Day Fifteen

Home Again, Home Again

We had breakfast, loaded the buses, and got on our way to Frankfurt. It was pretty uneventful, until we were sitting around waiting for our flight. We were on the second floor, right next to a big glass partition that looked out over the main floor. All of a sudden I heard...bagpipes. I looked around to see if I was hallucinating; several other people also had quizzical looks, so I figured they heard them, too. I got up and looked around, and on the main floor was a piper in full regimental dress, playing for some men in uniform. It was like they knew I was going to be there.

I'd like to thank the following people for being such an integral part of my experience. These are the people without whom my trip would not have been the same, or even possible. They are:

my parents; the Hs; all the directors, especially Mr. Cole; Alex; Clive; Nathaniel and Jared; Josie and Nicole; the moms; Erich, Sven, and Cole; Heather, Jenna, Steven, Zach, Amy, Justin, and Cassie; and Amy, Liz, Sarah, Brian, Curtis, Jenna, Emily, and Sarah.

My life flows on in endless song
Above earth's lamentation
I hear the real though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation
Above the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

Day Fourteen

Rothenburg

We had a leisurely morning, and a bunch of us headed out to look for the Mittelalterliche Kriminalmuseum. We wandered into a fairly likely-looking building and went up a flight of stairs before we realized that it wasn't the museum. Since we were already there, though, we paid the two marks each to climb a steep little ladder up to the tower. From there we had a view of the whole city and the surrounding countryside.
After we actually got directions to the Kriminalmuseum we found our way there. In English they call it the museum of crime and torture. It was not really graphic or scary in its depiction of medieval (that's the mittelalterliche) punishments; the worst part was imagining having to wear the scold's bridle. I would gag. A scold's bridle is a kind of face-mask thing that they used to put on women to keep them from talking; it usually had a depressor that held the tongue down. The women who were sentenced to wear a bridle had talked when men thought they shouldn't have, or said things that men thought they shouldn't have. I also liked the ducking stool they had outside.

Rothenburg has several year-round Christmas stores, though I'm not sure why. I went in some of them to look around. They were like little Christmas theme parks. There was tons of cotton-batting-snow and lights and fake trees. Most of the ornaments were arranged by color, so you'd go into a section and there would be a whole wall of red glass balls and spindles and stars, then a whole wall of blue ones, and so on. It was pretty crowded, and most of the ornaments struck me as expensive (and fragile and difficult to pack), but then I saw it: a brown and gold glass ball for seven marks. I had to get it. How could I not?

Looking into the Marktplatz. In the building just right of center is a clock that reenacts an event when the mayor saved the city by drinking beer.

We went back to the hotel to get changed for our final concert, in the Marktplatz. It was raining sporadically, but the band played on. Before the concert, though, our special visitors showed up. Two of our classmates from school happened to be in Germany on a separate trip, and we'd told them when our concert was, so they showed up with their German host. We ended up going to a German/Italian restaurant with them, where they spoke lots of German and we felt dumb. I got bratwurst with sauerkraut, and E taught us how to flip a coaster (actual coaster from the restaurant scanned at right). We went back to the hotel and hung out for a while, and then they had to go. It was unexpectedly fun.

After dinner we went on the Nightwatchman's tour of the city. You may remember that around Christmas this past December I posted an entry about how I saw our nightwatchman on TV. His black cape and the evening hours made the city seem so much older and more mysterious. It was really cool.

Finally, we had our end-of-the-trip meeting. Our head director talked to us for a while, and some of the other directors did as well. Then they let any of us who wanted to talk. I don't remember who spoke, except for one of the crew. He got up and talked about how good the trip was, and how he was sorry if we annoyed anyone, and how the back of the bus ruled. My journal says that "We all cheered for him because he is one of us." We took lots of pictures and said goodbye to friends.

Tomorrow: a special send-off at Frankfurt airport and thanks

Day Thirteen

Germany Past

We loaded up and left Seefeld after breakfast. It was around 11 when we reached Dachau. Dachau was one of the concentration camps in which prisoners were held by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In 1945, my grandfather was present at the camp's liberation. My family has pictures that he took then of bodies stacked in railroad cars. Going there was even more important for me because of the history and because my grandfather had been there 55 years before.

The gates to the camp still stand, and still read "Arbeit macht frei." The first building you enter is set up most like a museum. There are pictures of important events, a basic history of the camp, and posters and things like that, but all of the tags are in German. There was one room off to the side that was filled with wreaths and memorials and markers that visitors had left in honor of the victims and the liberators. That room made me cry. One wreath had a ribbon that said "Ils ont brisé nos chaînes"--they have broken our chains. That sentiment in particular really touches me, even today.

Many of the original buildings were pulled down, some by the Allies after liberation. There remain some guardhouses, two barracks buildings, and the crematoria. There are also a few memorial chapels, built since the camp closed. It's a little frightening to walk through the crematoria, one of which has a gas chamber in the same building. Outside the crematoria are two large plots where ashes were buried. One is marked with a menorah, the other with a cross, and both "Grave of thousands unknown."

One barracks building is set up as it would have been at the beginning of the war, when there weren't as many prisoners. It wasn't that bad, relatively speaking. But the barracks from nearer the end of the war didn't have beds; it just had shelves stacked up three high.

There is an international memorial at the resting place of the Ashes of an Unknown Prisoner. In different languages it says "Never Again."

When we left Dachau and were on the bus on our way to lunch, some of my friends were wondering why we had visited a concentration camp. I could not begin to explain to them why it was important that we took time from our fun to remember the suffering of millions of people, of entire countries. It enrages me that there are people who actually have the nerve to deny that the Holocaust happened. That's why we went, because those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. Because we should never take our blessings and liberties for granted, and because the people who died in these camps deserve to be remembered.

From lunch it was back on the bus and on to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Rothenburg dates from the 13th century, and is (fanfare please) a walled city. I don't know if it could be any cooler if it tried. During World War II part of the wall was destroyed, but it was rebuilt after the war ended, with donations from around the world. The oldest part of the town is inside the wall; that's where our hotel was. After dinner I walked on the wall with one of the other kids from school.

The walls are several feet thick, and in some of the rebuilt sections there are plaques with the names and messages from people who donated to the rebuilding. The wall doesn't go all the way around the town; there are places where you have to descend and walk a little on the street before climbing up on the wall again. At one of these points we were about to go down through the tower when my friend, who was ahead of me, yelled and jumped back. That reaction in turn startled me. It turned out that a cat had run through the tower, but the blur of movement in the dark was enough to freak us out. We were able to psych ourselves up enough to run down the stairs and outside the wall and walked through the moat for a while. Then we met up with some of the others, and we managed to get back to the hotel without getting lost.
Tomorrow: crime and punishment, Christmas in July, our last concert, visitors from afar, the nightwatchman, and testimonials

Nightwatchman

In Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany, you can take a tour of the city guided by a nightwatchman. He's dressed in black and carries a lantern and a halberd and talks about the history of the walled city, from medieval times to modern, when parts of the wall were destroyed by bombing during World War II. The tour is very interesting, and the city itself is the definition of picturesque.* This Christmas day I saw a short piece on some news program about holiday traditions around the world, and that evening's featured location was... Rothenburg! And they interviewed the same nightwatchman who led us on the tour seven and a half years ago. Quelle coincidence. It was great. I like seeing places I've been on TV or movies, even though it often makes me want to go back, and even though I tend to say "I've been there!" probably to the annoyance of my fellow viewers. Hurrah for a flashback to my treasured past. Here's a picture of the nightwatchman looking bemused by two of my compatriots.

If I knew how to say "Merry Christmas" in German I would. Failing that, merry Christmas, and happy travels into the New Year!

*The modern definition, that is, not the more exact 19th century definition, as in Jane Austen's novels.