the continuing adventures of jh and sheißer wilhelm
the germans seem to absolutely love that joke... will decided to call himself "sheißer wilhelm" (a play on the name "kaiser wilhelm" of wwi fame), and they laugh as if they haven't ever heard it before. it never fails! anyway, we were off to...
heidelberg. we slept in, and then left the apartment and went wandering. we bought some müllermilch from the local handelshof for breakfast and set out for the altstadt, german for "old town". the pedestrian district was really cool, lots of great little shops, and more hot girls than any place i've been short of sweden and possibly denmark (i couldn't not comment on it...people here are just so freaking good looking! like ron burgundy calibre good! like, everybody, come see how good they look!). and man, the record shops here are bumpin'! everything was expensive, but the breaks and other shit they had on vinyl were off the hook. if levin ever gets rich, he'll have to go on a european vinyl hunt. like whoa. we hiked up to heidelberg castle and enjoyed the view of the town and the valley across the river. it's one of the most beautiful places i've been. the scenery is amazing, everything is really old which means that it has at least some character, and the forests and small mountains surrounding the city nestle it away in its own little world. after chilling with gab and nico for a while, and climbing the scaffolding outside their 10 story building to take some pictures, we crashed yet again. other high points of the city: daring will to eat a 1kg tub of plain yogurt, will actually eating said yogurt in about a minute's time, buying 0.8kg of ravioli from handelshof for roughly 90 canadian cents, eating shockomüsli (chocolate muesli) for breakfast every day (25% chocolate, i kid you not. the last few spoonfuls were like chocolate chips in chocolate milk. awesome!), hiking up heilingenberg and playing frisbee in a giant nazi amphitheatre on the mountaintop, waking up at 6am every day because my circadian clock is now even more ass-backwards than when i was at home, and proving the customs officers wrong by surviving on roughly 6 euro per day (they said we'd need 45 euro per day. chumps...). two days of solid walking later, we were on our way to...
dresden. but funny story... the autobahn number 6, on account of some construction, turns into the autobahn number 81, and does so apparently without any signage whatsoever. so instead our story takes us a few hours in the other direction, to...
munich! the drive in was somewhat less than spectacular (we actually thought we'd entered north edmonton), but as soon as we hit the old town centre, we were fully and pleasantly surprised. we parked the car and wandered to a little park where we ate tuna straight from the can (it's the only way to go, really), read, listened to music, and dipped our legs in a fountain surrounding an entirely confusing statue of neptune, the sea god. we took a walk and spotted a car dealership that sold exclusively ferrari, lamborghini, maserati, and bentley. disgusting. and by that i mean that the cars were unreal nice... after that fun we slept in the car in a rest stop, and when we woke up we drive a few km to the nearby...
dachau. as i'd expected, it wasn't anything like i'd expected. dachau was the first nazi concentration camp set up prior to world war ii, and in the end served as a sort of hub for tranporting prisoners (though victims seems a more apt choice of word) between other camps, meaning that utlimately it was overcrowded to the point of health crisis. over 200,000 victims passed through dachau in the 12 years of its operation, and over 40,000 died there. the camp itself is huge, and relatively simple. jails, offices, barracks, watch towers, things like that. it was sobering, certainly, but the impression of what the camp stood for didn't really hit until i stepped from the cremation complex into the gas chamber. almost everything on site looked similar with the exception of that one room. i won't bother trying to describe it, because i won't do it justice, but suffice it to say that my body tried to cry and throw up at the same time. and the thing is that no matter how empathetic we might try to be, there's absolutely no way we can ever have an understanding of the horror those people went through. i experienced moments when i thought i could imagine it, but i don't think there's any way that i could genuinely come anywhere even close. it was disturbing in every sense of the word, but it's such a good thing that the camp still exists and that things have been documented in the depth and breadth that they have been. it's naive to hope so, but maybe the reminder will be enough that something similar will be prevented in the future, though recent decades in africa seem to indicate otherwise. if ever you get the chance, spend a day at one of the concentration camp sites. it won't be nice by any means, but i can promise that it'll be important.
the late afternoon brought humidity, and temperatures in the mid-30s, so we headed for the park. and i must say, the englischer garten in münchen is a park to be reckoned with! the place is absolutely huge, there's nice grass througout, lots of paths, trees, and benches to relax, and the uniquitous naked germans weren't even the best part!! i know, i don't really believe myself either! so what's so cool, you ask? there are a small series of canals that run throughout the park, the fastest of which runs at probably 20-ish km/h. kind of cool, yes. but we were wondering why there were people in wet bathing suits walking from where we parked (like 10 blocks from the park itself). well, naturally it was because you can ride the canals! the place is like a big waterpark! so we stripped down, and 5 or ten minutes later we were a few km away, freezing cold, soaking wet, and more pumped than ralph klein on oil revenues. we both tore the shit out of our feet on the canal's rocky floor, and sucked down more water than i'd ever voluntarily inhale in the "rapids" (they were small, but powerful!), but my goodness... FUN! after that we chilled near the calmer canal and took in the glory of the non-, partially-, and fully-naked germans everywhere. things there were incredibly chill, which was a nice end to what began as quite an intense day. ah, balance. after getting lost and almost running out of gas in a part of the city completely unknown to us, we were off again. the opel set a new landspeed record of 190 kph on a nice little downhill run, and we parked her in a rest stop for some overnight recovery. it's really quite funny how many germans sleep in their cars in rest stops overnight on the autobahn. we thought we were going to be breaking new frontiers, but alas, we're just some wet-behind-the-ears rest-stop amateurs, sleeping in a surprisingly comfortable opel meriva hatchback, thousands of miles from home. and yet somehow, right at home, still...
jh..
heidelberg. we slept in, and then left the apartment and went wandering. we bought some müllermilch from the local handelshof for breakfast and set out for the altstadt, german for "old town". the pedestrian district was really cool, lots of great little shops, and more hot girls than any place i've been short of sweden and possibly denmark (i couldn't not comment on it...people here are just so freaking good looking! like ron burgundy calibre good! like, everybody, come see how good they look!). and man, the record shops here are bumpin'! everything was expensive, but the breaks and other shit they had on vinyl were off the hook. if levin ever gets rich, he'll have to go on a european vinyl hunt. like whoa. we hiked up to heidelberg castle and enjoyed the view of the town and the valley across the river. it's one of the most beautiful places i've been. the scenery is amazing, everything is really old which means that it has at least some character, and the forests and small mountains surrounding the city nestle it away in its own little world. after chilling with gab and nico for a while, and climbing the scaffolding outside their 10 story building to take some pictures, we crashed yet again. other high points of the city: daring will to eat a 1kg tub of plain yogurt, will actually eating said yogurt in about a minute's time, buying 0.8kg of ravioli from handelshof for roughly 90 canadian cents, eating shockomüsli (chocolate muesli) for breakfast every day (25% chocolate, i kid you not. the last few spoonfuls were like chocolate chips in chocolate milk. awesome!), hiking up heilingenberg and playing frisbee in a giant nazi amphitheatre on the mountaintop, waking up at 6am every day because my circadian clock is now even more ass-backwards than when i was at home, and proving the customs officers wrong by surviving on roughly 6 euro per day (they said we'd need 45 euro per day. chumps...). two days of solid walking later, we were on our way to...
dresden. but funny story... the autobahn number 6, on account of some construction, turns into the autobahn number 81, and does so apparently without any signage whatsoever. so instead our story takes us a few hours in the other direction, to...
munich! the drive in was somewhat less than spectacular (we actually thought we'd entered north edmonton), but as soon as we hit the old town centre, we were fully and pleasantly surprised. we parked the car and wandered to a little park where we ate tuna straight from the can (it's the only way to go, really), read, listened to music, and dipped our legs in a fountain surrounding an entirely confusing statue of neptune, the sea god. we took a walk and spotted a car dealership that sold exclusively ferrari, lamborghini, maserati, and bentley. disgusting. and by that i mean that the cars were unreal nice... after that fun we slept in the car in a rest stop, and when we woke up we drive a few km to the nearby...
dachau. as i'd expected, it wasn't anything like i'd expected. dachau was the first nazi concentration camp set up prior to world war ii, and in the end served as a sort of hub for tranporting prisoners (though victims seems a more apt choice of word) between other camps, meaning that utlimately it was overcrowded to the point of health crisis. over 200,000 victims passed through dachau in the 12 years of its operation, and over 40,000 died there. the camp itself is huge, and relatively simple. jails, offices, barracks, watch towers, things like that. it was sobering, certainly, but the impression of what the camp stood for didn't really hit until i stepped from the cremation complex into the gas chamber. almost everything on site looked similar with the exception of that one room. i won't bother trying to describe it, because i won't do it justice, but suffice it to say that my body tried to cry and throw up at the same time. and the thing is that no matter how empathetic we might try to be, there's absolutely no way we can ever have an understanding of the horror those people went through. i experienced moments when i thought i could imagine it, but i don't think there's any way that i could genuinely come anywhere even close. it was disturbing in every sense of the word, but it's such a good thing that the camp still exists and that things have been documented in the depth and breadth that they have been. it's naive to hope so, but maybe the reminder will be enough that something similar will be prevented in the future, though recent decades in africa seem to indicate otherwise. if ever you get the chance, spend a day at one of the concentration camp sites. it won't be nice by any means, but i can promise that it'll be important.
the late afternoon brought humidity, and temperatures in the mid-30s, so we headed for the park. and i must say, the englischer garten in münchen is a park to be reckoned with! the place is absolutely huge, there's nice grass througout, lots of paths, trees, and benches to relax, and the uniquitous naked germans weren't even the best part!! i know, i don't really believe myself either! so what's so cool, you ask? there are a small series of canals that run throughout the park, the fastest of which runs at probably 20-ish km/h. kind of cool, yes. but we were wondering why there were people in wet bathing suits walking from where we parked (like 10 blocks from the park itself). well, naturally it was because you can ride the canals! the place is like a big waterpark! so we stripped down, and 5 or ten minutes later we were a few km away, freezing cold, soaking wet, and more pumped than ralph klein on oil revenues. we both tore the shit out of our feet on the canal's rocky floor, and sucked down more water than i'd ever voluntarily inhale in the "rapids" (they were small, but powerful!), but my goodness... FUN! after that we chilled near the calmer canal and took in the glory of the non-, partially-, and fully-naked germans everywhere. things there were incredibly chill, which was a nice end to what began as quite an intense day. ah, balance. after getting lost and almost running out of gas in a part of the city completely unknown to us, we were off again. the opel set a new landspeed record of 190 kph on a nice little downhill run, and we parked her in a rest stop for some overnight recovery. it's really quite funny how many germans sleep in their cars in rest stops overnight on the autobahn. we thought we were going to be breaking new frontiers, but alas, we're just some wet-behind-the-ears rest-stop amateurs, sleeping in a surprisingly comfortable opel meriva hatchback, thousands of miles from home. and yet somehow, right at home, still...
jh..
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