Statues - Mauthausen

I've written about walking the grounds of Mauthausen already - that story is here, if you're interested.  I think I mention somewhere that there isn't an inch of the building that hasn't been turned into a memorial.  What I forgot to mention is that just beyond the central camp buildings, out where the grass is green in a way that belies its sordid history, is a statue garden.  Built by the nations in honor of those they lost, these statues are a promise.  A promise to never forget how deeply hate can burn.  A promise to never forget the lives that were lost, and that still can be lost, when prejudice is manipulated.  And above all else, a promise to learn, and to prevent this from ever happening again.  Now, the sculpted steel giants on the lawn of Mauthausen guard that promise, and when you walk among them, you'll want to guard that promise, too.   

  

I Ate That

That is an unbaked apple strudel.  Or, as they say in Austria, "apfelstrudel."

It's a traditional Viennese dessert, though we were in Innsbruck at the time, stopped at a pastry school that sat on top of a hill.  (Years later, I'd find out that Friend Ashley had gone to school to become a pastry chef.  I didn't ask if the two were related, but I like to think that they were.)

Our big group of forty American teenagers split down into ten groups of four, one for each of the ten baking stations in the big, sterile kitchen, each station with the ingredients carefully measured out for us.  The instructor, a small man with grey hair and a kind smile, barked out instructions from the front of the room in heavily accented english, making big, comical gestures with his arms when he couldn't find the right words.  We'd take turns rolling the dough and chopping the apples, trying to find the best way for four people to make one apfelstrudel.  And once the apple filling had been carefully folded into its dough pocket, and the glazed pastry baked gently in the oven, we'd titter headily at the rum the recipe called for, and how much extra we'd pretended to put in the filling, making sly references to smuggling the bottles, still capped at our baking stations, out of the school under our jackets.   

The finished pastries would come out of the oven with varying degrees of success, but we didn't care.  We made them!  And though ours was a little lumpy, and had too much cinnamon for my taste, we ate every last crumb. 

Make your own!

It's Time to Go; I Hate to Leave-I Have to, Though.

It's almost the beginning of every teen slasher flick ever made.

We've just come from Mauthausen, and some of us haven't quite recovered from the experience, and when the bus stops in the city center of this tiny Austrian town, we'll be shuffled out of our seats and into the cars of complete strangers and expected to spend two nights in a foreign house, totally isolated from everyone we've come to know in the previous two weeks.  It's just a home stay, nothing to be scared about (I did two weeks of home stays when I went to Japan, so I have a little experience in that area), but it's been an emotional day, and the last thing anyone wants is to be away from their friends tonight.  I've lucked out - there are more kids than host families, and I end up sharing a family with another girl, Erica.  I think she's more relieved than I am.

Brigitte is a year ahead of us in school.  Tomorrow is her last day in class (all she has to do is pick up her grades), and tells us that she and her classmates are having a party tonight to celebrate.  It's been a long day, Erica and I are exhausted, but we pretend to be excited.  

We stop at the house long enough to put our suitcases in our room and use the facilities before we're back in the car.  Brigitte's mom is driving, which I don't understand until later in the evening when Brigitte starts drinking.  She tells us that the party is at her friend's "little house," but the street lights of the town are melting away in the rearview mirror as we drive deeper and deeper into the woods.  I almost lean over to Erica to say "This is the part where we all get killed," but by the look of her face in the dashboard lights, I don't think she'd find it funny.

There's a light up ahead, flickering between the trees.  The little house turns out to be a two-room wooden cabin ten miles outside of town, and there are close to twenty of Brigitte's friends packed into the tiny great room.  Her mom drives away; Brigitte promises to call her when we're ready to come home.  I'm amazed she can get cell phone reception out here.

There's a boy at the door handing out bottles of beer.  He tries to press a bottle into my hand, but I politely wave him off.  I never could get a taste for alcohol.  Erica shyly takes the offered bottle, looking around as if she thinks someone's waiting to bust her for underage drinking.  She forgets that we're miles from the nearest chaperone, and everyone in the cabin is legally allowed to drink.  A chorus of excited squeals sings out from the long table in the corner - a handful of girls from our group are also at this party, and they also have a growing collection of bottles and plastic cups spread out in front of them.  They wave when they catch our eyes, and we slide down the bench next to them. 

When I go with to school with Brigitte tomorrow to get her final grades while Erica stays behind sleeping off her first hangover, these girls will corner me in the back of the classroom with worry in their eyes.  They want to know if I'm going to rat them our to the chaperones when the group comes back together.  We did all sign the agreement not to drink on the trip, but I won't tell.  If someone had gotten hurt that'd be a different story, but hangovers notwithstanding, everyone woke up fine this morning, so their secret is safe with me.  

Later, riding the bus across the boarder into Italy, the line of gossip up the aisle reveals that everyone went to a bar with their host family, and nearly everyone spent at least one evening drunk off their asses.  My Morman friend practically glows when she describes her first taste of Red Bull and Vodka.  One boy ended up in Hungary, and has no idea how he got there without his passport.  When we ask about it, he just shakes his head and smiles wryly - clearly, we don't want to know.  

I'm sure the chaperones knew - I don't know how they couldn't.  Or if they didn't know for sure, they must have suspected that a group of unsupervised American teenagers would relish the opportunity to bend the rules a little.  They must feel the same way about this sort of thing as I do - out of sight, out of mind, and as long as everyone stays safe, there's no harm in turning a blind eye.  

Back in the cabin, there's a fairly drinking game working it's way around the table, and the American girls excitedly take sip after sip.  I feel like an old duck when I think, "They'll regret that in the morning." A young man and woman duck into the side bedroom; as he pulls the wood paneled sliding door shut, I see her reach for the top button on her pants, and in a stunning moment of naivete, I assume they're getting changed for school tomorrow.  (Seriously, it was at least three years later when I finally realized that Oh My God, they were having sex back there.  I don't have a good reason for being this dense.  Sorry.)  

One of Brigitte's friends squeezes onto the bench next to me.  I don't remember her name any more - I don't know if she ever gave it to me.  She offers me a cigarette.

"I don't smoke."

"I should quit," she says, and takes another drag.  She starts to ask me about America, about Indiana, my school, my friends, my family.  Everything I tell her is pretty commonplace, there's nothing particularly exciting about my small town home, but she hangs of my every word.  She tells me about how hard she's studying her English, because she wants to move to American to work someday.

"What do you want to do?"

"I have no idea," she says brightly, waving cigarette smoke away with her hand.  "I just want to be there." It's a familiar feeling.

It's past midnight now, and while there are no official classes tomorrow, everyone still has to be up early tomorrow for grades.  Brigitte's mom is on her way.  Something quiet and contemplative falls over the party, and a girl in the farthest corner begins to sing.

"Life!"  She calls, and the boys and girls around her join in the chorus.  "Life is life!  Bam ba, ba da daaaaa..."  They're all a bit drunk and charmingly off-key.  It's the beginning of a different type of teen movie now, the kind that starts off too maudlin and ends with lots of tears and feelings.  I know this song, but I don't remember why.  It's not my place to sing, but I hum along on my own.    

Into the woods, and out of the woods, and home before dawn.

When Your Heart is Breaking, Even Though It's Aching

There's a church not far from Vienna.  It calls itself a monastery, but it's entirely full of nuns.  Believe me, this caused no small amount of debate when I got home. "They said it was a monastery."  "Surely, nuns in a nunnery?"  "Don't correct the nuns."  I didn't really have the nerve to ask where all the monks were, though, because every statue outside the church was a saint in varying degrees of martyrdom.  Even the Jesus on the Cross in the sanctuary was a Bloody Anguish Jesus instead of the Regretfully Resigned Jesus we'd seen in every other church.  Enjoy these statues.  Don't have nightmares.

.

[yodel/]

Austria.  Summer 2004.

No lonely goatherds on this Austrian hillside farm slash village.  Just a couple of cows, a cat, and a nice young man named Fritz who charms us all with his good humor and makes the girls swoon with his sun-kissed cheeks.  There's a church at the bottom of the hill with skeletons in its basement, which had us all crowding around the tiny window to the catacombs the night before trying to spy on the bones, but that's forgotten now.  It's warm, but the fog rolled in early this morning, and shows no signs of rolling out back out, so we've all pulled on our long sleeve shirts.  It's a little stuffy, but it keeps the chill away.    

After lunch in front of the mill, Fritz puts us in a circle and teaches us to dance.

Pünk'd

Hellbrunn, Austria.  Summer 2004.

The trick is finding the place to stand. 

Hellbrunn Palace is definitive proof that people have always had a wicked sense of humor, that laughing at the harmless misfortune of others was not invented by Ashton Kutcher, that it isn't jaded modern cynicism that perfected the prank.  

The water games at Hellbrunn Palace are not the oldest jokes in the book, but they might be my favorite.  

It's an uncharacteristically hot Austrian day.  There are few trees casting shadows over the gravel pathways winding around the palace, and we are sweating.  Profusely.  Some of us gather around a fountain, dipping our fingers into the water and dripping it across our foreheads and the backs of our necks.  It's too sun-warmed to do much in the way of cooling, but that doesn't stop us.

The guide sneaks up behind us, sunglasses on her head and smiling like she knows something.  "Welcome to Hellbrunn!" she says brightly.  We groan at her enthusiasm and fan ourselves with our fingers.   

 

Our first stop is a long stone table sat in front of a reflecting pool.  The guide invites the group to come sit at the carved stone stools surrounding the table, and there's a small rush to be the first to sit down (I hang back - it's too hot to run fast).  One girl squeals when her bare thighs hit the stone.  "It's so hot!" she says, tugging the fabric of her shorts as far down as it will decently go.  Our guide describes the former Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg Markus Stittkus von Hohenems, the man who built the palace and designed its water garden.  "Visitors are only ever meant to be here during the day," she says.  "So there are no bedrooms in the palace."  Not that it matters much, she goes on to say, because Mr. Markus liked to entertain his guests outside as much as possible.  "And who could blame them?" she asks.  "Look at the beautiful view."  

And as our heads turn to look at the reflection of the palace in the in the pool, the guide drops her hand behind the column she's been resting on.  The guests at the table shriek when the water rockets up their backs, shooting up from the holes in their seats.  The rest of us throw our arms over our heads to shield ourselves from the jets of water arcing over our heads.  "Let the Water Games begin!" our guide cackles.  I bet this never gets old.   

(Allegedly, there's one spot at all of these water features that never gets wet.  Mr. Markus himself would stand in that spot, celebrating his dryness while his guests got soaked.  The tour guides stand there now - I suppose it's only fair.)

I was quick - I managed to escape the water mostly unscathed, and I've already dried in the sun. The girl from before has a dark wet line up her back, and she squeezes water from the bottom of her t-shirt.

When the guide parks us in front of the tall tower, those at the front of the pack move to stand as far away from it as possible.  I'm at the back of the herd, which leaves me among those closest to the tower.  I can't avoid getting wet this time.   The guide presses a button, and we all flinch instinctively.  To our surprise, there's no water.  Music plays as the little men and women positioned in and around the tower twist and turn.  It would be beautiful, charming even, if it weren't for the fact that one of those cute little figures is ten seconds away from squirting me in the eye.

When the tiny figure at the top of the tower begins to spin, we grit our teeth and grasp hands, bracing ourselves.  It's coming, and we know it's coming, and our eyes are fixed on that tiny statue, just waiting for it to squirt water out of it's mouth.  

There's a shriek from the back of the group, and a quiet panicked stampede to get away from the water coming up from the ground behind them.  There's a lot of Wet Butt at the back of the group, which serves them right for being such smarty-pants at the beginning.  I'm a little damp around the ankles, but I'm much better off than the rest.  I've won out this time, but now I have no idea where to stand as we follow the guide to the next attraction, shoes squelching all the way.  

Those aren't all the tricks Mr. Markus and Hellbrunn have up their sleeves, but I'm not going to tell you about them.  You're going to visit the palace some day, and I doing want to ruin the punch line.

Statues -Schloss Hellbrunn

I could talk for days about Helbrunn Palace and the water games; I probably will, at some point.  But when I see a statue, I just can't help myself, and the gardens here a littered with them.

Mauthausen

This is the day we've all been dreading.  It's one thing to read about Nazi Germany in our history books, to read excerpts from testimonials coupled with the tamest pictures the publishers could find.  It's one thing to know it.  It's another thing entirely to stand on the grounds, surrounded by cold stone barracks, and know that thousands died in this place for no good reason.

The grounds stretch out in front of us, vast, and impossibly still.  There's so much space.  I think back to those pictures in my history books, the ones where stick-thin ghosts are pressed tightly together with barely enough room to breath.  The empty barracks remind me of summer camp.  It's hard to reconcile the two images.

There isn't an inch of this place that hasn't been turned into a memorial.  The walls in the rooms stilled labeled "Showers" are covered in graffiti - hundreds of messages left in dozens of languages, all asking for the same things.  Peace.  Remembrance.  Begging future generations to not let this ever happen again.  The ovens in the crematorium are overflowing with flowers, ribbons, and cards, and in the grass around the buildings there has grown a monument garden, statues for every nation, religion, and political affiliation the Nazis attempted to quietly remove from the world.  

Strangely, the museum affects us more than the actual camp.  I wonder if everyone else is having the same problem as I am - the calm of the grounds masking the unspeakable tragedy.  The air doesn't even move between the buildings.  Maybe nature is trying to be respectful, but it just makes me anxious.  

The museum tells us that most of the people sent to Mauthausen were what the called the "intellgentsia", educated persons from higher social classes - teachers, artists, socialists.  Unlike Auschwitz or Treblinka, camps that specialized in instant extermination, Mauthausen practiced "Extermination through Labor."  They worked their prisoners to death.

The museum is full of pictures, the ones the publishers never put in our high school history books.  Bodies stacked high, waiting to be burned.  Men and women so thin you can't tell them apart standing naked outside the barracks.  Piles of personal belongings - glasses, scarves, watches, wallets.  There weren't many children sent to this particular camp, but in the corner of one photograph is a small pile of stuffed toys.  

There is one picture of the prisoners standing in line for roll call.  I can look out window and identify the building they are standing in front of, but it still doesn't feel quite real.  Maybe it's shame - I feel slightly dirty standing in this place, gawking at the aftermath of this tragedy, like because I don't have any relatives who were killed in the Holocaust (or like one girl in our group, relatives who did the killing) I don't deserve to be here.  But I'm shaken, like the rest of them.  I can't wait to leave.

Faces

Just a small collection of faces and heads.  These faces come from various locations in France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, England, and Uganda.