Munich

I left Prague with full-blown tourist shame, having capitulated and eaten Burger King at the train station.  Not to be out-American-ed, however, Jordan ate two meals at McDonald's the day we arrived in Munich, where he ordered this:

AMURICAH

Along with our roommates Matt--a fellow Vancouverite-- and two Dutchmen improbably named Maurice and Bob, we headed out to see Munich's nightlife.  "It's a dancing club?" Maurice asked the taxi driver eagerly.

"Yeah," replied the cabbie.  "Deesco!  Deesco!"

Apparently, the Munich cuckoo clock is the officially the
second most overrated tourist attraction in Europe
(behind the astrological clock in Prague)

And while the club was cramped and sweaty, it also served beer in glass mugs, and played "Two Princes" by Spin Doctors... AND TOTALLY REDEEMED ITSELF.

The next day, we did a walking tour of Munich with a British guide named Marcin.  Marcin was garrulous and funny, although he did occasionally make comments that seemed to allude to very depressing larger undercurrents, such as when he mentioned his life as a poor musician, or how his students used to make fun of him when he was a teacher, or the fact that he had stopped drinking a month and a half ago...

It's not the new millenium, it's the new MAXIMILIANEUM

Despite this, the tour was very informative.  At times too informative, such as when Marcin was describing the famous Hofbraühaus beer house, and spent nearly 15 minutes vividly recalling the history of urination there, which allegedly included opening your lederhosen and peeing all over your friends' legs, or into open gutters that ran across the floor.

Several of the ladies in the group could be seen cringing as Marcin got into a not-so-oblique discussion of the mechanics of "splashback"...

Sorry, I had promised to make this entry less scatalogical.

Besides delicious sausages (hey guys, enough with the jokes), Munich is also the wondrous land of one-liter beers, effectively upping the ante on Prague, and we both left the city with several liters of beer in our stomachs, as well as plenty of sausage (come on guys, I said enough with the jokes!).

The next day, Jordan and I headed out to Hohenschuangau to see Neuschwanstein Castle, the famous, ridiculously picturesque castle in which King Ludwig II went into reclusion, and on which Walt Disney apparently modeled his design for the Disney castle.

Though Jordan wasn't terribly impressed...

And surveying the staggering mist-shouldered mountains, the vast, running expanses of pastoral greenery, the vivid icy-blue lakes, and the mountain flowers gently blowing on the woodland hillsides, it was easy to see why this was the homeland of fairytales; easy to see how they could have once believed in magic--

AND THEN WE CLIMBED A FUCKING MOUNTAIN

We decided to hike a little ways up the mountain opposite the castle to get a better view of it.  But each time we thought we saw the summit, we arrived there only to found more mountain laying ahead of us, like some sort of mountainous Escher staircase.  But all the hikers coming the other way did not seem very tired, and they included little girls in sandals and great fat tourists, so we figured, "Hey, if Pit Stains over there can climb up and back, surely two lumberjackian lads such as ourselves shall have not the merest difficulty!"

So we kept climbing... 

and climbing...

and climbing.

And over three hours later, we reached the summit.  Which was 1707 meters high.

Which made us feel like--

Until we got "dinner" at the mountaintop restaurant--

--which seemed paltry recompense for our inspirational conquest of nature.  Once at the top, we realized that the train of hikers we had seen breezily going the other way had taken the gondola to the top of the mountain before leisurely strolling down.

The next day (legs aching), we went to Dachau.

Descending from the idyllic fairy-tale heights of Ludwig’s sylvan retreat to the death-stained campgrounds of Dachau feels like a powerful metaphor about the nature of man that I don’t feel pretentious enough to decipher or philosophize about.

According to Marcin, over 75% of Munich was destroyed during the bombings of World War II.  Knowing it was destined to be destroyed, Hitler ordered teams of thousands of photographers to chronicle every last inch of the city, down to the smallest detail, so that it could be rebuilt after the war.  Amazingly, 67 years later, the city is still being rebuilt; scaffolding spans the walls of the royal palace, and construction cranes litter the city skyline. 

It's at times like this that I begin to fully grasp Faulkner's quote, "The past is not dead.  In fact, it's not even past."