Europe, 1993. One of six cities on a two week trip. The kind of vacation you take in your twenties, when you have very little money to spend, but you don't care. You are going for the experience, not the luxury.
First stop, Paris. It's early Sunday morning and we've just arrived. There is nothing open, and we are starving. We head out to find food and the only thing available is some round balls that look like goiters and grape leaves. I am still starving because there is some stuff I just won't touch.
There is so much to see and experience in this city, and we do much of it. Truthfully though, the thing I want to see most is my childhood idol. I am on a mission to see Jim Morrison's grave. As we dragged our duffel bags uphill through Pere Lachaise cemetery, through the messages etched into other's tombstones stating things like "This way to the Lizard King," I was fascinated. And when we approached, I was floored.
The site was surrounded by mourners. Kids who reeked of patchouli and tears streaming down their faces. Music playing from their boom boxes, and a guard standing by ensuring no one stole the Morrison head that graced the tomb. Not at all what I was expecting - it was so much better. Turns out hauling bags up a hill didn't disappoint. It was like the scene out of a bizarre movie, and it was fantastic.
From there, we took the train from country to country. And while it started eventfully in France, it ended more memorably in Germany. Munich, specifically.
One can either assume it incredibly poor planning, or rather brilliant, to plan a trip to visit the concentration camp at Dachau on the same day you are planning to hit Oktoberfest. The morning proved to be one of the most moving, horrifying and memorable experiences of my entire life. Nothing you learn in a text book or see in a movie could have prepared me for what I saw and felt. It still haunts me over twenty years later.
We were so depressed after leaving that site, it seemed natural to drink the dread of the morning away in the chaos of a beer garden. It's one thing to take part in Oktoberfest in the U.S., where you get tickets for a couple of pints of brew and stand around freezing with a bunch of your buddies while laughing at those who come dressed to play in lederhosen. Oktoberfest - the real one - was incredible. Even for a girl who isn't a beer drinker.
From the beer tents, to the incredibly strong frauleins who haul multiple liters of beers per hand, this was an unbelievable atmosphere; like a three ring circus of barley. And after a few hours of beer sampling and watching hysterical Japanese patrons take pictures of everything, it was clearly time to call it a day.
And as we sprinted all wobbly down the street in desperate need of a bathroom - those beers were HUGE - we became hysterical, laughing as we approached the lousy hotel we were staying at. Some idiots had hung their laundry outside their window, and there were underwear and bras blowing in the breeze like colorful tiny flags. Perhaps it was the beer that made this seem so funny, but it seemed so stupidly…American. We cackled all the way to the hotel, until, of course, we realized those idiots were us.
Oops.
I heart Europe.
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