Day 21 – Sobering

We went to Dachau today. Everyone knows at least something about it. To see the scale of it, the scale of the depravity is awful. It’s a place where it just doesn’t seem right to smile, laugh or be happy, there’s some heavy weight, the spirit of the murdered perhaps, the shocking recognition of our capacity for evil, preventing one from doing so. Nobody’s taking selfies in Dachau. People move about slowly, silently, pensively, avoiding eye contact. The US troops were wise to force the locals to see Dachau – no one would ever have believed it otherwise.

We left the train from Dachau at Marietz Platz and rose up out of the subway into the seething mass of New Year’s eve revelers – sucking lungs full of refreshingly cold Dachau free air. It was only five but the Platz held a good crowd already. Our receptionist smiled and said ‘I’ll try’ when we asked for a dinner reservation earlier – no luck – so we thought we’d give an early pub dinner a try.

Pushing through the Platz crowds (many looking up for the five o’clock clocktower bell ringing), then down through the Townhall arch and out of the square, the numbers thinned a bit; faster moving families and groups out on a mission, to restaurants and bars, before the fire works.

Everywhere looked full, many places with people queued outside or checking window menus. One aproned cook, body steaming through his T-shirt, out for a smoke, saw Di approach him and said ‘no’, shaking his head and giving a ‘no goal’ with his arms.

We thought of Augustiner’s (from the other night with the swiss people), wandered in, and were taken straight to a nice little table by the window – bonne chance! It was so nice that we spent the next six hours there dining and chatting and watching the world go by – what else do you do till midnight? The thin, fast moving, waiter would get to within a meter of our table, look at our glasses and say, ‘two more for you’, turn on his heals and speed away. He was a warm, smiley fellow who’d always place a hand on your shoulder, as he spoke. When Di and I swapped seats and perspectives, he simply said, ‘yes, yes, of course, two hours here for you and two hours here for you….I bring two more wines’.

Two young Italian girls were photographing their family at the table next to us and we photo bombed them and had giggle. A little later, the girls came over to our table, they’d cut our images from the photo bomb and edited them into an “elf yourself” app. They were a lovely group from Verona, who recommended their favourite restaurant and, disconcertingly, the address of their jeweler store.

Outside our window people’s scattered wanderings had united riverward, into streams of beer and fireworks bearing party goers (an ominous combination to be sure). One guy had six big rockets fanned out on his back like Ninja turtle swords. It was time to join the crowd.

As we walked, loud ‘cracks’ would echo from down side streets or we’d hear the quick fizz of a rocket before it exploded in the sky lighting up our path. The pungent smell of firework smoke hung on the cold night air.

Some small boys were lighting sparklers and lit and gave us one each. We drew circles of light in the smoky night air with them before moving on towards Reichenbachbrucke [bridge], leaving the boys to turn their cardboard firework boxes into a small bonfire.

Whether a formal, council prepared, fireworks display ever happened, we couldn’t say. The bridge was crowded on both sides, with cars, trams and cyclists still braving the no-mans land in the middle. All up and down the river, on the banks and out on the sandbars people gathered – with fireworks. Rockets and coloured fountains went off randomly all around us, slowly at first, before midnight, then rising to a crescendo of flash-banging light and colour that roared till at least a half past midnight.

It was complete chaos up and down the river. People running out onto the bridge to light rockets, big spaces suddenly forming in the crowd as fireworks exploded at close quarters, rockets shooting in all directions, out over the river, from the river up over the bridge and from all over the city and back streets. A fellow next to us had a ginormous, wily coyote sized rocket and was waiting excitedly for his mate to finish his beer (the launching apparatus), two girls gave us some sparklers and four big German guys, after hugging us and saying ‘peace’, danced around arm-in-arm singing ‘what shall we do with a drunken sailor’ in funny (alcohol enhanced Germinglish) – it was crazy fun.

Once the sizzle had died down and the crowds thinned, leaving only the well intoxicated or truly dedicated pyromaniacs (fireworks continued pretty much all night – and into the next day), we made the short walk home to our cozy little abode.