I realized today that I forgot to tell you about the second part of my Easter vacation. I remembered because I was in Munich this morning, which seems to be a fairly common place for me to be recently even though it's 5 hours away from Klagenfurt. I was only there for the airport, though, on my way to Herrnhut, Germany for the weekend.
I left off telling you about my Dad and I in Munich at the concentration camp. We left Munich the next day to head off to Salzburg. I was excited because it was the first time I was going to ride on the high-speed train. I had never been on one before because they are the expensive ones, and I always choose the cheapest option. Luckily, my dad was there, so we took the fast one. We spent one day in Salzburg walking around, sitting in the sun, and mostly just relaxing. That night, we met up with a friend of my Dad's, who he had met during a pilgrimage in Assisi, Italy 5 years ago. This was the fun part of Salzburg, at least for me. I don't know how they did it 5 years ago in Italy, but the only way for the two to communicate to each other was through me. It was my first experience translating for people in an actual conversation. Of course, there were things that I couldn't get from one language to the other, but it was fun anyways. We spent the evening with him, then headed off to Vienna in the morning.
Fun again. We took the high speed train one more time. I think it was traveling around 200 km/h. You can try to figure that out for yourself in mph. Vienna was absolutely beautiful. The weather was magnificent, which made for a couple nice days walking around the city, viewing the palaces, enjoying the parks, and wandering through the market. The city was seriously amazing. If you ever get the chance, you should visit it. After two nights in Vienna, we headed off to my hometown of Klagenfurt.
Klagenfurt is the capital of the state of Carinthia, but it is an awfully small town, meaning there's nothing really to do. I showed him the highlights of the city, and we headed back off to Munich in the morning. Our last day was spent walking around Munich again. This time we took no free tours, we just relaxed. My dad left the next morning, and I stayed in Munich for a couple more hours waiting for my train.
The whole two weeks were amazing, and I can't say that I ever expected to spend a week in Europe with my dad. I consider myself very lucky to even be able to have the chance to do that. We learned a lot about the dark history of Nazi Germany, saw quite a few century-old palaces from distant empires, enjoyed hours in the sun on the grass, and filled our bellies quite graciously.
My last couple hours by myself in Munich were spent exploring parts of the city we didn't see. My walk ended, however, at the very place where our free tour had once ended. It was a square where Hitler used to hold demonstrations. On one end of the square was a stage, guarded by two massive stone lions. To the left of the stage stands a large cathedral, and to the right stands the government. We were told how the leader used to rally the crowd with powerful words spoken from that very spot on the stage, so I went up to see what it was like for myself. Standing there, it was easy to see how a feeling of power could be absorbed from the pulsing crowd. There wasn't even anybody in the square cheering for me, but it was still evident. I walked down the steps of the stage towards the center of the square and thought about what it must've been like to stand in the crowd during those speeches. The words were presented perfectly, so perfectly that even the opposition bowed to the evil that spoke them. I looked up at the stage, and a song came to my mind. It's a song called "Pain" by Aaron Strumpel. The end of the song says:
It's just around the corner, when every knee will bow,
and the freedom will come.
It's just around the corner, when You'll come in the clouds,
and pain will be no more.
I imagined that the stage was once filled with a voice of pure evil, but someday soon, that evil will be replaced by the Voice of love. Someday soon, that square will be filled again with a crowd, and the people will be bowing. They will be bowing because the Voice will be taking away pain, hurt, loneliness, anger, fear, evil. It won't be just that square either, it will be every square on earth filled with all of us imperfect people. I have hope that that day will be very soon, and when it comes, there will be nothing better.
love
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