Germany

Monuments and Memories

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

History is kind of like science. It’s true whether you believe it or not.

The thing is though, if we forget it we repeat it.

  • The confederacy WAS about slavery.
  • The monuments ARE celebratory of traitors AND aggressive toward people of color.
  • The monuments WERE erected DECADES after the end of the war, DURING Jim Crow.
  • The ideals and celebration of the confederacy NEED to be wiped from our country with the exception of museums and the history books.
  • Germany DOES have monuments and statues related to nazi Germany but you know what they depict? The absolute defiance of the Jewish people and the horrific atrocities committed to them. You know WHY?

So they fucking remember.

Go.

See them.

Dachau is one of the most stirring experiences of my life. When I think of it, there are tears and it was almost 25 years ago.

On top of the various statues and monuments, the thing that has stuck with me the most is the gate.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Work Makes one Free

I can’t exactly place my finger on it but this has always seemed pretty close to attitudes and ideas from our current administration (including the lie).

IF we allow these statues, monuments, street names, and military base names to remain we will be doing nothing more than supporting those traitorous a-holes AGAIN.

ANYONE that thinks this crap needs to remain needs to remove themselves from this country right along with it.

How I Stole From a Monastery

~ randyaa ~ 8 Comments

Ettal Monastery So, I have a confession to make.

Randy Aldrich is a thief.

I stole from a Monastery back in 1998.  Not much, but it happened.  We stopped at Ettal on our way to Neuschwanstein & I took a little booklet that described the abbey and the monastery.  At the time I thought they were free.  I didn’t know that they weren’t until we got back on the bus and someone else asked me:

You bought one of those!?

To which I responded “bought?”

Anyway… turns out they were 5 Marks (at the time Germany had not yet adopted the Euro).  Herr Stoker told me just to drop a 5 in the donation bin at the next church we went to and I’d be square with the big guy in the sky.  Seemed like a good enough Karma move to me, so that’s what I did.

The picture to the left is a scan of the cover of that book, which I still have and will probably keep forever just as a reminder.  However; even to this day, I don’t believe I’ve ever read it… *sigh*.

That being said, the Monastery is beautiful so if you’re in the area, I highly suggest it.

1998 Europe Travel Journal

~ randyaa ~ 13 Comments

I found the following Travel Journal in a bag of my old stuff given to me by my mother.  It’s from my from my Trip to Europe with school in 1998.

I’ve provided it below, unedited And awesome. I’ve left it mostly intact and punctuation preserved for your enjoyment.  Go ahead and laugh, I did.

4/16/1998

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. ~Joseph Addison, Chicago Cultural Center (former library)

I expect Germany will be like country kind of towns with lots of public transportation and then in the big cities more very modern looking buildings and I expect the people will be very friendly.

4/17/1998

The towns here just kind of end.  And then there is nothing for miles.  Walking in Rothenburg was like walking back a few centuries.  Even in the smallest town, which is where we are staying, there is a bus stop.

4/18/1998

Today we went to Dachau.  It was interesting.  There were many more concentration camps than I thought there were.  I guess we only hear of the big ones.  I also learned that Dachau’s gas chambers were never used to kill anyone.  The gas chambers at Dachau were never used and nobody knows why.  It was strange being at one of the Nazi concentration camps where people actually died by the hundreds.

4/19/1998

We had to get up at 5:45 this morning which meant I got about 5hrs of sleep.  That stunk.  We headed out to Neuschwanstein, Ludwig II‘s castle.  When we got there we hiked up the mountain to the castle and toward it.  After touring the castle we went up on the bridge that was a few hundred feet high.

4/20/1998

Today was travel day.  We have to go to Venice which is about an 8hr trip but we stopped a lot along the way.  Our travel plans were sort of changed because of some snow conditions.  Instead of going to Innsbruck on the way to Venice we stopped at Salzburg.  That was just as good because Mr Stoker lived there for a while and showed us around quite a bit.  I bought some spoons there while shopping and a chocolate pretzel which was very good but was so rich I could only eat 1/2 of it. When we got to Venice it was suppertime and we had pasta and then some viel stuff hat I didn’t like at all.  After all that just our group went out and walked around the town we were staying in (not Venice but close).

4/21/1998

Today was the best shopping day so far.  When we got up we ate (the same thing for the 6th time in a row) and then took the bus to a boat.  When we got to the boat we had to wait about 10 minutes before they got started.  Then it was about a 15min ride.  After that we took a 2hr tour around Venice and saw the “sights.”  I imagined Venice to be much better than it was, but it was really a dump.  But I suppose if you build a city on top of water it will tend to do that.  We had freetime for about 6hrs and then went back to the hotel.  The worst part about the day was it rained for most of it.  In Venice it normally is quite whet though, so…  They even have planks a foot off the ground to walk on in case what they call a (double high tide) happens.

4/22/1998

This morning we left from Venice for Verona and then on to Lucerne.  Today for once it’s not raining.  Big surprise!  It’s travel day and it’s not raining because we’re not doing anything.  It took about 10hrs to get from Venice to Lucerne.  I only got about 1hr of sleep on the bus.  When we got to Luzern nothing really happened, we ate then hung out for a while and went to sleep.

That’s it.  Which is really sad, because Lucerne was my favorite part of the trip.  I think Switzerland really spoke to the outdoorsman in me.  This makes me wish I had kept a real journal of everything.