Wiesn

This afternoon some of my colleagues headed to a beer garden (in Harlem of all places, but I digress) to celebrate the beautiful fall weather.  And me?  I had to stay in my office.  Working.  I thought about them drinking steins of beer while I made corrections to a client presentation.  Sigh.  

But, really, I shouldn't complain that I missed one outing to a bier garten.  Because I once had the pleasure of going to the ultimate beer party.  Oktoberfest, aka Wiesn, in Munich Germany.  And while I would certainly have loved to raise a stein of beer today, I had my fair share (or maybe more than, but let's not discuss that) of prost-ing with friends during Wiesen.  

And, despite the piles of work, I thought tonight I would dig out a handful of Wiesn photos to share and to remind me of some of the good times I've had.  

And yes, those hot dogs are a meter long.  There's no "foot-long" dog in Germany.  Metric system.  That, and the Germans are really serious about their sausage.  I just don't recommend going on the rides after eating one. 

(Oktoberfest, photographed October 2008)

Dachau

My book club selected two books on Nazi Germany to read this month - the Book Thief and Maus.  I would recommend both wholeheartedly to anyone looking for something new to read.  But I'm not here to recommend books, and that's certainly not why you look at this blog.  No, I mention these books because they made me want to share these photos with you.

The Book Thief is set in a town outside of Dachau, and I felt particularly moved when I read of the long marches of Jewish prisoners headed to Dachau in that book, because, you see, I had visited Dachau when I was in Germany for work a couple years ago.

According to Wikipedia, Dachau concentration camp was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich.  It opened in March 1933 as the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazis and served as a model for other concentration camps that followed.  It's not clear how many individuals passed through and suffered at Dachau, but one source estimates that over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were here, of whom two-thirds were political prisoners and nearly one-third were Jewish.  Over 25,000 prisoners died here, with another 10,000 dying in subcamps established at satellite locations.  The number of deaths only increased as, toward the end of war, death marches to and from the camp weakened and killed scores of prisoners. 

Most of the buildings don't exist on the grounds anymore.  You can just see the gravel filled outlines of the buildings' footprints.  Skeletons whispering of the enormity of what happened.

 As is patently obvious from these pictures, it was a beautiful day. An oddly, strangely beautiful day to visit a location where such terrible atrocities were committed. The sky was bright blue, dotted with soft and puffy clouds. The weather was mild, neither too hot nor too cold. I couldn't believe how lovely it was. But it really made me think. There had to be beautiful days when Dachau was being used for things-too-terrible-to-write. Days when you couldn't believe how nice it was when terrible things happened in the world.

If you want to know anything more about these particular photos and what they show, please ask.

(Dachau, photographed July 2008)

And Round We Go

My friend Heather said she likes my blog but she's detecting a theme so far.  Lest you think that I'm a crazy cat lady who takes only photos of flowers, I present to you these photos from when I first met Heather, which so happened to be on a ferris wheel for Munich's 850th birthday celebration.  Don't you meet all your friends that way? I'll leave it to her to tell you the story about how she invited herself to Salzburg the next day (she tells it much better than me as I learned last night).

(Munich Ferris Wheel, photographed July 2008)