Finally Friends!!!!

Here they come to save the day! We are sooo excited our friends, the Bono’s, joined us on this part of our journey! As we made our way from Rothenberg, we ventured to Munich, where we were accompanied by some of our closest friends. The kiddos finally had some friends to chat with, which made them super excited as well.

Of course, the Euros were going on in Munich that day, and France was playing Spain in the semi-finals. We had to check and see if there were tickets available. Boom!!! There were, and Jeff, Jen and I went to the game.

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This was a crazy interesting experience for me. While they were screaming excitedly in German over the loud speakers to pump up the crowd, doing the intros and the play-by-play, I couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy/weird. Perhaps I have seen too many WWII movies.

Jen is some sort of sleep god wizard because she went to the game and stayed up the entire time and wasn’t even crabby, despite having minimal to no sleep since before her flight left Oklahoma. However, we did get a red card from the ref.

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Chris was a super planner and made sure we had some group activities planned. This is something Jeff and I don’t typically do. We are more fly by the seat of our pants kind of people and like to randomly discover places. However, with a city like Munich, there is so much to do that having some sort of coordination is good with 8 people. Here was our list:

– Uplifting tour and trip to the Dachau Concentration Camp
– Tummy filling food tour
– Not-so-scary ghost tour

The Concentration Camp was by far the most educational. Our tour guide did an excellent job of explaining the horrific acts of this particular camp, and some things absolutely shocked me. Dachau was the first concentration camp established. Most of the occupants here were German Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, other political opponents of the Nazi regime, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), gay men, Jews and criminal offenders.

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I had previously, highly ignorantly, thought concentration camps were just for the Jewish population. This particular camp had roughly 25% Jewish inmates. The above is a list of the different identifying symbols placed on all inmates. Each color and symbol represent different populations. Apparently, prisoners were given different rankings, and sometimes prisoners actually controlled other prisoners.

The other interesting note was how the Soviets significantly helped in the winning of the war. They lost an estimated 3.3 Million Soviet POWs in camps. They also lost roughly 24-27 million people during the war. Clearly this was a war of attrition, and Russia significantly helped to wear down the Germans. Roughly 418,000 Americans died by contrast. The rabbit hole is deep and fascinating. I would encourage everyone to just do a little more research on the global dynamics of this horrific war.

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On to some positive stuff! We ventured the next day on our food tour where we played German drinking games and tasted pizza ice cream. Yes, the pizza ice cream was disgusting. It was basically oregano in cream, cold. We have determined Germany has quite the limited selection of food. Sausages, schnitzel, beer and pork knuckle. To add variety to the menu, some restaurants would say pork shoulder instead of pork knuckle. The Italian food was good though. In Munich, there was a lot of Italian food given its proximity, and it was excellent.

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Our food tour expert, the one who took us to get Pizza Ice Cream, kept asking if we had been yelled at by the local Germans. We stated several times that we hadn’t, and she was surprised. She said that Germans give a “German Stare” when they see someone not following the rules properly, something unwitting tourists do frequently.

I am not making this shit up. She said, as an example, if we use the wrong mustard (sweet vs savory) on a particular sausage, we might encounter a German stare. She said if we encounter one not to stare directly back, or it will be considered rude. I felt like this was a challenge and was excited to give a St. Louis American stare at a German stare, but sadly this never happened. Actually, we felt quite welcomed by the locals, and all were very kind.

My favorite part of Germany in terms of culture was the driving. They follow the rules!!!! Yes, they go fast on the highway but they use blinkers, nobody drives slow in the left lane, trucks emphatically stay on the right, hazard lights are put on when there is an abrupt slow down (this is a great idea), directions are clear, and they see and stay in the fucking lines. Italians don’t see lines!!!! I literally don’t know why they even have them. Side note: driving all through Germany, I saw 1 accident the entire time. Driving through Italy, first day, saw 3.

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We headed to another German Gem, and that was the famous Neushcheidnln Castle. Just kidding, it’s the Neuschlender Castle. I mean Nuestlender Castle. Ok, I must spell check it, it is the Neuschwanstein castle. I wasn’t even close. I was genuinely trying to spell it, and those were my attempts.

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This castle was built by good-old Ludwig who was in love with this piano guy (Richard Wagner), who seems to never have requited his love. He kept building castles to get piano man to hang out with him, but alas it didn’t work out. Poor, rich, lonely Ludwig never was able to see the final version of this castle, but I have to say, this hopeless romantic sure knew how to build them. This place of the N-Castle was impeccable. Ludwig loved copying the French and mimicked Versailles in his summer home. Particularly the Petit Trianon. We next moved on to Gottlieben.