Due to upcoming school responsibilities, I knew I had exactly two weekends to do fun stuff before I’ll be exhausted and just want to sleep all weekend. So I decided to finally tour around Munich because usually when I go it’s for a very specific reason (shopping, the Fleischmanns, airport). However, I undecided as soon as I found out from Sarah that it was the first weekend of Oktoberfest.
For those of you who have always wanted to go to Oktoberfest based on what they show on TV, run, run away! It’s horrible. How horrible? Most locals actively avoid it like the plague because it’s so miserable. Sarah says that she even avoids train connections through Munich for the next three weeks because otherwise you’re climbing over passed out people.
So I went for Plan B: Nuremberg, no train changes through Munich and still in Bavaria which means awesome Bayern ticket!
I took my time getting down to the train station, picked up the obligatory bakery breakfast (one Kaesebrot and one Schnecke) and read my book the whole way there. Walking out of the train station I was very tempted to just hop on the Prague express bus which was loading up, but considering I only had one book , no laptop and no Czech kronor with me I decided against it. Finding the #9 tram, I made my way out toward the suburbs where the Documentation Museum is, right smack in the middle of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds.
The museum looked super small on their website and comparatively it was, but there was so much information that I ended up staying for two hours. The museum has literally hundreds of documents, but goes through the rise of the Nazi party from right after WWI through to the Nuremberg Trials. The focus is mostly on why and how the Party Grounds were built (many nearby concentration work camps were built to get stone for the project) and how the NSDAP(the German abbreviation for their party name) used celebrations and the stripping of the individual for a superficial sense of community to influence and manipulate people. Nuremberg was considered “the most German city” and so it was a hub of NSDAP activity.
The museum is housed inside the half-finished Kongresshalle which is made up of exposed brick and gives the whole museum is dark, dungeon feeling. The only part really finished was the Zepplin Field which is across the lake. The plans for the rest of the area were ambitious and creepy. Lots of long streets for parades, fields with grand stands for mock battles, lots of stadiums for bringing people together for “the event”: seeing the “Fuehrer”. The videos from the time look like half Oktoberfest, half ancient religious event with lots of partying, but also lots of pomp and emotional manipulation surrounding Hitler. It was very cult-like. The museum was fascinating but also much different than anything I had ever experienced. Usually when you go to a museum of such gravity in the US, you walk out into the sunlight and sigh, back to current reality, which may be disorienting but also quite comforting. It’s strange walking into the sunlight at the end and being right in the middle of what all the black and white photos just showed, except with a Segway tour buzzing by.
Nuremberg’s done their best to deal with the ruins. The sports field has been modernized and used. Most projects were mowed down to make a nice park area around the lake. The Zepplin field is still there…don’t know when it’s used. And the Kongresshalle is half museum, half Nuremberg symphony orchestra and funny enough, the big stadium space in the middle is used to train ambulance drivers. Once finishing the museum, you can walk out onto a steel platform that juts into the center of the stadium and a bunch of us stood there watching a sad, hapless newbie run over plastic cones while a group of mentors yelled and groaned. It was a bit theater of the absurd.
The day was nice enough I was going to walk around the lake to see the Zepplin field but when I looked at the Park map and saw how far away it was, I ran for the tram and headed back into the city. I walked down one of the main stretches and ran into an alternative energy transportation festival. There were cool looking bicycles everywhere, lots of electric cars and weird prototypes of all shapes and sizes. And a dance troupe…but anyway…I walked up to one of the main churches and discovered not only was I there for the alternative energy transportation festival, I was also there the opening weekend of the Autumn festival which was HUGE, think Christmas market for the fall huge. Lots of stalls, lots of onion cake and rose wine and lots of tour buses. To my dismay there was no stall selling French fries, the closest was deep-fried cauliflower, so I thought I’d look at the historic things.
I was taking a picture of one of the churches when turning around I saw…LUSH!!! I just about died. So much for my historical Nuremberg self-tour. Lush is a great vegan Bath and Body Works kind of store that smells heavenly. I picked up a few things, lingered, and had awkward half English/half German conversations with the shop ladies (Best line: “If you need anything, just scream.”) By this time, I was getting hungry and realized it was 2PM. I found one of my favorite places from Frankfurt, Vapiano, was in Nuremberg so I stopped there. Unfortunately, I hit it at a peak time so it took forever to get my food (Vapiano only serves salad, pizza and pasta and you line up in the appropriate line to instruct the chef exactly how to make your dish and watch them make it). I stuck with my old standby of linguine carbanara and 25 minutes later after watching 10 other people’s lunches being made got mine. It was wonderful as usual.
Next off to Zara and Mango for some window shopping (why is poop brown THE color for this fall? Why? Why?) and then decided to go back to the train station to see when I could catch a train back to Augsburg. With an hour to kill until my fast train, I mossied around the Altstadt and wandered into the Australian Chocolate and Ice Cream place. They had fruit shakes but didn’t have any flavors so I asked in my best German if he could speak English. A little. He suggested I try in German and he answer in English. After about 10 seconds he said, “Never mind. What you want?” I told him I wanted to know what flavors and very slowly he walked me through “Welche fruchtshake haben Sie?” even though as soon as he said it I knew it (that darn “welche” always gets me). While my Erdbeer and Orange shake was being made, he asked me where I was from and in my best German explained that I lived in Augsburg but was originally from California. “WOW! A real California girl!” Oh dear. Thanks a lot, Katy Perry. He was super friendly after that and the fruit shake was amazing. So I headed back on the U-bahn to the train station.
I was exhausted from all the walking and the carbs and almost fell asleep in the train (walking up in Switerzland would have been funny, but not very practical). I hit all the tram lines such that walking home would be faster than waiting so I hobbled in at 7PM tired and smelling like my LUSH bag, but happy.
Now what to do next weekend?
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