In the jungle, the mighty jungle....

FINALLY caught a break!

I've been doing all kinds of traveling since the last post. There are at least 6 places I've been I can count off of the top of my head right now. BUT, I'll try to keep it consistent on here going stop by stop and post by post if necessary.

The last leg of the northern trip was a two night and single day stay in Munich.

The first night was very rainy, and we spent the majority of the night at outside in it at Oktoberfest. I was afraid to ruin my camera in the rain and left it in the hotel. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the whole experience. Most people think of it as a gigantic beer-fest where people dress in "lederhosen" suits, and sing drinking songs the whole time. It is, basically...but there's a lot more to it!

Here is a verbatim excerpt from a page on one of our itineraries detailing the history and activities of Oktoberfest:

"Every year, a big celebration takes place under the eyes of Ms. Bavaria, patron of Bavaria and the Oktoberfest, a huge female stone statue, which is celebrating her 153rd birthday this year (2006). The history of the Oktoberfest started with wedding bells and a horse race in October of the year 1810, four years after Bavaria became a kingdom, when crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria (who was to be King Ludwig I) married Princess Therese of Saxon-Hildburghausen. The official festivities lasted five days and included parades of riflemen, music, eating, and drinking. The festivities ended with a horse race held on a green which was situated in those days outside of city limits and named "Theresenwiese" (Theresa's Queen) in honor of the bride. Over the next years the horse race was repeated and the Oktoberfest, also called "Weisn" was born.

In 1811, an agricultural festival was added to the horse race, which ceased to be held after 1938. The festival, which takes place now every two years, has been a part of Oktoberfest up to this day. In the year 1818, the first carrousel was set up as well as a few beer counters.

But--this was only the beginning--in 1896 the first of the huge beer tents were built and still today only breweries from Munich are allowed to sell beer at Oktoberfest. The number of carrousels, swings and food bazaars also continued to increase, but due to bad circumstances there were years when Oktoberfest did not take place: during the French-German war, the cholera epidemic in 1873, and in the years of World War I and II.

But as time has passed, the attractions of Oktoberfest have continued to get more and more exotic, and the festival has become bigger and bigger. Today the festival is the biggest fair in the world and is thusly known worldwide. What's special and attractive about the Oktoberfest is its ability to combine a celebration for the locals and an international mega-event, a combination of traditions and high-tech new ideas, and influences.

The big opening celebration starts always with a folk march of approximately 7,500 participants through downtown Munich towards the Oktoberfest fairgrounds. This parade presents the diversity of traditions, folk-music, and folk-dance in Europe. There are costume groups from every Federal State in Germany; groups from Bulgaria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Ukraine.

Today Oktoberfest is a multinational festival that is visited by over 6.5 million people every year. In two weeks, they eat over 600,000 roast chickens and drink 5.8 million "mass" (1 liter) beers. Over 2.35 million kw hours of electricity are consumed and 59,000 cubic meters of water are used. The largest tent is the Hofbrautent with over 10,000 seats. All this is just to please the nearly 450,000 who visit every day for the 16 to 18 (depending on the 1st Sunday of Oct) days of its duration. The party, which is spread over 26 hectares (64 acres), also generates 877 tons of waste."

Everyone who went had a really great time...the carnival type funhouses and rides there were some of the most complex and thrilling I had ever experienced, and I definitely want to go back at some point in the future.

The next morning it was still very rainy, but we still as a group went out early to go see the concentration camp in Dachau. This is the location of the first-constructed concentration camp, meaning it was the prototype for which all further camps were modeled after. It was also the 2nd to be liberated by the US and British Allies in 1945, and was one of the critical sites that brought news of this kind of genocide to the Western world through newsreels and journalist writings.

Walking through the actual site brought things so much closer to heart and mind than what you read about in the textbooks and Night. I walked through a gas chamber "shower", stared at a crematorium not 4 feet away from me, and saw the very places where people had slept, ate, and were tested on so many years before. Much of the barracks have been collapsed and replaced by raised platforms signifying where they used to be in a large array down the camp. You can still see toward the end of the barrack area the trench they have preseved showing where prisoners attempting to escape or willingly commit suicide by gunfire would run toward the camp walls covered in barbed wire and sharp metals. Around the trenches were towers for the guards to snipe the desperate from. I felt very sick to my stomach by the time we had left the camp...it was a very overwhelming sight to take in and play out peoples actions in my imagination. I could literally see in my mind the things going on in real-time as I walked by respective buildings there.

Glad to return to a modern and safer reality, I spent the rest of my afternoon wandering around the city of Munich on my own.

Perhaps the most unique feature about the city is this...

A lion in a Lederhosen! But really... these statues are strewn about the city, all in different artistic interpretations. It's a lot like the hokie statues that once adorned the streets of blacksburg. (I hope they are still there when I get back...I heard they are leaving)

I didn't know much about the statues initially, but its a city-wide cooperation in which several artists contributed efforts to raise funds for a "Children in need" charity as I came to learn from this site promoting them. http://www.leo-parade.de
There you can find albums of every single lion in the city! It really brightened up everywhere you walked!

Here's a few other cool shots of the city...I'm not clear on any names or histories this time other then the Rauhaus-Glockenspiel. Even on that my knowledge is limited...I didn't spend much time with anyone who could share what it meant. It is the world's most famous glockenspiel attatched to the clock in New Town Hall. At certain times during the day, it depicts a marriage of key Bavarians, shows a joust in which the blue knight of Bavaria wins, and on the lower level of it many citizens are dancing. At the end, a golden bird pops out and chirps three times letting the audience know the show is over. I found this very neat modern art museum while there too, filled with art from someone who can paint pictures like it was taken from a photo, along with a bunch of other obscure art...very neat stuff.




ALMOST forgot...that night I went to Olympia Park to try and find the site of the terrorist attack of the Olympics in the 70's. I couldn't find a memorial, but I believe this college dorm (used to be a hotel) is where the attacks took place. While there I also got to see the stadiums they had used that year from the outside.





It feels good to be back!

Peace and Love 'till next post,

B Ezie