On Getting Sleepy in the Augustinier-Keller Biergarten, Munich

Before I tell you what took place that first night in Munich, I would like you to know that I had not slept for 36 hours, had eaten only a pretzel and a peach from the Viktualienmarkt, the local farmer's market. 

So we had gone to the Augustinier Biergarten that night, in search of...well, what you would expect. Beer. Given the outrageous drinking age in America, I was eager to drink for the first time. Well, legally, anyway. 

The Viktualienmarkt, where the produce is cheap because rent is cheap...favors the Mom-and-Pop shops over fast food joints

In keeping with my recent bout of rebellion, I texted my mother: "Going out drinking lol". To my disappointment, her response was: "OK". But I didn't let her obvious lack of concern for my nighttime activities (what fun is teenage rebellion when nobody cares?) dampen my enthusiasm.

It was a lovely, warm evening as we descended into the Sendlinger Tor station, emerged at some other, and walked to where the beer was good and the food cheap. Unlike such establishments back home, the biergarten was welcoming, unassuming in its warmth. Children sat with their parents, or ran about at play. People of all ages mingled, and here and there wisps of cigarette smoke wove smoothly through the air, around people's heads. It was a place of drinking, but nobody was very obnoxiously drunk. There was nothing sloppy about it, or anyone partaking in it. 

I think that the relaxed attitude regarding drinking over there is healthier than ours here. There's nothing taboo or defiant about it, so there's no need to overdo it. Apparently it is the trademark of young American tourists to binge-drink over there, to make up for lost time, I suppose you could call it. It's not a big deal to them, and children grow up watching their elders drink responsibly. 

If the old cemetery is the first thing I think of when I think of Munich, the Augustinier Biergarten is the first I think of when I think of the quintessential beer garden. The floor was one of white pebbles, which apparently is the preferred ground cover in Munich. It was the same as it was in the Alter Südfriedhof, which perhaps is why my exhausted brain bothered to remember it.

My father had a rather lax approach toward alcohol himself, so it was hardly the first time I'd tasted beer. That being the case, I had taken it for granted, and never truly believed that it was something that could make me drunk. Having sampled Mao Tai  amongst several Chinese brandies and wines, I underestimated the German brew. 

Kindly recall the state my body was in: sleep deprived and low on fuel. I went and ordered myself a whole liter of Augustinier Edelstoff. That's pretty potent stuff, you know. If you didn't know, you must now realize it. Another funny quirk is that they stop serving half liters after 5 pm, and obviously I wasn't going to miss out on an opportunity to immerse myself in the culture. 

Halfway through I knew I was drunk. I never even felt buzzed. You know, I always thought that I'd be a classier drunk. This, unfortunately, was not the case. My table- two chaperones and a classmate- had a good laugh at me. 

It was the strangest feeling, because I felt that I was faking and that all the swaying was voluntary. I was convinced that I was doing it all for attention, putting on a show to be funny. Then when I went to stop myself, I couldn't. My speech wasn't slurred noticeably, but boy did I have a hard time walking back to our hotel. 

Good times, eh?

And in case you were curious, that was the best beer I'd ever tasted. At that point, anyway, because I had a half liter of Weiss a few days later. Edelstoff is typically sweeter than most other beers, which effectively masks how much stronger it is. It's got this bright, brassy ring to it somehow, like you're drinking something sunny. Yes, that's a good way to put it. It's a sunny drink. 

So, as you'd expect, I had some trouble unlocking my door and navigating my room. My roommate was asleep and I didn't want to wake her. Naturally, that meant I promptly banged into the wall, and fell atop my suitcase. Yes, I woke her up. Yes, she was amused. 

It was an amusing night. 

Alter Südfriedhof, in the Heart of Bavaria

I am finally beginning to come home to San Diego. I miss Germany and Austria, but the patterns of my life here are picking up almost where they left off. In any case, Time passes and we grow up with it.

An outdoor cafe somewhere outside of our hotel, called Carat
 (very early morning, Day 1)

I wish I'd written more while I was over there. Now that I'm back and miss traveling so desperately, I regret not leaving a record of my thoughts and feelings when they were fresh. That's one less thing for me to sift through when I try to recapture whatever mood, whatever emotional state I'd found over there. I didn't even take very many pictures. Or at least, I could have taken more.

But I think it is time now for me to sit and preserve what remains of the trip. I have collected all my train ticket stubs, my receipts, my brochures, and my luggage tags and smoothed them out, placing them in a box for safekeeping. It's so I can look through it later, and remember a little.

I won't be able to tell things exactly as they were, because memory is never completely reliable. I won't know how to describe the way the light looked in the early morning when we woke up that first day. Nor the way it felt to wake so early, to look over and see a strange girl in bed next to me, the feeling of intrusion. I can't make you understand what I myself did only a little while ago, and then forgot.

I think I will write a few posts on specific places and experiences, rather than going day by day, or place by place. If you are interested, my APEC teacher did just that:  http://majesticeurope.blogspot.com/

Today I want to talk about Alter Südfriedhof. The name translates to "Old South Cemetary", and when I think of this trip, and of Munich, that is what comes to mind first. I asked our tour guide about it later, but I can't remember if he was the one to tell me about it. Perhaps not, but I remember asking him all the same.

Alter Südfriedhof

Duke Albrecht V founded it for plague victims in the mid 16th century, which explains its location outside of the city gates, Sendlinger Tor. Apparently a great many notable painters, musicians, muses, and writers are buried here. None of the names jumped out at me, so I never bothered to remember any of them. That's enough background, wouldn't you say? That's all I've got in any case. Either that or I've forgotten the rest.



We'd discovered this cemetary, Alicia and I, on that first morning. I'd woken before her and sat in the inky morning light, refreshed and restless. We were out the door before 6 am. I waved to the young man behind the front desk as we left. I got a bemused look in return.

Side note: I think I've done a pretty terrible job deciding the order of these pictures, but let's pretend like that adds to the charm shall we?

Alter Südfriedhof, on a Northerly path. Or was it Westerly? Neither. It was Southerly. I think. 

I like being out very early and very late, because all the other tourists are in bed and I can be as touristy as I want all by myself. I mean, at 5:45, pretty much everyone else is still in bed. I thought it was pretty weird that their convenience stores didn't open til 8. Here they never seem to close. 8 doesn't seem like a very convenient time to open, if you ask me, but then, I appreciated the refusal to honor the instant gratification principle.

Either way, we were out in search of a convenient store that was open. That was how we came upon the old cemetery. We cut through it as a shortcut to get across town to a gas station. Ali must have looked up directions on her phone, or else how could we have possibly known to go through there? But I seem to recall finding the gas station convenience store with a sense of being lucky, so maybe the traipse through the cemetery was just exploration on a whim.

I love that cemetery. We walked through it every morning, discovering every inch we could. It's very old, almost- but not quite- overgrown. It's not so sanitized as some other graveyards I've seen, with their orderly rows of white markers on manicured grass beds. In Alter Südfriedhof, no two graves were alike. 

It was very peaceful in there, although there was only a wall separating it from the street. There were barely any cars so early in the morning, but even on our way back, or on days when we came later, the sound of engines and people driving was muted. I think it's the ivy on both sides of this wall. It grew so thickly and in such robust clusters and tendrils that it must have muffled the noise. 

There's a playground immediately outside the first half of the Alter. Ali called it creepy and I suppose in a way, it was pretty gruesome to have children play so close to the site of the sleeping dead. But I've noticed that we're the only ones that make such a big fuss about Death. It's as natural as living, you know. Maybe they aren't so afraid of it there.



There's so much more that I can't make clear. How the gravel crunched under my sandals, the individual pebbles finding ways to worry my toes. How the air smelled of leaves and soil and rain. How some of the statues had lost noses and worn so that they looked ghoulish, all discolored and Voldemort-y. How the man in the blue linen shirt looked up at us, surprised to find anyone at all there, but especially foreigners. How the massive sculpture of Jesus on the Cross had turned green in some parts. 

Good thing I have pictures.

You know, for a cemetery, this was a surprisingly charming place. Not exactly welcoming, because there was this sense of disinterest in the coming and going of people. Not foreboding, though. No brooding gloom, no threat of zombies. Very beautiful. I miss it already. 

Not as macabre as it sounds.

Home is Where the Heart is

I am home again, and everywhere I look is a sight both familiar and alien. I am at once comforted and unsettled by the amenities I had become accustomed to live without: my car, gleaming sleekly in the driveway; my bed, waiting for only one tired body; my closet, with more clothes than I remember what to do with.

While abroad, I had gotten used to walking more than ten miles a day on considerably less food. Breakfast consisted of black coffee, some nice German breads, melon, and tomatoes. Lunch was more often than not a nectarine, bought from the street market, and a chunk of bread, maybe a pretzel. Dinner was whatever, but I never over ate there. I already miss that, the feeling of satiation without extension- full, but still light. I woke this morning to a yearning in my legs to walk. The muscles had already hardened under the stress of visiting Mozart's birthplace, walking along rivers, tiptoeing to see over old castle walls.

It's so easy to see why people over there age so very well, and are so trim.

This post is to be very short, because I can no longer sit still enough in this room to write about what's already forgotten. I just want to tell you that I miss being a guest in another land, and thinking of anything other than the here and now.

What is Violet?

As the sun sets in the West and color is leached from the sky and the Earth, look out across the lake. It is the darkness deep in the heart of the water. It is the mystery held beneath the glassy surface. What light is left is dying, and the skies turn velvety. It's the transitional dusk, between sunset and night, warmth and coolness.

It's the color of sleep. Not a midday nap, but heavy, restful slumber. The stillness that takes over bodies in repose, freezing king and pauper alike. When we lie awake for hours, it's the shadows under our eyes- what sleep we were deprived of is painted upon our faces like rouge. A reminder, of the rest we cannot escape.

It's a flower. A flower that blankets the graves of children. The heart shaped petals see them off in their journey, their eternal slumber. How innocent, how sweet. 

Soft, whispery silks, trailing like smoke and falling like water. It's the feel of them caressing sunburned skin. That cooling kiss, as a mother's hand on a feverish brow. It's the bittersweet goodbye murmured against pillows that let you murmur. 

It is something unshakable, eternal. It is neither sad nor glad, neither dead nor alive. It's a haven between two stops. Something that isn't exactly asleep, but will never wake. Violet, the last color in the rainbow, is that which fades before darkness. 

Violet is rest.

What is Yellow?

It's the little bit left in the glass after it's been drained. Whisky, cognac, gin, the stuff that burns away feeling. What warms as it kills.

Its the lace you find in your grandmother's chest she's kept to hold memories of her youth, all moth eaten and stained by the years. Beside it are the love letters sent by the man she loved before your grandfather. They're all tied up in a neat package, carefully hidden from view. He's not important now, but she loved him once, in another life that plays behind her closed eyes with the static of old television sets.

It's the dress the color of sunshine you used to wear to school, you're hair all trussed up into a schoolgirl's braids. It's tucked away somewhere, still bright as brass.

It's the goldfish you won at the fair. How its scales caught the lamplight as it wriggled about in the bowl. That fish faded into insignificance, and no one really remembers when or how it died, but its gone now.

It's the dust motes swirling and jiving in the late afternoon sunlight. When the air is sticky and the roads lazy and red. When dogs lay down to wait for cooler weather, not even bothering to bark and strangers driving by their porches.

It's the funny notes in people voices when they sang, a hundred years ago. It's curiously missing in the music of today, but maybe it is only because not enough time has passed. Like fine wine, the timber hasn't matured to dusky warmth. Perhaps our children's children will hear the songs of our youth and understand us.

When a bouquet of roses wither and droop, it's the hue of what used to be white and pink and speckled with dew. It's the stories told by those waiting for immortality, the touch of fingers roughened with care. They are gentle enough when they pluck photographs from worn albums to present to you, proud as they are of how life used to be, how they survived.

Yellow hurts. It's a peculiar pain that brings happiness in remembering.

A Venetian Afternoon

Beneath the sun's ravenous rays, brilliantly hued crowds mingle on the Venice Boardwalk. Self-proclaimed rap gods stand, sweating, trying to press disinterested millennials to take their mix tapes. Paint-splattered artists squint out into the mingling conglomerate. Sometimes, if they are working, they are surrounded by the curious and appreciative.

It felt fine to walk along sandy pavement, with the scent of the sea in the air. Every so often I would lift the edges of my silk shirt, or my shorts, to exclaim ruefully at the deepening tan lines I found. It brought an odd sort of satisfaction to watch myself become striped brown and deeper brown. The friends I walked with, who were showing me around LA that day, could trace their ancestry into more Northerly lands, so their complexions were better preserved. Ah, well...

At the famous skate park I found love. With everyone and nobody. Once one of them jumped so high in the air that the crowd pressed eagerly against the rails gasped, applauding when he landed, although there was a moment of uncertainty after, when he teetered precariously on his board. From a distance most of them looked very young. It surprised you, then, when they came nearer and you could make out the shadows on their jaws, the maturity in the muscularity of their shoulders.

Even when they miscalculated, they were graceful. Even if they lost their footing they seemed to step rather than fall off. It was a rough, careless elegance. The ones that weren't showing off were huddled around, grinning, or smoking blunts openly. The smell of weed was delicate sometimes, and sometimes it was overpowering. It lingered like a man's cologne, following us back to the Boardwalk, where it was joined by a larger cloud of the scent. Everywhere we went reeked of the stuff.

Reluctantly, we left, and headed back towards Santa Monica by way of the Boardwalk. I was some three hours away from home, yet the same dustiness was there in the sunlight. The sand was familiar, although I think sand in Southern California must be the same everywhere.

I dropped my change into the collecting jar of a homeless man playing an old Skip James song. He was very good, so I dug deep into my bag and came up with a dime and three pennies. I gave them to him, sorry I didn't have more. The deep furrow between his eyes softened when he smiled, his eyes an astonishing lack of color.

The smoke shop played a Led Zeppelin song, and I was sorry I couldn't patronize them too. They had a piece shaped like a carrot, but I had no use for it.

I paid a little too much for a bathing suit because I had forgotten to pack one. It was of very flimsy material- nothing about it warranted the price I paid for it, although it wasn't that much. The old Mexican gentleman who sold it to me was liberal with his flattery, which was administered with only the barest trace of sincerity. To my intense annoyance, the sun retreated before I could make good use of the suit, so I defiantly wore it in the rain.

That's the sort of person I am.

For lack of a better, more graceful ending:

Peace. I'm out.