DAY 12
Monday, April 13th, 1998 (Room with Lacy 133) 6:50am
MUNICH, GERMANY: HOTEL IMPERIAL
I can’t believe that tomorrow we go home! I’m ready, but wish coming back wouldn’t be so hard to do. I know with a blink of an eye I will be able to travel back in my mind.
I forgot to talk about yesterday’s mass. We were in a balcony and sang beautifully. The organist and wife said how lovely our robes were. We went down and sang songs right to the faces of all these old people. One reminded me of Grandma and all seemed like I had seen them before. Afterwards we shook all their hands and they loved to touch us. They spoke in German but we knew we had touched their hearts. One couldn’t talk and motioned to us. Beth helped her upstairs. Leah kissed them on the cheek. Mr. M. went back in the church and a lady said that there were angels in there today. That made me feel spiritual inside. I hope I have more warm fuzzy feelings as I have had on this trip. We also went to the Gazebo yesterday and sang “I Am Sixteen Going On Seventeen.” Bev, Beth, and Amanda all went crazy. They absolutely love the movie. It was so cold. Hungry, tired, okay.
(Monday 10:20pm)
Today we sang beautiful at a church that was so huge. We all seem to be coughing a lot. The mass went quicker and we sang at the exit where people gathered. I led us into the church which was an honor. We later went to Dachau concentration camp. It made us all sick to our stomachs and a few of us threw up. I took a stone from there. We had a great tour of Munich. We saw the Nymphenburg Palace, and English Garden that’s a little bit bigger than Central Park. We saw Maximilian Street that’s like 5th Ave in New York. There was also a Four Seasons Hotel, and an opera house where Mr. M.’s grandma sang at before she moved to America in the 1930s. We saw a gate that was used to enter Munich. We saw Hitler’s headquarters, a 1ft. deep canal with a boy pulling a boat, a BMW factory, the olympic place (1972), beer making places like Lowenbrau, and learned the nicknames of the city: City of Beer, City of Music, City of Fashion.
— *below are notes in my journal, but I’m not sure what they mean:
Pure law (nothing added)
Strong for fasting holidays 75-80% alcohol
Penny tax for beer to rebuild opera house
—
Our ending dinner was very special and we all cried. Mary and Anne are sick though and Mary only stayed for a while. Anne didn’t come at all. Tomorrow’s a long day so I’ll write more about it then. Tired. Sad. Ready for home. Scared.
Ingrid. We had a superb guide today and she inspires me to come back.
(end of journal)
In 2022, I found the stone I had removed from Dachau in my house. It was inside a beautiful music box I had purchased in Vienna that played a waltz. I remembered my grandmother loved waltzes and I thought of her when I opened it. I had recently read the book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. In this moment, I was practicing her question of holding items in my hands and asking myself whether or not it sparked joy, if not I’d let it go. I took the stone out of the music box. As I held that stone, I felt sick to my stomach. It didn’t feel like it belonged there, and definitely did not spark joy. The opposite. I took it outside and buried it in the ground.
It was in that moment of burying that stone, that I knew I wanted to revisit my journey and share it here.
I recently rewatched the film The Sound of Music with my boys. They had been singing the song “Do Re Me” on repeat at bath time and begged to see where it had came from. They had both learned it in school and only seen clips from the movie. Was I ready to watch the full film with them? Were they ready for learning about this part of our history? Something told me yes. So we did.
The next day I ran into the school crossing guard at our library, and she told me my youngest had told her he had watched it over the weekend.
My boys had questions, but they loved how smart and brave the kids were. They loved seeing how even the nuns had decided it was alright to remove a car part or two in this case…. to help stall… and allow Maria and the Von Trapp family to escape.
I’ll end with one more picture of The Sound of Music Gazebo and lyrics from one of my favorite songs from the film: “Climb Every Mountain.”
Thank you so much for being here.
Climb every mountain
Search high and low
Follow every byway
Every path you know
Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
‘Till you find your dream
A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live
* Disclaimer: This is a work of creative non-fiction based on actual journal entries at the dates and places included. However, I cannot guarantee the accuracy of all the information included, as it was written solely from what I remembered at the time. To respect the privacy of individuals, many names have been changed. The journal has been edited for grammar and punctuation. This is not an advertisement. I am not being compensated for sharing anything from my journal including, but not limited to, places we stayed or visited. Alcohol should be consumed responsibly. Mentions of consumption of alcohol in my journal is, to the best of my knowledge, in accordance with local laws for the places we visited abroad at the time in 1998.
Read all journal entries from this trip! here
