Free Your Mind, and Your Brain Will Follow

It is not good, so they say, to be stuck in one's ways. I tend to agree, but all too often, I further tend to be too lazy to haul myself out of my, at this point, entirely too deep ruts. Usually, I settle into a routine and then find myself complaining bitterly about both the difficulty/necessity of altering it and the staggering ennui such routines inevitably engender. This is where my friends come in. They are often the helping hands that lift me (I ain't heavy; I'm your brother) out of the pit of mundanity I have dug for myself (even in foreign countries!). Sometimes, it's out of a sense of competition ("if X can do it and survive, certainly you can too!"), but most often it's because I am perhaps hyper-social, and I really don't find a lot of things fun unless there's someone along for them to be fun with. Therefore, I am truly thankful for my friends, especially the travel-minded ones who like me enough to encourage me to get up off my slothful ass and either accompany them on trips or take trips to visit them.

I had an absofuckinglutely grand time with the inimitable Kyle B. Gorman in Prague and Budapest, and my initial desire to recount it in blog form was thwarted by the fact that I have not at all mastered what certain travel writers call (I am not making this up) "The Accordion of Time" — the contraction and expansion of events and details for the purpose of effective narrative. Thus, recounting seven days of adventures in Eastern Europe would take... seven days. None of you has that kind of time. None of me has that kind of work-ethic. Instead, I leave it to the old on-line photo album, found, as ever, right here.

I had planned a trip back to dear old Bonn, but my pal Johannes decided to go to Cuba on the only dates I could have made it. He's coming here next weekend though (shit, I need to clean!) .

On June 27th I'll be riding a bus for 24 hours to get to Belgrade and my favorite ex-pat, Katie Woznicki. I'll be there long enough for a Fourth of July celebration and plenty of Tesla related mayham!

My last hurrah on the Continent won't technically be on the Continent at all, as I'm heading to the English Midlands and the home of everyone's favorite Shrewsburian, Tim O'Neill from July 10th through 14th. We are going to go to Liverpool, look at the special exhibition at the Beatles Museum on Ringo Starr's solo career, and then go home. Somehow, I will get back in time to board a train for Frankfurt Airport and go home.

This will not stop me though, as immediately thereafter, the Infamous Megabus will ferry Ian and me to mythical Chicago, where we will pick up Paul and head for the bloated confines of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, home of the Minnesota Twins.

I know that I come away from the next 5 weeks 100% flat broke. I only pray that I do not die.

Red Bricks and Hott Lixx

(This was going to be part two of my Stralsund adventure, until I realized that me walking around taking pictures of brick buildings would be much better conveyed through the medium of said pictures.)

The accompanying pictures for parts one and two can be found here.

Stralsund is an old, walled city on the mainland side of the Strelasund sound. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (I defy you to find something of size or age in Europe that isn't) for its copious Brick Gothic structures. I walked into town, desperate for food, so I stopped at the first place I saw and ordered a "Big Döner" an Apfelschorle (sparkling apple juice). I was informed by the extremely friendly, German (Döner is usually the realm of Turks) proprietor that a Danish tour group had just swept through and cleaned out the last of his Apfelschorle, so I settled for a Coke, and that's the only reason I mention the food at all.
Acting on the advice of one of my old professors, I headed for the tallest thing I could see (this applies only in Europe; in the US — usually — you want to head in the exact opposite direction of the tallest thing you can see). The good Dr. Hammermeister did not disappoint, as this course led me straight to the Marienkirche, which has a 495 foot tower that was not only the tallest structure in the world from 1625-1647, but also was equipped with 366 (fairly steep) steps and an observation deck open to the public. To this I bounded gamely up, and was rewarded with a gorgeous view of the town, including the two other large churches in town (the Nikolaikirche and St. Jakobskirche), the giant, new bridge that takes cars across the Strelasund to Rügen and the expansive Volkswerft shipyard (Stralsund has a lot of big stuff). After taking in the view, and a few snapshots, I descended into the church, which is almost as stunning as the view from the tower and counts among its assets a staggering organ, an ornate high altar and a very nice lady who will encourage you to take as many pictures as your heart desires.

Moving Me Up

Faithful followers are going to have a lot to occupy their free time in the next few days. I have to finish my report on Stralsund, as well as detail my week-long trip to Prague and Budapest with the one and only Kyle "Killa B." Gorman. I also want to write something about my emotional state and how the looming end of my time in Germany is affecting it for personal, cathartic reasons. But right now I'm catching up on things I missed from the Internet in that time (thanks, Google Reader!) and one of them was a blog post from Mike Doughty which, in addition to his breakdown of what he's looking for in a life partner (which I found sort of cathartic and reassuring itself), contained a video for a song by Arthur Russell called "This Is How We Walk on the Moon", a sentence which I was sure I had made up, but am no so glad I didn't as you will see if you watch this:

Architecture Is Bad for Your Moral Compass (A Day at the Baltic Sea, Part I)

The accompanying pictures for parts one and two can be found here.

For weeks I was pressured from all sides to join four of my friends in their endeavor to rent a car for this past long weekend and — entrusting it to a Briton who had, in all his born days, not once set foot to pedal on the proper side of the road — drive to Poland. This, I politely and repeatedly declined, not out of any lack of confidence in the driver, but rather due to a desire to save money for my upcoming trips to Budapest and Prague (one imagines the scene of a justifiably sour Kyle Gorman walking right back down the terminal, when I show up at Tegel with turned-out pockets attended by little fluttering moths). So, of course, it took all of five minutes for one of my fellow teachers to convince me that I should take a trip on my own up to the Baltic Sea over the weekend. Don't ask me how my brain works. Though, it's true, my trip was cheaper.
Anyway, the fact is I hopped the 6:30 regional train at the Hauptbahnhof that runs straight up to Stralsund, and after about three hours of stopping in towns named after Berlin streets (Prenzlau, Eberswalde, Anklam), I arrived at the station in Stralsund, where I ran into a wall of riot police completely disproportionate to the amount of soccer fans present at the station. I didn't have time to stick around for the police riot, because I had to make a connection to get to the island of Rügen and check out some actual Gestapo tactics on the streets of a settlement called Prora. Explaining this is going, I'm afraid, to require a tangent:

--------------------------------Historical Interlude------------------------------------------
You see, when the Nazis came to power, they outlawed not only the Communist Party but all labor unions, subsuming them all under the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF) or German Labor Front. This, you might imagine, made all those left wing workers (some of them quite militant) very angry. To appease them, the DAF was made responsible for the Kraft durch Freude program (KdF) or Strength through Joy. The basic idea being to bribe the proletariat into accepting National Socialism in the place of their familiar, regular Socialism. This was done, in part, by giving every German worker 3 weeks' vacation. But it was also under the auspices of this program that a certain Ferdinand Porsche designed the affordable, mass-produced family car, the KdF-Wagen. Originally to be made available for 990 Reichsmark (approx. 11,000€ today) or 198 easy payments of 5RM a week, the KdF-Wagen achieved worldwide fame as the Volkswagen Beetle.
The other mode of transportation associated with KdF is the cruise ship. A fleet of four of these huge ships was built, and one, the Wilhelm Gustloff achieved maritime infamy when it was sunk by a Soviet submarine, as it was attempting to evacuate over 10,000 refugees in 1945. The resulting deaths of some 9,400 people make the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff the largest single tragedy in seafaring history.
Of course, now that the Germans had all this free time and all these ways of going on vacation, they needed someplace to go to. It was with this in mind that KdF built the Prora spa. A sprawling complex of concrete hotels stretching nearly 3 miles along the beach in the Northeast corner of Rügen, Prora was to be able to host 20,000 people at any given time, and with 3,000 arrivals and departures every day from April to October, 14 million people were expected to spend one week of their vacations in the resort. Eight 500-meter-long hotels made up the bulk of the complex, with the other 500 meters taken up by a large event hall containing 20,000 numbered seats (making it possible to know just who, for whatever reason, was opting out of the mandatory community activities). Also planned were a huge swimming pool, an even bigger parking garage (for all the KdF-Wagen), and various other necessary things like staff quarters etc.
Due to the whole, you know, war thing, construction was stopped after only the 8 hotels were built, and the spa (like the original KdF-Wagen) was never used for its intended purpose. It served various military purposes during the war, and subsequently became the property of the East German Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), National People's Army, which stationed up to 10,000 soldiers there at one point, who took to using a large quay wall for target practice. After reunification, it was passed on to the NVA's successors in the defense of Eastern Germany, the West German Bundeswehr, who left the complex in 1992. Prora has been open to the public since then, though it is still government property.
---------------------------------End Historical Interlude--------------------------------

And so it was, thanks to a couple fascist wing-nuts 72 years ago (almost to the day, it turns out), that I stood at the Prora train station — quite alone, trying to figure out how to get out of it. The source of my difficulty was, as it happens, that I was never actually in it — largely because it isn't actually there. Less constructed, even, than the lesser stops on my beloved Regional Express 7 (Potsdam Rehbrücke), the Prora stop (it really doesn't support the weight affixed to it by calling it a station) is discernible only due to the fact that the grass gives way to enough pavement to approximately accommodate this and a small, covered bench.
Pulling away, the train revealed a tiny, deserted parking lot next to a tinier, equally deserted hut (which I am currently struggling to find another adjective for, though "ramshackle" comes to mind) and the way off this concrete island. Checking the A-4 sized timetable (quite frankly, I was impressed it was laminated) on the wall of the hut as I passed, I decided I would shoot for the 2:16 train back to Stralsund, so that I'd get back around 3:00.
I crossed the street and stepped onto the curiously broad sidewalk, which attribute was justified nearly at once, as I was very quickly overtaken by a large cadre of Intense Cyclists. Walking the 20 minutes down to Prora, I was looking for any first-hand sign of my goal. Given that it's nicknamed the "Colossus of Prora", I expected it to be rather hard to miss. All I could see from there were signs promising that the place was just a little bit farther along. These signs were obviously directed at motorists and cyclists (indeed, I was the only pedestrian I encountered); ¼ hour is not "just a little bit". But eventually I turned a corner as directed by those ever-helpful German signs and my gaze stretched down a long driveway, fixed on the six-story mass of concrete that was blocking my view of the sea.
Trudging on down the driveway (again, if you visit this place, bring wheels!), I finally got to the cross-building of house three, which houses a seafood restaurant, a nightclub, and the permanent exhibition "MACHTUrlaub" (a phrase with the dual meanings "go on vacation" and "power vacation"). The latter is how I found out, for example, that I was in house three. It was chock full of information divided into two basic categories: the DAF in general; and National Socialism on Rügen itself, which included an extensive exhibit on the Eastern Europeans who were brought there as forced-labor, and the "purification" (banishing of Jews) of Rügen's various resorts. I found the former rather unremarkable, nothing your average Germanist hasn't seen a hundred times in some form or another. The latter, on the other hand, was much more engaging and through the display of letters describing living and working conditions (sub-human) and various "personal effects", such as uniforms worn in the barracks and work booklets stamped with how much and what kind of work was done by its holder along with signs announcing draconian rules (sex with a German, for example, was a capital offense), and what had happened to the specific rule-breakers, along with reminders that they had come to Germany "voluntarily". When I went to have a look at the model of the complex (good for getting one's bearings), one of the most classically Kafkaësque moments in my life happened when I followed some hand-taped signs directing up two flights of stairs to a vastly long hallway where I did not see a single other person. Expecting no one else to be around, I opened the door marked as the model room (which I half expected to be locked) and was shocked to find the room jammed full of people listening to a tour guide. I know it doesn't sound that weird, but I was alienated. Thankfully, rather than chuck apples at me the tour guide just kept on talking, filling us all in about where we were and what the plans for this place had been. This is where I got most of my info on the place; he was very knowledgeable. People kept rotating in and out, but the only time he broke off from his spiel was to shoot a quick "Tag, Heiko" at the maintenance guy passing through. 15 minutes of this was more than enough, in a good way.

Sufficiently armed with Context, I walked down the rest of the "Museum Mile" (disclaimer: nowhere close to an actual mile), which featured an art gallery, an NVA museum, an exhibit about wildlife around the Baltic, a "Viennese Café" and, finally, a passage through the building to the side facing the beach. I walked through, with insouciant disregard for the sign warning of falling debris to see several people taking pictures of something on past the fence on the right. I looked to see what it was, but I couldn't see what was so photogenic, until I realized that they were taking pictures of the buildings stretching off into the horizon. Really, the things are that long. After snapping a couple photos for myself, I started down the well-worn but precarious path through brush and overgrowth toward the beach. The beach was amazing. It was a bright, sunny day, and there were a quite a few people lounging around in the sand or wading cautiously into the chilly water. The view of Rügen's chalk cliffs was brilliant, as was the unobstructed line of sight out into the sea. I walked along the beach and up along the quay wall for the length of two buildings and then headed back towards them to take in the other side. Aside from the aforementioned "Museum Mile", every other part of the entire complex is abandoned and crumbling. Window panes are either completely gone or smashed, everything on the first floor is boarded up to prevent squatters getting in, I guess, and graffiti abounds (a personal favorite being the advertisement for the JAM Beach Club, which looked straight out of Saved by the Bell). I went the length of another two buildings, when I came upon a wall blocking off the rest of the complex, so I turned left and walked down another very long road back in the direction of the train station. On the way, I passed an overgrown monument to Otto Winzer, East German foreign minister from 1965-1975, and the road spit me out practically where I had begun, in front of the train station.
This would have been a pleasant surprise, except that I was 56 minutes early for my planned departure, which meant that I had missed the previous train by approximately three minutes (I am, actually, rather used to this). Since I hadn't eaten all day, I decided to head back to the museum area and grab a currywurst or suchlike at the little snack stand I'd noticed. This was a bad idea, because in the 20 minutes it took me to walk back there, a good 15 other people got the same idea and a place in front of me in line. Naturally, there was only one guy manning the stand, and he had a tendency to forget the large orders placed by the overtaxed fathers with noisy dogs and children, and the suburban motorcycle gang that looked like a bunch of Wild Hogs rejects. Over the course of the 15 minutes I stood there in line, I realized that that if I ordered anything that wasn't pre-wrapped, I was going to miss my train and be stuck there in Prora until at least 4:00 when the next train showed up (by the way, you have to be pretty far out in the middle of nowhere not to get at least one train an hour). I made do with a Nestle soft-serve cone, partly because I was in a hurry, and partly because I had resolved to save more generous patronage for a more deserving, expedient establishment. I scrambled back towards the train station, silently cursing the tourism gods as I passed the lonely, excitingly painted used book store I had mentally noted to check out, when I saw they were having one of those Armageddon sales where you get some absurd number of books for 5€.
I made it to the train station with about 5 minutes until the train came, and used this time to look around for a place to buy my ticket. If you look back to my earlier description of the station, you will not be surprised to learn that there was absolutely no way to purchase a ticket at this stop. "No matter", I thought, "I'll just buy one on the train". The train pulled up, the conductor greeted me, and I sat down and waited for him to come around to check tickets. But in the 45 minutes it took us to get from Prora to Stralsund, I never saw him again. Everyone who got on at the next 8 stops could have ridden for free, had they felt like it, which, as it happened, I did. And so it was that I waltzed out of the station in Stralsund a full 6€ the richer and in the high spirits of someone who's just "gotten away with it"...

Stay tuned for our next installment: Adventures in Red Brick Gothic, or: Your American University Owes us Big Time!

There's Nothing Like the Feeling You Can Never Forget...

YES!