Oktober Noch Einmal.

Second time in Oktoberfest and it's open season as usual. This year the pretzels managed to grab first stage, the weather was temperamental and the roller-coasters particularly dizzying. Some tents were explored, more nooks pried, less slimy-slippery tarmac traversed.
Why is it though that a hysterically funny night with a wandering Finn and a temporary baker, in utterly inappropriate clothing at a small local bar with only five more people watching the telly, sticks out in my recent memory and how does that reflect on my Mass drinking prowess, I do not know. And I care even less frankly.

Noch Ein Mass Bitte!

There's a little round tent with a colourful, childlike till at the front. A smiling middle-aged lady in a dirndl gives away tiny tickets and before you know it you've entered a place of fairy-tales. With a twist. The round, spinning stage is where men box out of balance, girls try to dodge lassos and swinging mothballs and couples cling onto each other as they flee towards the barriers. The crowd is rowdy and the MC drunk beyond tact.

This is the theme park with the traditional Bavarian games and more modern roller-coasters of Oktoberfest. The big party of course is in the "tents", huge structures of distinct breweries where bands play intermittently and songs ring out constantly, all to the rhythm of an endless flow of beer and roast chickens. Smiling and blushed face all round, smalltalk, dance and singalong, passionate kisses and endless toasts to "Gemütlichkeit" and your head is spinning! You have to wear your lederhosen or your dirndl to feel comfy but other than that it feels like the party of the year without an effort. Ein prosit once more!

"Hunting Zebras"*.

Only 30 minutes outside of Munich lies the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. The place of the first Concentration Camp of the Nazi regime, opened within months of seizing power in 1933, and eventually serving as the prototype of the huge expansion of the C.C. network after 1937-8 throughout the Reich and occupied territories. It was the beginning of an unimaginable plan of incarceration, forced labour, torture and eventual extermination of more than 2 million political opponents, POWs, homosexuals, "asocials" and "workshy", Jews, Roma and Sinti and "special prisoners".

It would be impossible to do it justice in a few lines here, even to attempt condensing the feeling of walking under the gate, around the (reconstructed) barracks, inside the Crematorium and the infamous Bunker. The spotless snow blanketing over the compound gave it an even more profound sense of desolation and otherworldliness. More importantly, I found myself utterly unprepared for such an experience despite my homework. And unfortunately there are more than a few more such sites to be visited to get an order of magnitude of the genocide.

* "Hunting Zebras" was the euphemism used by the SS while hunting down and executing the escaped (stripe-suited) prisoners during the infamous "Death Marches", the forced marches of thousands of emaciated Camp prisoners out of the soon-to-be abandoned Concentration Camps at the final stages of WW2.

Snow, Gluewein and Friends.

I found myself in Munich to see two good friends from warmer climates and I finally met the snow I was so longing for. The city was blanketed, frozen and cheerful. Munich is all about the markets at Christmas. Fruits, sweets and sausages, toys, pottery and decorations. The streets were surprisingly busy for such a cold weather and the chiming church bells were giving the rhythm. It sound kind of corny, I know, but when you're there you sort of tune in. It's hard not to.
But the whole point of the visit was Norbet and Monica. The mulled wine was flowing and every part of the body was wooden stiff. Except the face of course, kept warm from the constant smiling, laughing and joy of being with people we love.