I looked for a couchsurfing host in Munich because even hostels were too expensive at this time of year, and I was ready to get a taste of the couchsurfing spirit. I couldn't find any hosts in town for the holidays, so I posted my request as a public trip. A woman named Sarah wrote to me expressing that she and her family would be out of town for the duration of the holidays, but that she would be happy for me to stay at her apartment as long as I help take care of her cat, Christinith. She said that her neighbors would give me the key when I arrived, and asked if it was ok that another couchsurfer stay at the same time. I was a mildly nervous at the prospect of a solo male couchsurfer because of my experience in Hamburg, but Sarah said he had stayed with her family before and that she totally trusted him. I was taken aback by the generosity of this family, and their incredible trust in couchsurfer-kind to let a total stranger stay at her flat while they were out of town.
I arrived at 4, as scheduled. The neighbors didn't appear to be home, apparently they were expecting me at 5:00. I sat outside the door in the hallway with my huge backpack, writing my Prague blog and waiting until 5:15 for the neighbors to arrive. Finally I decided to go find wifi so I could message them to ask when they'd be home. I walked with my backpack to a restaurant down the street, and asked the waiter for the wifi password. He said he'd give it to me if I sat down and ordered; a fair bargain. I sat down, observing only two couples were present at the restaurant. I eyeballed the waiter for ten minutes before he brought me a menu. I waited another ten minutes for him to come back and take my order. I asked for a beer, having heard that Bavarian beers are the best and knowing that once I got in touch with the neighbor, I wouldn't want to wait much longer to meet them. I thought maybe I'd come back later for dinner because the prices were good and it was so close to the flat. Ten minutes later, the waiter brought me the wifi password. I got in touch with the neighbors, who said they just arrived at home and we're ready for me. I didn't want to be rude or betray my end of the bargain, so I waited another ten minutes for the beer. Finally, I got up and put on my backpack. I said to the waiter, "I've been here 40 minutes and asked for a beer 20 minutes ago; it doesn't take that long to pour a drink. I'm sorry but I have to leave now." He grumbled something at me in German, but I headed out anyway. When I knocked, the neighbor immediately opened the door and showed me where I would stay. I settled in, then went out to a different nearby restaurant for dinner before going to bed.
The next day I met up with Eleri (the awesome Welsh girl I met in Prague), and we went out for the day on a free city tour. We were told that Munich is a city founded by monks, and there are pictographs of monks hidden all over the city- on top of town hall, on the side of the trams, on the manhole covers, blended into the sides of buildings. We saw a plethora of churches and outdoor art installations. We saw the plaza where the nazis used to gather in masses to hear Hitler speak, which I recognized from pictures and films of the rallies. We saw the plaza where Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass which is considered the start of the Jewish holocaust, was instigated. We saw old nazi buildings that have been repurposed for more lighthearted things, such as a toy museum with the worlds biggest Barbie collection.
After the tour, our guide recommended us a place to eat and suggested the dish we get. She told us we would be full of we shared a small size, so that's what we ordered. The waiter was outraged, exclaiming "that's it!?"
"We'll order more if we're still hungry," we explained, and he walked off with a huff. The meal was delicious. We ordered kasespatzl, which is like mac & cheese only way better, and it came with salad. We were stuffed, and asked for the bill. Shockingly, we were each charged €3.20 for tap water from the sink!! We brought it up to the waiter and he said bluntly with a malicious grin, "welcome to Munich." Later I was told by my friend Till, who studies water conservancy in Germany that there's a law which ensures sink water always be served free of charge. He told me that if that ever happens to me again, I should refuse to pay. As you read in my Prague blog, Eleri is not a pushover about getting charged absurd fees, but neither of us knew whether it was legal, so we paid.
The previous week in Prague, it came up in conversation with Eleri that I had taken a piercing workshop in San Francisco, and she suggested that I pierce her ear at some point. I told her I didn't have the proper equipment, but she had a sewing needle, determination, and a brave heart. She bought an earring, and that night we set to it. I sanitized the needle and her ear as I had learned, iced her earlobe, put on fresh latex gloves and the whole deal. I pushed the needle through her ear on the exhale of a combined deep breath, but couldn't quite push it all the way through. Right at this moment, the other couchsurfer arrived. Nick is a 60 year old absolute badass from Australia, who has been traveling for seven years straight as he pursues his love of photography. I was concerned about his first impression of us, finding me needle deep in her earlobe, but he was totally cool about it and greeted us warmly. When I had trouble pushing the needle through he even offered to help, and he finished the job of piercing Eleri's ear. We all hung out and talked for a bit before Eleri had to go catch her bus to Austria, and I went to bed.
My friend Till whom I met in Berlin arrived in Munich the next day. We enjoyed Bavarian cuisine and beers, and I showed him what I knew of Munich so far. He was especially interested in window shopping in this wealthy city, so we took a long, slow walk down the pedestrian street with the ridiculously expensive merchandise. He oohed and ahhed over the silver dish sets, diamond studded watches, and all sorts of jewelry. I practiced my patience. Upon spotting an art gallery, I asked if he was interested in art, which unbeknownst to him is one of my primary interests. He responded that he's more interested in high-end art thieves, and I had a good laugh. We checked out a beautiful church called Saint Michael's and another called Saint Peter's Basilica before going to the top of the city hall to see the panorama view. After he left, I had dinner with Nick. We talked about everything under the sun from our experiences traveling to American politics to spirituality. The conversation was very eye opening and inspiring. I felt great joy for this reality I've created which allows me to meet incredible people with such different perspectives on life.
The next day I decided it was time to go back on couchsurfing.com and report my travel companion in Hamburg for his bad behavior. I've been thinking about it for the whole month since it happened, going back and forth about what I wanted to do. I was nervous to leave him a negative public review on the website, because I figured the chances were high that he would slander me, making it impossible for me to find couchsurfing hosts in the future. I knew I could report him as being dangerous or inappropriate to the administrators of the website, but I had reservations about it. He's been hosting couchsurfers for years, and the way he described it, his social life relies heavily on it. He told me that he doesn't get along with many people. I think it's easy for him to make connections through this medium because his couchsurfers depend on and are indebted to him. I didn't want the weight of him losing his social life on my conscience. But more than that, I couldn't stand the idea of another woman being hurt by him because I didn't do anything. First, I wrote to the other women who left public negative reviews on his page, asking about the extent of his bad behavior to know whether this is something he's done before. One wrote back about her experience with him being horrible and traumatic, but that she had been embarrassed to post all of the details on the website. This was enough for me. I wrote to the administration and told them exactly what happened. Within hours they wrote back to me, and told me they banned him from the website after reading my testimonial. I haven't heard from him since and hope he doesn't know I had anything to do with his removal from the site, but even if he emails me with something nasty, I know I did the right thing to protect other women from his hideousness.
After I got that off my chest, I took a long walk around town. I went to see the glockenspiel, which is a very old mechanical show on the clock tower of the city hall. Instead of the glockenspiel playing though, there was a Christmas concert complete with a children's choir, an old fashioned group of Bavarian men singing, and a harp player. I had dinner at a famous local brewery, then walked to the spectacular Asam's church and sat in on a German sermon just so I could take in the stunning art and architecture around me.
The next day I woke up early to go out to the Dachau concentration camp memorial. At the main train station before I left Munich I was approached by a wide-eyed, clean-cut man who started raving to me in German. The only words I recognized of his heated monologue were "Adolf Hitler," "Heil Hitler," and "Speig Heil." I had heard about skinheads sometimes hanging out around the concentration camps to intimidate people, but I was 90 minutes away from the camp, still in the heart of Munich. I wasn't wearing a Magen David around my neck or a kippah on my head; I have no idea why he chose to pick on me. As his face turned red and he got closer to me, spewing his German hate speech, I tried to look bored and turned to the couple next to me.
"Sprechen zie English?" I asked them.
"Yes, we only speak English and Russian. Are you okay?" They looked concerned.
"I'm okay. Do you understand what this guy is saying?"
"Only the obvious. Do you know him?"
"Definitely not. Do you think he's dangerous?"
"I think it's just talk."
"Ok. So, where are you from?"
After a few minutes of conversation with this couple, the Neo-nazi got bored of me ignoring him and moved on.
I took the train, a tram and a bus for an hour and a half total to get to Dachau. I planned to go to Auschwitz during my travels because I had family there, but I'm unsure whether I'll make it to Poland. It felt important to me to see a camp while in Europe, to contextualize my understanding of the holocaust based on school, the stories I've heard from living survivors, and the 50 books I read about it by the age of 10 years old. When I was a child, I was nearly obsessed with studying the holocaust. I had read many accounts of life and death at Dachau, so I arrived with some expectations of how it would be.
My friends who have visited concentration camps before me described the grounds as being eerily vacant of life. I saw plenty of birds as I approached the entrance, so I figured my friends were exaggerating. But when I entered the camp, everything fell silent. Not a bird could be seen perched on the trees or flying above. Only a few buildings of the former camp remain, the rest has been torn down and filled in with plots of gravel. What remains is the seven guard towers, the SS headquarter building which has been turned into a museum, a bungalow that held "special prisoners" (mostly political opponents of the third reich and pastors who protested), a bungalow that served as living quarters for Jewish people, the crematorium and gas chamber.
I found that the exhibits described in great detail the individual Christians who were detained, while the Jewish people were reduced to mostly six-figure numbers. There are three Christian monuments on the site, and one Jewish. The garden where the ashes scooped out of the crematorium were buried was garnished with crosses. It was an odd and unsettling experience. I could clearly envision what I read about the camp, especially when standing in front of a wall pockmarked with bullet holes uphill from a ditch which was meant to collect blood as the bodies dropped. Despite the grimness of the environment, it was a beautiful day as the sun peeked through clouds and patches of blue sky brightened up the grayness around me.
I went back to Munich and had a nice dinner with Nick before heading to the train station to pick up Steffen (my friend from Leipzig) who was visiting for the weekend. The next day Steffen and I took the train two hours out to see the Neuschwanstein castle, on which Sleeping Beauty's Disney castle was based. The castle is beautiful and even though the tour was rushed, it was fun to see the extravagance inside. My favorite part was standing on the balcony after the tour and watching the sun set over the Alps, which are even more spectacular than the castle. The next day I would head to Innsbruck, a small Austrian town nestled within this same spectacular mountain range.