thousands that were
undocumented. Also the fact that people who were not fit to work at this camp
were sent to Auschwitz… to perish. Just incredibly sad.
We then headed out into the main courtyard area. This is
where the guards would perform another sort of torture… roll call. Prisoners had
to line up standing with their heads down and hands outside their pockets. If
they didn’t have the correct position, they were punished. If someone was out
of line or they were missing a person, then the guards made them stand for
hours upon hours frozen in this position. Literally frozen as sometimes these
roll calls would go into the frigid winter nights and these people were only
given a measly piece of cloth for clothing.
At the front of the courtyard was a sculpture. What it
depicted was an
entanglement
of people ensnared in barbed wire. In case the
prisoners didn’t know there was no way of escape, this was yet another sickening
reminder.
From here we went into the living barracks of the inmates. Back in the day, there
were rows upon rows of these barracks, but today only a couple replicas remain.
We got to walk around inside one of them for a bit. Their “beds” were wooden slabs that
wouldn’t have even been able to fit a whole body across. The prisoners in
charge of building the beds would be severely punished if the made the width or
height even just an inch too wide or tall. As more and more people got forced to go to
this camp, it got so crowded that people had to take shifts lying down. And by lying
down, I mean they could only do so on their sides because there was no space to lay
otherwise. They had to be back to back and those who didn’t get a spot on the
wood had to attempt to sleep standing up.
Their little toilets were just that…little. And very few of
them. They had two communal sinks for all those people. What made me really
upset was finding out that about 7 of the bunkers were set aside for the sick
and 5 of them were set aside for those who had human experimentation performed
upon them. The biggest tests were injecting malaria into the relatively healthy
inmates and testing various drugs to see their efficiency. More than half of
these victims died as a result, and almost all of those tested were gypsies. There
were also freezing experiments (to test for treatments of hypothermia) and sea
water experiments (to test if sea water could be drinkable).
We walked outside down the main walkway. During this walk, our tour guide told us even more about life on the camp. Some of what she said is too graphic I don't feel comfortable writing about in my blog. My sunglasses were on this entire time because I just wanted to cry. But I did find out the prisoners had a way out... they knew if they stepped even a foot off the path and onto the grass, then they would be shot by one of the guards in the tower immediately. If the guard happened to miss them, then they could run into the barbed wire and be instantly electrocuted.
Probably the most disturbing part of the tour came next. My
stomach was in knots the entire time and I felt I was going to be sick.
The crematorium, known as Barrack X.
Inside the crematorium were different rooms. The first room
was the disinfecting room, where prisoners were first informed they were about
to take a shower. Then they moved onto the next room, which was the waiting
room. Until they entered a room labeled “shower”. They didn’t know what was
coming, it was all perfectly disguised and had what appeared to be shower
spouts insides. Instead it was poison
gas that came out and anyone who had entered that room was
suffocated to death. As I walked through I couldn’t imagine the utter panic of
those who suffered this death.
We found out that Dachau had the potential for mass murder,
however the gas chambers were only used for small groups. But still, this was
the set up for mass murder and perhaps with time it would have become so. Beyond
the gas room was a room to pile dead bodies as they waited to be cremated. The
next room was the cremation room with 6 or 7 cremation furnaces that could fit
2 or 3 bodies. I couldn’t stay long here.
When we left, our tour guide concluded the tour at the Liberated Solider Statue. With his head held high and hands in his pockets, he was finally a free man again. Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945, however many were not alive to be apart of this. When the US soldiers arrived, there was a pile of 7,400 bodies stacked up because the camp had run out of coal to cremate the bodies. But for those who survived, their lives would never be the same.
Our tour guide was a very knowledgeable woman. At then end of the tour she told us the tour guides were not allowed to give more than 1 tour a day and only a few a week because of the toll it took on them. She said it is not easy for her to talk over and over again about Dachau, but she wanted the people (us) to know the truth.
I cannot fathom how this was allowed to happen. How could this have happened? Human beings torturing fellow human beings... what's honestly incredible is Hitler's rise to power. He moved from Austria with nothing but a suitcase to Germany. He started out being just a postcard painter, but he came to rule the biggest regime and become the most powerful man in German history. He wasn't even German and the German police wanted to arrest him once they found out he was Austrian, but at that point he already had too much influence. Just crazy.
Well it was time to head back to the train station because we had the 8 hour train ride back to Riva San Vitale.
(Day 4?)
We arrived in Riva just a little after midnight, so we got back for my birthday!! (the 23rd of September!) haha I got a bunch of "Happy Birthday!" wishes from those on the train and the people back at the villa already! No celebrations that night, we were all too tired and went basically right to bed when we got back!
But what a crazy experience this weekend was. Oktoberfest was a riot, so much fun and definitely a once in a lifetime adventure! Dachau was an amazing learning experience and I will never forget it. All in all, I had yet another truly wonderful weekend :)
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