invasion of europe
Episode #9
I took a train to Dachau and all I got was this lousy t shirt.
The final day in communist Italy. My foot doesn't work and I am trying to find a way to kill 12 hours in Florence. I have lost both of my 18 year olds, well, they are in Europe, but in normal Daniel fashion, I left them and didn't say goodbye. I wish them luck in their pursuits.
I spend the day riding the bus in Florence and I see the city from Michealangelo park above the city. It gives the place a real postcard sentiment and inspires me to want to carve stone into male perfection. Of course, David has that locked down, so I guess I can just sit on the steps and whine about my sore foot.
It occurs to me that more people in Europe rarely find that culture that Americans are accused of lacking. Here I sit in the epicenter of history and it's crawling with European high school students on field trips, not soaking it in and making themselves better than Americans. No, they are playing male group flirting with coy female groups, who are in turn flirting back and staring at shoes. Both groups are missing the "culture". Of course, the American groups, the American families and the American backpackers, are buying shorts with David's crotch strategically placed on the crotch of the shorts. It's classy and very American.
The final few hours of Florence I spend looking for something to do and I decide that if I can't walk, that I might as well stand in line. So I am waiting for the David and my sore foot and the Italian sense of fair play come into action.
I get to see the David for free, and I only stood in line for twenty minutes. Let's hear it for being handicaped.
The train to Munich.
It's filled with Italian women and the guy from LA law that played the retard mail boy. (which a certain number of German men resemble to a T) The girls are talking, asking me questions. The german is clearing his nose every ten minutes. My foot is swollen so much that it doesn't fit into my shoe.
Two hours into the trip, the pain is so great that I have to ask the conductor for help. He wants to kick me off the train but settles on an ice pack. AND... my own car to sleep in. I love being crippled.
Munich.
As I write this I am twenty-five feet away from the building that is presently selling bedroom sets. Seventy years ago, Hilter and some buddies created the Nazi party over some beers.
Munich is nazi central. Hitler created his empire from this town and this stands as the center of all that he worked so hard for. It's all here.
I got off the train, foot less swollen, feeling dirty, but of good cheer. I found a hostel two blocks away and I check in, eat, shower and I am on a train for Dachau in an hour. It's four train stops away. In a suburb of Munich.
First, it's free to enter. Second, it's filled with high school students on a field trip. Sadly, Dachau is no longer functional or the high schoolers presence here would have made me happy. It's the same story as before, flirting, and this time - fighting. That's right, in a concentration camp, the first concentration camp and the meanest, a Brazilian and an Italian from differing worlds are fighting over the football(for you non metric that's soccer). In the middle of the roll call field, a fist fight.
The day only gets better.
Anyone visiting a place of death is hard pressed not to feel the footprints that they are sharing with those that came before. I am walking down the right side of the camp, I can see the tower less than twenty feet away. Between me and the tower is a small strip of grass known as "no man's land". If you want to die, just step off the gravel onto the grass and get shot. A few feet of grass gives way to a small creek, then an electric fence, then barbwire, then another creek, then a machine gun nest and then greater Germany. You don't flee, cause there ain't no where to go. The only reason to step to the right is because you have given up.
Before me, years ago, men walked here that didn't have the luxury of argument over football.
Dachau - This is the place where they experimented on people to see what the human body could take.
This is where they practiced the gasing and the ovens. Both of which you get to walk through.
It's fifteen degrees here (metric people that's forty kilos). I am wearing a coat, a fleece, a heavy denim shirt, a tee shirt and a cap and I am cold. The prisoners wore much less.
It wasn't Jews. It was everyone. It was everything. This prison saw more political prisoners than jews. Jews were moved out of Germany. So this place saw death by other means and this was the concentration camp where the SS was taught to run other concentration camps. The meaner you were, the faster you got promoted.
Inside the grand hall of exhibits, two jewish women from Florida are visiting, crying and moving me. I follow them to hear their words. This is their first visit to Europe, and they are moved by what they see and it's touching.
I finish my tour and head out. On the train back to Munich, I hear the familiar sound of Florida women, but the cracked tone is gone and they are talking about how American civil liberties have been streached too far and some restraint has to be put in place.
These two women just left a place that has a monument that says, "never again". These two women are your new nazis.
Well, not yet.
En route to the hostel from the train, I get to see modern day Nazis. Man are they cute. No one here talks to me so they leave me alone but they bother everyone they can and I feel left out. What does a prick like me have to do to get a Nazi's goat.
Never blow a kiss at Nazis... Unless you're getting off the train. Then it's funny.
After a nap, I am off to see the town. So much hatred lives in this town that it's hard for me to decide whether I want to see it all. In ten minutes I am supposed to join some Aussies for a beer in the Haufbrauhaus, the famous beer hall where Hitler and his chums gave their first speeches and rallied a nation. A nation of rabid football fans that needed a reason to start a fight with anyone that would let them.
Lest we forget the lesson of Munich. A weakened nation that was looking for a reason, found one in a failure of man. Who found a rallying cry - it's "their" fault. And a nation that needed a reason to feel good about itself again, agreed and was willing to subject itself to ridiculous violations of their civil rights and liberties all for nothing.
I took a train to Dachau and all I got was this lousy t shirt.
The final day in communist Italy. My foot doesn't work and I am trying to find a way to kill 12 hours in Florence. I have lost both of my 18 year olds, well, they are in Europe, but in normal Daniel fashion, I left them and didn't say goodbye. I wish them luck in their pursuits.
I spend the day riding the bus in Florence and I see the city from Michealangelo park above the city. It gives the place a real postcard sentiment and inspires me to want to carve stone into male perfection. Of course, David has that locked down, so I guess I can just sit on the steps and whine about my sore foot.
It occurs to me that more people in Europe rarely find that culture that Americans are accused of lacking. Here I sit in the epicenter of history and it's crawling with European high school students on field trips, not soaking it in and making themselves better than Americans. No, they are playing male group flirting with coy female groups, who are in turn flirting back and staring at shoes. Both groups are missing the "culture". Of course, the American groups, the American families and the American backpackers, are buying shorts with David's crotch strategically placed on the crotch of the shorts. It's classy and very American.
The final few hours of Florence I spend looking for something to do and I decide that if I can't walk, that I might as well stand in line. So I am waiting for the David and my sore foot and the Italian sense of fair play come into action.
I get to see the David for free, and I only stood in line for twenty minutes. Let's hear it for being handicaped.
The train to Munich.
It's filled with Italian women and the guy from LA law that played the retard mail boy. (which a certain number of German men resemble to a T) The girls are talking, asking me questions. The german is clearing his nose every ten minutes. My foot is swollen so much that it doesn't fit into my shoe.
Two hours into the trip, the pain is so great that I have to ask the conductor for help. He wants to kick me off the train but settles on an ice pack. AND... my own car to sleep in. I love being crippled.
Munich.
As I write this I am twenty-five feet away from the building that is presently selling bedroom sets. Seventy years ago, Hilter and some buddies created the Nazi party over some beers.
Munich is nazi central. Hitler created his empire from this town and this stands as the center of all that he worked so hard for. It's all here.
I got off the train, foot less swollen, feeling dirty, but of good cheer. I found a hostel two blocks away and I check in, eat, shower and I am on a train for Dachau in an hour. It's four train stops away. In a suburb of Munich.
First, it's free to enter. Second, it's filled with high school students on a field trip. Sadly, Dachau is no longer functional or the high schoolers presence here would have made me happy. It's the same story as before, flirting, and this time - fighting. That's right, in a concentration camp, the first concentration camp and the meanest, a Brazilian and an Italian from differing worlds are fighting over the football(for you non metric that's soccer). In the middle of the roll call field, a fist fight.
The day only gets better.
Anyone visiting a place of death is hard pressed not to feel the footprints that they are sharing with those that came before. I am walking down the right side of the camp, I can see the tower less than twenty feet away. Between me and the tower is a small strip of grass known as "no man's land". If you want to die, just step off the gravel onto the grass and get shot. A few feet of grass gives way to a small creek, then an electric fence, then barbwire, then another creek, then a machine gun nest and then greater Germany. You don't flee, cause there ain't no where to go. The only reason to step to the right is because you have given up.
Before me, years ago, men walked here that didn't have the luxury of argument over football.
Dachau - This is the place where they experimented on people to see what the human body could take.
This is where they practiced the gasing and the ovens. Both of which you get to walk through.
It's fifteen degrees here (metric people that's forty kilos). I am wearing a coat, a fleece, a heavy denim shirt, a tee shirt and a cap and I am cold. The prisoners wore much less.
It wasn't Jews. It was everyone. It was everything. This prison saw more political prisoners than jews. Jews were moved out of Germany. So this place saw death by other means and this was the concentration camp where the SS was taught to run other concentration camps. The meaner you were, the faster you got promoted.
Inside the grand hall of exhibits, two jewish women from Florida are visiting, crying and moving me. I follow them to hear their words. This is their first visit to Europe, and they are moved by what they see and it's touching.
I finish my tour and head out. On the train back to Munich, I hear the familiar sound of Florida women, but the cracked tone is gone and they are talking about how American civil liberties have been streached too far and some restraint has to be put in place.
These two women just left a place that has a monument that says, "never again". These two women are your new nazis.
Well, not yet.
En route to the hostel from the train, I get to see modern day Nazis. Man are they cute. No one here talks to me so they leave me alone but they bother everyone they can and I feel left out. What does a prick like me have to do to get a Nazi's goat.
Never blow a kiss at Nazis... Unless you're getting off the train. Then it's funny.
After a nap, I am off to see the town. So much hatred lives in this town that it's hard for me to decide whether I want to see it all. In ten minutes I am supposed to join some Aussies for a beer in the Haufbrauhaus, the famous beer hall where Hitler and his chums gave their first speeches and rallied a nation. A nation of rabid football fans that needed a reason to start a fight with anyone that would let them.
Lest we forget the lesson of Munich. A weakened nation that was looking for a reason, found one in a failure of man. Who found a rallying cry - it's "their" fault. And a nation that needed a reason to feel good about itself again, agreed and was willing to subject itself to ridiculous violations of their civil rights and liberties all for nothing.
posted by Daniel Loomis | 12:32 PM
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