challenge them to arm wrestle. A good friend of ours from Dallas, Kay Williams, came up from hiking in France to party with us and even brought me a birthday cake with candles! She was able to dish dirt on everyone that Gary had left out last month in Scotland. (Remember, we CRAVE gossip and can’t repeat it to anyone, so we are safe. Email us all your secrets!) We also picked up our snail mail, which, because it was my birthday, was a great treat. We saw yodeling, alpine horn blowing, Bavarian dancing, musical woodchopping and sawing and slap dancing (a la National Lampoon’s ‘European Vacation’). Munich has it all.
After Munich, we toured the concentration camp at Dachau in a drizzling rain. I wasn’t prepared for the beauty of the area. Fall was creeping through the forest surrounding the camp, singling out tress to turn brilliant red and orange. Surprised to see such color, I realised I think of that era, and the Holocaust events in particular, in black and white. There is, however, a strange beauty as fog settles down over barbed wire, electric fencing and metal stakes, softening the edges of watchtowers, bunkhouses and chimneys and blurring colors. As we walked, chilled, over the gravel parade ground where roll call was taken twice daily, I was struck by the incongruity of such lovely scenery surrounding such an evil place. As I do when visiting historic places, I couldn’t help wondering how the people here 55 years ago thought and felt. I wondered if they would have noticed the colors of a day like this or at what point cold, hunger and disease move a person beyond aesthetic awareness.
ML overheard 3 American ladies discussing the horrors of the camp with the comment by one “It makes you want to never complain about anything ever again.” Moments later, the lady was complaining that “European toilets aren’t as good as what we have in America.”
We cruised the Rhine through autumn-colored, castle-topped hills to the town of Bacharach, to help them celebrate their annual winefest. Here you can visualise a small town’s homecoming parade with the lovely twist that people on the |
