Germany, Day Four: "Don't Worry, I'll Work Funny Into this One. How about a Lion made of Flowers?"

The first time I met a Jewish person, I was two weeks from my 18th birthday. I was in D.C. for some young leaders conference thing (which was one of the best experiences of my life). Anyway, there really aren't very many Jewish people in Louisiana, and I, despite rumors, am not Jewish (2017 EDITORS NOTE: Ten years after this, you take a DNA test, and you find that you are, in fact, JEWISH!!!). Therefore, while the Holocaust has always felt like a great tragedy, it has always seemed very remote--I let my geographic, genetic, and historic distance from the Holocaust somehow allow me to dehumanize the event.
In the morning, the three of us took a train to Dachau.
We visited the Holocaust museum there, set in the buildings of the WWII concentration camp. The above picture is of the memorial there. I took the picture through the window because I did not feel as if I had earned taking a naked photograph of it.
After reading and viewing most of the material and exhibits in the museum, the Holocaust's face seemed to come at me clearly from out of a fog, and it was so human, and so horrifying. Considering humans did this to 6 million other humans in a span of time so short ago that some of those who both survived and perpetrated it are still with us, we should never feel like we can take for granted that something like this won't happen again.

This is a gypsy girl, who was murdered in the gas chambers shortly after this photo was taken.
I also found this wood carving, made by a survivor, quite moving:

And then I cried.

This ends the only serious portion of the travelogue.


We rode a train back to Munich. The rest of the day was warm and marvelous, despite the below freezing weather and snowfall. We wandered around Munich fun and fancy free, free being the key word, as anything I wanted to buy cost at least five Euros, or 100 trillion dollars.
We randomaly met up with some person Robker knew, and several of this person's friends. There was this really cool Alaskan girl whose name I cannot remember that I hung out with. We were going to do something with them again, later in the day, but then we didn't because we fly solo like the Eagles...the bird kind.
We decided to go to the German Museum of Hunting and Fishing because:
A. It sounded weirdly cool.
B. It was cheap.
If you are in Munich, go to this place. The old guys who work there are really nice. Visiting the museum is like stepping through some animal-antler portal into a world of old landscapes and taxidermy. There were many paintings and photos of the fictional mountains known as the "Alps". As I've stated previously, I went to where these "Alps" were supposed to be, but they weren't there, so they don't exist. You've seen them, you say?
Nonsense. The Germans put LSD in your water and tricked you.

Here I am, going toe to toe with some stuffed savage beast. While I was in Germany, I didn't see any of these creatures actually living, so, like the "Alps", I am going to assume the Germans just made them up.
Oh, and notice how blurry the picture is? That is because Robker took it. Apparently, the Robker siblings left their crack in America and could not take a picture without shaking like monkeys deprived of heat and bananas.
After the museum, we went back to Augustiner Beerhall because we are like that (it's not every day you get to visit THE WORLD's top ranking Beerhall, and that is something I am not making up. Check the facts, dawg).
I purchased some beer that the monks brew and drink as a meal during lent. I figured that, since I could not afford an actual meal, I would try to fill up like the monks do. The beer, while quite good, did not do the job. Thankfully, Stephanie, who is a black belt in many handheld weapons arts, is in the top one-percent of the world's population in sword fighting, and is feared among mere mortals, has the approximate appetite of 3/4ths of a church mouse. So, I ate all her food when I was done with mine.

This was a delicious meal, and disproved my theory that the Germans would be better off eating their own bile than actually cooking their national cuisine. I mean, look how thick that bread is. It makes me sad that I didn't have enough money to sample what I would have liked. Next time, I will rob a bank in America beforehand, and visit Germany as a fugitive of the law.
After this meal, we hurried back to the hotel, got our stuff from the storage room the nice desklady let us use, and got on:

THE NIGHT TRAIN!!!

There is some crazy song where some guy sings "Night Train" in a really high pitched voice, and Robker kept singing it to me and making me piss myself, which I do not think the owners of the train enjoyed, as urine can be tough to get out of linen. AND WHY IS THE FONT SO BIG ALL OF A SUDDEN??!

The Robker's played a deadly game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who got bottom bunk, and Robker won.
Actually, that didn't really happen, but I like to think it did.
I mean, look at me:

You know I like to think it did.