Not So Plain Jane

So I decided to stay at one of the ubiquitious Marriott Courtyard hotels in Prague, on points mind you, since I was still traveling on a budget. It was snowing, covering the world with an icy veneer that appeared even icier when one was desolate. I lay in bed, my body was leaden and wobbling, that disorienting state of weakness when you are on the verge of recovery. Without neighbors, there were no distractions and no motivation to see the city, so I wallowed in my own thoughts. Every mistake I had ever made, every regret I had about life, men, and career choices appeared in vivid images before me, and I felt my own worth dwindle in some intangible way.

I had never felt so lonely. Jenny called me after receiving a particularly depressing email from yours truly. Jenny was Chinese, fine-boned and fashionable, the epitome of professional success in corporate America. In her early thirties, she was a pharmacist and global director of regulatory in one of the most prestigious healthcare companies in the country. Why was she friends with a basketcase like me?

Jenny informed me that a mutual friend in NYC, was having a birthday party at a posh club. Dan was an MIT-educated ABC (American Born Chinese), eternally energetic and known for bar-hopping every night of the week, and he conveniently knew every happening place in Manhattan. Not that he could always get us in. Dan was an oxymoron; he was simultaneously painfully shy and eager to party, he was outgoing and conversationally distant, he seemed a Peter Pan who refused to grow up and yet he is the most responsible friend I know.

I felt even lonelier.

The next day, I dragged myself out of bed and walked through the historic part of the city. It was still snowing. Prague was an exquisitely romantic city, with glittering rooftops the color of brick, uniform and yet unique at the same time. (Reminded me a bit of Mykonos, with the whitewashing and cobalt rooftops.) But romance, when steeped in sadness, appears ever tragic.

Nonetheless, I made my way to Prague Castle, abode of the Holy Roman Emperors, republican presidents, Nazis, and Communists. Comprised of Romanesque and Gothic architecture, this was supposedly the largest castle in the world, although the sheer size was not due to any particular building, but the archipelago of structures which congregated in such a dense space. What I remember most was how exorbitantly long it took to cross the courtyards to get from one building to the next, especially in below-freezing weather. The Basilica and monastery of St. George Cathedral was particularly impressive, harkening back to an old poem...

"Here come I, Saint George, the valiant man,
With naked sword and spear in hand,
What mortal man would dare to stand
Before me with my sword in hand?"

It was the mother of Marie Antoinnette, Empress Maria Theresa, who commissioned the final rebuilding of the castle.

However, it was en route to see the Czech crown jewels and the National Gallery Museum in one of the lower rooms, that I met her.

A sweet-faced Australian girl named Jane, who was loitering by the paintings with a similar level of scrutiny and annoyingly slow pace as me.

Things were looking up.

Popular Prague

Yes, this sounds like a gimmick from a travel agency, but I quickly realized that Prague had become the new "it" destination, the rite of passage for all self-declared world travelers, the way Paris was ten years ago or China is in the present day. In my three days in Prague, I ran into more tour groups than in my thirty-seven days in all of Europe combined. So we have the obnoxious crowds, loud tour guides, poking backpacks and fanny packs obscuring anything and everything worth seeing in the otherwise romantic old city.

I was still sick, probably sicker because my generous, thoughtful hostel roommate in Munich decided to leave the window open before he/she left. I vaguely recall it was a short-haired woman whose odorous feet manage to keep me awake, aside from the fact that she removed my belongings from the inward corner bed (the toastiest bed in the room which I had previously claimed) and plunked it squarely on the bed nearest to the window (arguably the coldest place in the room). All I saw were her feet and her head, snuggled in MY bed. I contemplated waking her up and reasoning with her, except when you are dealing with inconsideration, what can you do? She was already asleep and I probably would have started a cat fight if I dared interrupt her.

I sniffled, fumed, shivered, and wished negative thoughts upon my nemesis. Of course, the bad intentions boomeranged on me, since it was 4am and I was still angry. I wondered briefly if it would serve me better to forgive her. Not that I did, but I considered the idea and in the midst of considering, I drifted off to sleep. Perhaps I was learning to let go. That is, until the frigid cold snapped me out of my slumber and I prayed that God would give her a taste of her own medicine.

Was it a yearning for justice or was I being a cantankerous old cat? I'd like to think it was the latter, although I suspect the reality is less than flattering. So I took this sick, peevish self all the way to Prague and discovered the hard way that it really does serve oneself to forgive, since I probably would not have lost my much-needed hat if I had been paying attention to my journey.

This would be a lesson that would take me years to learn...

For now, I resolve not to travel into cold places during the winter, since that was apparently the cause of all my suffering.

Dachau

I had always dreamed of seeing Auschwitz. Perhaps because I had studied genocide in high school; perhaps because terror, no matter how well-documented and analyzed, never ceases to shock the human system when we see the dark reality for ourselves. It is far too easy to forget, to lie within our layers of comfort and contemporary distractions, to bury ourselves within another part of history. I was never one for the easy path. I seek the remembrance of pain because it feels more real to me, far more real to be hurt than to be happy.

Well, it was snowing in Munich and forecasted to be inevitably colder in Poland. I could barely lift my head, let alone brave a train to the capital of the crematoriums. So what did I do? After sniffling and moaning and fretting the bad luck of getting sick at such an inopportune moment,(although I cant recall of an opportune time to get sick), I gave up a dream. Substituted it rather, with the help of free WI-FI and my trusty sidekick, the ubiquitous IPOD touch (wonderful invention, God bless Steve Jobs). In the haze of a sinus headache and a wet, rattling cough, I booked a local tour to Dachau. Not that one concentration camp could replace another, but I never did make it to Auschwitz.

The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed to see a site of the Holocaust. What is it about ourselves that we keep pushing towards a destination, a goal even if we know we are poorly equipped for it? The hour train ride was torturous, and towards the end I had forgotten that I had elected this. At the stark, iron-wrought entrance gate, I suppressed waves of nausea roiling inside my stomache. I wasn't sure if it was the flu or if I was sickened by imagining all those premeditated deaths, stacked into piles like in documentaries.

Two things truck me about Dachau. How bare the space was, and how small the showers and crematoriums were. How they were reduced to nothing, how life was nothing, only a room and a bench and a shared bunker if they were lucky enough to live. If not, bodies crammed into the showers, smothering together, not that there was any air to breathe in the first place, but that sulfurous poison enveloping the lungs like a parasite.

The wind was frigid, and penetrated through the fabric of my jeans as if they were threadbare, a gust of paralyzing cold. So this is hopelessness. The labor, the cold, the desensitization of death. Except not everyone lost hope. Viktor Frankel, a noted Jewish psychologist and Holocaust survivor, remarked that man's suffering is like a gaseous entity, no matter how much or how little, it always fills up the volume of the container. Enlightened thoughts.

Then I thought of the lotus, how it grows from the filthiest mud possible, the scourge of the earth, to become an uplifted blossom, opening towards the sky. Lotus was Buddha's flower.

Try as I might, I couldn't help but taste ashes in my mouth.

Post Fairyland Castle

I was already sick by the time we left the snow-capped Alps of Ludwig's realm. The winter had come on rather quickly, even though it was only early October, and an icy air blew through Munich like a giant's terrible breath. Temperamental snows dusted the city like flour, although they dissipated before turning to ice. It was the brute, unabashed cold that hit me like a stone. I found myself with the sniffles, then a sinus infection, and then rivers of mucus that clogged my throat. Yes, I was deteriorating in the midst of Bavaria.

There is something about the state of being ill that causes one to feel lonesome, rather acutely. I scampered back from the train to my hostel and while it wasn't literally far, I might as well been dragging through the mud, feeling awfully sorry for myself. I even forgot about Simon, our mutual promise to spend Germany together before heading back to opposite ends of the world. Luckily, Simon hadn't forgotten about me. He followed me back to my room and as he watched me shuddering uncontrollably, he ran out again. So I finally got rid of him after all.

At length, he returned with a cup of hot tea and lemon, and asked how I was doing. I could only raise my eyelids pitifully. He proceeded to give me a massage, and then some small plastic packets that generate heat after we rubbed them for a few minutes. (Ingenious contraptions, those Taiwanese). Then he tucked me in and related that he felt worried and uneasy leaving like this, but his flight back to Asia was already booked. He did seem genuinely concerned, and those long-lashed, liquid eyes blinked at me guiltily.

I was profoundly touched. He had no obligation to me; I was a fellow traveler, transient and forgettable. He would never see me again. Yet, there was something transcendent in the human to human interaction, a sharing of thoughts, experiencing a wondrous event in the same time, that inevitably binds us. That sense of connection, that we affect each other, that we are real and we lived in that moment together is powerful. Even though we have become no more than a memory to one another, it is impossible not to care and not to feel that my life is somehow better because it was touched by kindness.

So Simon departed and I was left to my coughing fits. But I smiled every time my toes touched on the warmers that he gave me, which thawed out my frozen feet and kindled something in more guarded areas of the heart.

Neuschwanstein

Neuschwanstein was a disappointment at first. Romanesque style, with byzantine accents, it was the most romantic castle I had ever seen, whitewashed limestone, glistening turrents with cobalt roofs that matched the somber azure skies, perched in an isolated cliff in the midst of the Alps. Unfortunately, there were rows of iron scaffolding on the castle, a caged, bridled beauty unable to manifest its glory.

Nonetheless, as Simon and I walked inside, we entered the utopia of a shy, reclusive king. He commissioned Neuschwanstein to be the builted in the style of German knights' castles, and financed his idyllic venture from his own personal fortune and some heavy borrowing. Ludwig II's portraits indicate a delicate, fine-boned visage with earnest eyes, eyes that dream and roam the official affairs of state with the yearnings of fantasy and imagination. Inside was a Hall of Singers, a green and ethereal fairy land in homage of Lohengrin, Richard Wagnor's opera of Swan Knight. I remember the vibrancy of the light and opalescent colors of damsels in distresses and magical animals, King George slaying the dragon and the twelve-toned robes of Jesus' disciples. Here was a man who was an artist, a poet, and musician, who possessed such a passionate nature who was bound by birth and law to be a politician.

Something told me that he didn't quite fit into his life and his pre-determined calling, the struggle that he endured to remain authentic to his most intrinisic sensibilities. Perhaps that was basis of his friendship with Wagnor, an appreciation for those intangible things that stir heart and imbue the senses with an indescribable, almost unbearable duty. Thanks to his faithfulness to his own heart, we walked into the reality of this whimsical monarch, the visions he kept in proximity and perhaps more alive to him than the procedures of constitutional government.

I too, did not fit into my previous life. That was why I had come, to see how others carve a sanctuary of authenticity within the worlds they inhabit, within the vulnerable spaces of the mind that the world never ceases to intrude. To maintain the self, the sacredness of the self, the divinity of the self, as you truly are.

Ludwig was never considered a great king, but I sense an immeasurable peace, a joy that pervades that castle, even though the operas and fairy tales do not necessarily have happy endings. He was a boy who materialized his dream, even though it was never finished. Perhaps it was not about ending, or the happiness within the end, or even if there is a true, finite ending. Perhaps it is about the journey, the honesty of the journey, whether it is about self-discovery or staying true to a revelation of the self, who we truly are and what is life-giving to us. Perhaps it is our ultimate truth. Perhaps it is no more than a fleeting moment.

Oktoberfest

No, I was not in Munich during Oktoberfest, although I had my share of German beer in the beer gardens, where the buzzing of intoxication was accompanied by the rowdy chatter of Bavarians, providing much better entertainment than performances of any kind. The best entertainment, by far, however, was the Australians. In general, Aussies are ubiquitous wherever there are interesting sites and good drinks to be had. Apparently, Aussies comprised nearly 30-40% of Munich's population during the two week-long festivities of Oktoberfest, frequenting its beer tents "Bierzelte" with laughter, smooth accents, and good old inebriation. So inebriated, in fact, that the majority of the Aussies lost their passports and the Australian embassy aptly set up a temporary, make-shift embassy (in a tent) during Okoberfest so that the drunkards who lost their documentation did not have to take the 6 hour train ride to Berlin, where the official embassy was situated. True story.

I lived vicariously through Simon, who shared the experience of paying nearly $30 for a mug of beer during the celebration, as well as shacking up with roommates for meager accomodations and shelling out $150-200 for a third of a room per night. Wow. Now I am just not that committed to beer. Half grinning and half sheepish, Simon assured me it was worth it for him to see his typically uptight friend completely lose it. "Drunkenness with trusted company" was the way he put it. Simon seemed so young to me, guileless and with big, double-lidded eyes unusual for those with Han ancestry. A Taiwanese friend once told me about the ethnic differences between the indigenous Taiwanese versus those who later came with Chiang Kai Shek after WWII. Chiang's cohorts were unmistakably Han, but the indigenous people looked a bit more exotic, with wide eyes and darker skin. I guessed Simon belonged to the "original" Taiwanese, but it is inevitably a sore subject to raise, as the indigenous Taiwanese and their intelligentsia/scholars were massacred by their Han counterparts. Sigh...

Simon and I went to the Residenz, the largest palace within the city, home of the Bavarian monarchs that has now become a museum, a concert hall, undergoing immense reconstruction behind billboards of some famous Italian designer like Prada. It boasts some amazing Rococo and classical architecture, among others, and true to the German style, everything was perfectly symmetrical. The Antiquarium, (Hall of Antiquities), was a massive hall covered by a plethora of Renaissance paintings, separated by large beams of wood, which seemed to be the overpowering color in the entire collection. It was the most impressive room and somehow, the coldest. Suddenly, the tears that I did not shed on the train spouted full force and Simon was justifiably baffled. However, he didn't find an excuse to leave that hour, that day, or even that evening. Backpackers are not beholden to one another, and whenever you felt that your paths needed to separate, there was no explanation necessary. Instead, he sat beside me until I quieted and for some reason, there were very few tourists in the Residenz that day. I don't remember what I told him as the reason for my outburst, and I don't remember him asking. Perhaps it was nothing, and perhaps it was the wave of uncertainty over uncertainty hitting me as I didn't know what my next step would be. Nonetheless, it didn't matter. We sat in the silence, punctuated by my occassional sobbing, and then it was over.

And he suggested we have dinner. We went to this folksy, non-tourist and therefore non-English-speaking restaurant where the food was reputed to be authentic. However, we weren't warned on the demeanor. Not to be speaking in generalties, but Bavarians are rude. Particularly in restaurants. They are impatient with you for taking to much time to decide, and then annoyed that these bumpkins did not pronounce the names correctly. I ordered the Weisswurst, a traditional sausage made from very finely minced veal and fresh pork bacon, and Schweinsbratenhe, pork with gravy. Simon had the Nürnberger Bratwurst mit Sauerkraut (fried sausages with Sauerkraut). The meats were hardy, succulent with juices, and utterly amazing. And strudel, of course!

That night, the air turned frigid. As I ate the last bits of my apple strudel with beer and began to sniffle, I realized I was coming down with a cold.

Bavaria Continued

Except that Simon interrupted my flood of tears, pointing to the landscape with glee. There is something about acquaintance, no matter how remote or recent, that obligates you to be on your best behavior. Perhaps it was the fear of being judged, how familiarity with people causes you to care how you stack up in their opinion. So I held back that torrent of feeling which rains salt and water and contorts my face until I look like a red onion. I had no idea what excited him, but Simon had the kind of ebullient personality that was almost contagious. Then he mentioned his sisters, how he learned to detect when a woman wasn’t happy and how to cheer her up. I glanced at him sideways, wondering if he was a womanizer in disguise, but he seemed completely in earnest and had an eager-to-please look reminiscent of a young puppy. He was also about 8 years younger than me.

Simon & I made a pact to meet that evening for dinner after we got settled; it turned out our hostels were neighbering institutions. The train rolled into Munich and like in every station, I headed over to the kiosks to arrange my ticket (via the EuroRail pass) to the next city, Prague. Except I couldn’t read German, so I stood in the information queue for about 20 minutes. They promptly directed me to another kiosk where I stood behind a long line for another 15 minutes to buy my ticket. When I got to the window, I asked about train times and they absolutely refused to sell me a ticket because I did not know the precise time of the train I wanted to take. Instead, they referred me to a glass waiting room where more complicated tasks like purchasing a multi-train pass were resolved. Incidentally, that was also where the timetables were located. I tried to ask a brief question, but was instead instructed to take a number. After 30 minutes, my number was called and I was promptly referred to the large steel fixture of a shelf with multiple pamphlets. None were in English and when I inquired about that, I was told to take another number.

So much for customer service. Germany, the epitome of discipline, efficiency, and standardization; and it took me over an hour to even get a timetable translated into English. Apparently, Germans spoke flawless English, unless you happened to need your visa renewed or any kind of paperwork processed. Then, every utterance of English was indecipherable and you were inevitably misunderstood. Looks civil service was on par with customer service.

I roamed free in the land of BMW Bismarck, Oktoberfest, and origins of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party, otherwise known as Nazi. Ironically, political power and racial supremacy were not the prime dreams of Adolf Hitler, at least not in his youth. He was a foiled artist, or so he believed, rejected from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts multiple times before he began peddling street paintings and got involved in grassroots politics, along with disbanded members of the German military post WWI. How the course of the world may be have changed if only he was recognized as a painter. Other interesting commonality among some of these totalitarian radicals was that Hitler was Austrian, not German, although he claimed he was "Germanic." Stalin, too, was Georgian, not Russian and perhaps their lack of "true belonging" in Germany or Russia led to a psychotic drive for domination.

I took a free walking tour of the city, exploring Marienplatz and its marvelous medieval, baroque, and renaissance architecture in a variety of stalwart pillars and churches. As the young German tour guide recounted the city's illustrious and sometimes sordid history, it occurred to me he tiptoed around any semblance of German pride, remarking in a deadpan tone about everything that this city stands for. It was a pattern repeated time and again. Conscientiously, they are still embarrassed about the past and the Holocaust, to the point of depriving their future generations of any sense of positive national identity.

Only the Germans are big enough to admit what they did was wrong. What about the Americans and Native Americans? What about the Japanese, massacre of Nanking, or the Korean "comfort women?" What about the Chinese massacres during the Cultural Revolution, and more recently, Tiananmen Square? None of these superpowers has made an effort towards such humility and reparation as the Germans have done. For that, I am proud of the Germans.