The Behrens Venture

Osnabrueck is a city of about 160,000 people located in the Niedersachsen state of Northern Germany. It’s about 2 hours away from Bremen, 3 from Hamburg, and maybe 2 from Hannover. This is the city where I will spend the next 5-6 months studying.

When Erik and I arrived in the train station, we had no clue where we were. We got a taxi and let the driver figure out where Erik’s apartment was at. October the 2nd is a German holiday, so everything was closed. I couldn’t move into my apartment until the 3rd, so I was going to crash at Erik’s that night. We were pretty tired, so we just relaxed and slept for a bit. When we woke up, met all of Erik’s roommates and his one roommate Jahn offered to take us on a tour of the city, which was perfect. He showed us around and gave me some good initial clues about where I was. He also showed us some of the better places to eat at around town.

The next day, I moved into my apartment and met my roommates. 3 people from Poland, 1 German girl, 1 guy from the Ukraine, and some others. In total, we are 8 people. I was a bit shocked at first, I’m used to dorm life and living with like 60 people… but having a smaller apartment with 8 people was not something I expected… I didn’t really have much planned for the first day, except Erik and I both had no sheets for our beds. Later that night, we met up and figured out how to get to IKEA and I spent like 90 Euro buying pillows, sheets, forks, spoons, rugs, and anything else that looked cool. IKEA is just an amazing store, which sucks because there are only like 2 located within an 8 state radius of me in America. However, I now had an apartment and a bed, what more could I want!?!

Monday morning, I woke up dead with no energy at all. The weekend had completely drained me, but we had to check out of the hostel. Everyone from our group was just kind of lounging around, making plans for the day. Erik and I eventually got down to the train station and stowed our luggage for the day. Since we had been stuck in Oktoberfest all weekend, you really had no idea what Munich looked like! We headed downtown again and actually did some touring. Munich has a really nice park and huge garden area, along with a nice river that flows through the town. I fell asleep for a few hours by the river and took some pictures of the ducks.

One of the coolest thing I saw in Munich was a pay-as-you-go bike. They were scattered all over, they had little meters in them and you would have to pay like 1 Euro for 5K biking or something. It was so weird at first, seeing bikes lying all over, but the government has to make good money on them because everyone bikes around here.

Another interesting thing were the stop lights. Since everyone bikes, you have stop lights for the bikes. Public transportation using busses is very popular too, so they have stop lights for the busses. Combine that with stop lights for normal cars and I have no clue what the hell this is:

We grabbed dinner and lounged around in the train station for the rest of the night until our train left at like 3AM. We eventually got to Osnabrueck in the late afternoon and Erik went to his apartment. We had finally arrived at our destination!

We checked into our hostel Friday afternoon and were drinking by 6 o’clock. We checked out Monday afternoon and took a train late late that night to Osnabrueck. The time between then was simply amazing. Oktoberfest 2006 was one of the best times of my life for many reasons and hopefully someday I can do it again. I could type stories for hours, but I will try to keep it short and simple here. If you really want to know, come find me in person!

Our hostel was the Meininger Hostel located barely 3 blocks from Oktoberfest. In a very cool twist of events, the room reservations we had booked were through some British travel company, which included a whole list of events for us to do all weekend, which ended up making Oktoberfest so great. The guides met us at 6PM and we had dinner at a nearby restaurant. We got to know everyone in the group and then set off to Oktoberfest. It was pure chaos, even this late at night. Hundreds of thousands of people scurrying about. We sat down at a table outside a beer hall and started talking 2 Italians at the table. They had been drinking all day and couldn’t speak a word of English, but we all understood each other perfectly. We told them it was our first time here in Oktoberfest and they bought our first rounds! It was a good start of the weekend.

Saturday, we woke up at 8AM and went to wait for a table. At Oktoberfest, the big Liter beers are only served to you if you are seated either inside a beer tent or alongside the tent, in a small section of beer tables. The tent we had chosen was already full, so we grabbed 2 beer table and sat down for the day. I started drinking at 10AM, others held off until later. We sat at that table drinking all day long. Around 6PM, I got curious and managed to sneak my way into a beer tent. Entrance to the tents is strictly controlled, you either need a wristband or your name on a list, but I managed to find a wristband. Inside the tent is like heaven, there is a giant band playing in the center of the tent and everyone is as happy as can be. I stayed late until it shutdown and then found my way home.

Sunday, we woke up at 10AM and headed out to a bar called Ned Kellys, a split Irish and Auzzie bar. Some new friends of ours were from New Zealand and wanted to watch the rugby championship game. It was my first rugby match and it was great. From there, we walked around the downtown for a bit and then headed back to Oktoberfest. There were 5 of us and we managed to get into a beer tent. From there it was amazing. We sat in the tent for the rest of the night and enjoyed the company. I can’t describe it. The entire weekend was amazing.

When we came back from Dachau, Erik and I headed right to the Hofbrau House because I wanted a cold drink after a place like that and we also didn’t have a place to stay that night! Our hostel reservations started the next night. So we found our way downtown and checked it out. There were streams of people coming in and out, but we managed to get into before security stopped people.

The inside of the Hofbrau House is just crazy. It’s like a mini-Oktoberfest. We found a seat at a beer barrel converted into a table and were served pretty quickly. Some potato dumplings, coleslaw, and some kind of meat along with of course, the HofBrau House DunkelWeizer(dark wheat) beer. I enjoy the meal and beer, and soon enough we’re talking with the table next to us. Some blokes from the UK were there, along with a German from North Germany who was celebrating his birthday, along with a bunch of other random people. We spend the rest of the night talking about anything and everything, before Erik and I head out in the night. We wander around for awhile and eventually make our way back to the train station. To our surprise, the entire train station was full of drunks! Everyone from Oktoberfest heads back there and crashes until the Polizei kick them out around 5AM. We got kicked out too. From there, we did some more wandering until the hostel let us into our rooms later in the day.

We left Berlin in the morning and got into Munich in the early afternoon. We didn’t have any plans, but Erik really wanted to visit Dachau, so we threw our luggage into lockers at the Bahnhof(train station) and hopped on the next train! As it turns out, Dachau is barely 15 minutes outside of the city. We got off the train and grabbed a taxi because we really had no clue where to go.

We got to the camp around 3PM, so we had about 2 hours before it closed. A movie was just about to start inside the museum section of the camp, explaining the camp and the Holocaust, so we ran and saw that. We came out of the camp and then just started taking everything in. One of the first things I immediately realized, was that I had been here before. When I was living here in Germany before, I know I had gone to a concentration camp, but I couldn’t remember which specific one. I knew it was this one. I checked out the special prisoner barracks, behind the museum, where they held the very important people.

From there, I headed out into the main courtyard area, where rollcall was taken. There were about 20 or 22 barracks lined up in the camp and every morning, every prisoner had to come to the courtyard for counting. They were forced to stand for hours sometimes, in the rain or the harsh sun. If anyone couldn’t remain standing, they were dragged off for punishment.

There are 2 barracks still standing as examples, you can walk through and view them. The tiny beds were forced to hold 8 or 10 people, there was always massive overcrowding. Everyone was forced to use public restrooms without any privacy.

I headed toward the end of the camp, exploring some area I didn’t remember that well. There is an active church built into the ground at the very end of the camp, along with a nunnery too! If you head off the to left side, you can find the crematorium and gas chambers. It’s a very small building actually, with 1 or 2 smoke stacks. The main gas chamber is open and you can go inside of it. The inside of the gas chamber was the most somber place in the entire camp for me, actually seeing a gas chamber is very horrifying. The interesting thing is that most experts contend the gas chambers in Dachau were never actually used for exterminating people, mostly for fumigation of clothes. It was quicker and easier to just build mass graves and kill using guns.

At this point, it was around 5PM and most of the museums and open areas were being shutdown. I met up with Erik and we headed back to the train station and eventually, Munich. Dachau is a very somber place, it’s amazingly quiet. There weren’t too many people there that day, but everyone was silent. I was the same way, just lost in reflection. It’s important to have memorials like these, so the past is never forgotten.