#7 - Hitler and the supermodel

Nuremberg was always going to struggle to live up to the brilliance of Switzerland. The large, grimy city in central Germany is steeped in history, but is more well known in modern times as one of the birthplaces of the horrific Nazi regime. Hitler and his Nazi Party considered Nuremberg the ‘most German city in Germany’ in the late 1920s and chose it as the base for many of their activities over the next 15 years. It was Nuremberg where Hitler delivered some of his most famous propaganda speeches, and where the Nazis built a sprawling base on the side of the city to house their massive rallies. That base, now known as Reichsparteitagsgelände, was my destination for the day.

I was feeling pretty down and alone on Saturday without my travel buddy, so what better way to cheer myself up than spending the day at a Holocaust museum? From my lame hostel in central Nuremberg – where I didn’t see anyone younger than about 30 for the entire stay – it was a three-kilometre walk. The rally grounds are a huge, sprawling compound made up of a crumbling congress hall, a huge parade area, the Zeppelin field (constructed purely for Hitler’s rallies) and several other dilapidated fields and long-demolished parade grounds. Designed to the tastes of Hitler himself, construction of the grounds started in 1933. They were to be a monument to the might of the Nazi Party and Germany, a show of strength and superiority. Reichsparteitagsgelände was actually meant to be much bigger and more ornate than what stands there today, but once war broke out in 1939 the Nazi’s focus shifted and it was never completed.

The most striking building of the grounds is the congress hall, which was only half completed. Today, the shell of the building has been converted into an exhaustive museum chronicling the rise of fascism, Hitler and the Nazis, and the horrific aftermath of the regime. I paid my $5 euros and quite enjoyed the audio tour, beside the fact that none of the displays were captioned in English, so crucial details about photos, places and people in them were left to my imagination. Like in the U.S, where historical sites are very honest about the horrors of the past, Germany is extremely upfront about what the Nazis inflicted on so many.

After the tour, I wandered the innards of the unfinished congress hall, which was meant to be opulent and grandiose. Each seat and viewing area was meticulously designed to face a marble lectern at one end of the hall. Here, Hitler would have stood to deliver his speeches. The Nazi architecture is striking, and was designed to be minimalist, epic, sprawling, symmetrical and sharp-edged to infer precision and power. Yet you would not get that sense of style judging by the current state of the building. Since the end of World War II, the half-built congress hall has been allowed to deteriorate and was used as a storage facility in the decades since the war.

Despite the massive worldwide interest in Hitler and the Nazi regime, Germany has always felt uneasy about spending money on historical sites linked to the Nazis. Most have been left to crumble, which I guess is Germany’s final ‘f**k you’ to Hitler. Other than the museum, nothing has been preserved or maintained throughout the entire rally grounds. What’s left is a grimy, eerie and ugly reminder of one of the most brutal regimes the world has ever known. Even the famous and once opulent Zeppelin Field, where Hitler delivered some of his iconic speeches, has been left to decay. These days, a motor racing track runs right through the centre of the Zeppelin Field. Piles or rubbish from a recent race event litter the field. On the actual marble promenade, where Hitler stood and barked his propaganda, teenagers practice on their skateboards, dodging curious tourists waiting their turn to stand in the same spot Hitler once did. The marble steps are literally crumbling, and huge pillars that once rose above the field have been torn down.

There is no respect for the place. I saw many people on the marble steps taking selfies with huge grins on their faces. It was a weird scene. In a way, it was kind of sad to see such iconic pieces of history left to ruin, but completely understandable why Germany had so little interest in preserving monuments to the worst period of its history. There is a recent push to restore and turn the rally grounds into a permanent memorial and a reminder to future generations about the danger of letting demagogues rise unchecked. Whether Germany will fund the restorations is yet to be seen.

Rant time: If I’ve learnt anything during my time in Germany, it typically never ends well when disillusioned voters take a chance on aggressive and divisive populist figures. America, be wary. Sure, from what we have seen so far, Donald Trump is not evil incarnate like Hitler turned out to be. Yet Trump is divisive, full of bile, nationalistic, antagonistic, impulsive, and won his way to the White House riding a wave of disillusionment speckled with racist, sexist and imperialistic undertones. Hmm…

After that uplifting experience, I was headed by train onto Passau, a tiny town on the Austrian and German border. It was to become one of the strangest nights of my life. The mishaps started in Plattling, where I got on the wrong train. Once you move away from the more urban areas of Germany, the amount of people able to speak English dramatically plummets. Once I found someone who could understand me and after realising my mistake, I found the right train and somehow, eventually, ended up at the end of the line in Passau. It was late now, almost 9pm, and check-in at my hostel finished at 9.30pm. Passau is built on the edge of a massive cliff, and a canal separates much of the town. To get to my hostel, I had to walk through Old Town, cross the canal, climb up a steep cliff and enter an old castle perched on the top of the ridge. The walk was meant to take 20 minutes, which meant I’d arrive at 9.20pm with plenty of time to spare. Right? Wrong.

Things started well enough. I crossed the canal, found the steps leading up to the steep cliff climb and pumped through the first three or four staircases like it was nothing. It was cold now, about minus 4, but I was feeling great. Before long, the combined weight of my backpack and the burningcold air in my lungs was slowing me down, but I was still loving it. Behind me was a stunning view of a perfect little city, and in my ears was the latest Metallica album. I was 10 minutes from beer and the fun of hostel life. Life was good.

Once I got to the top of the steps, things started to unravel. The lights that had illuminated the path up the cliff stairs stopped, and it was hard to make out where to go next. None of the bush paths seemed well-worn, so I took a chance and chose a clearing that was in the general direction of the hostel. This… this was a poor decision. Before long, I found myself traipsing through a potato farm, completely drenched in sweat. My GPS had given up and left me on my own, and it was now 9.25pm. I was stuffed. I’m a pretty calm person, and there’s only three things capable of winding me up. My sister, losing at Call of Duty online and when technology – in this case my GPS - lets me down. I was pissed. When I lost my footing on a rotting potato and almost crashed to the ground a few minutes later, I abandoned humility altogether and kicked the churned-up earth while letting out a short, guttural roar. Sigh. No Metallica guitar solo was going to remedy this disaster.

Ultimately, and after being blanked and ignored by three cars, I successfully flagged down a slightly bewildered German man, who stopped his car and pointed in the right direction. I was a full kilometre off track. He must have been wondering why this strange Australian lad was sweating in minus 4 temperatures, but he wished me luck and I was on my way.

I eventually found the hostel, which was embedded in an old castle on a hill overlooking Passau. It was beautiful, but impenetrable. It was 9.40pm by the time I arrived, and the place was completely locked up and eerily quiet. I wandered around in the cold for a bit, desperately hoping someone would see me and take pity and let me in. I didn’t hear a peep from the place in 15 minutes, and eventually went exploring in some desperate final ploy to avoid a chilly, ignominious end. A few minutes down the road I found this trendy little pub built on the same hill and quickly rushed inside. I sat down and, surprisingly, the place was pumping. I ordered a beer and a banquet of German bread and dip, because what else to do other than gorge when faced with a cold night outside? The place had free wifi, so I sent out a call for help on Facebook in a half-joking, half-deadly serious ‘this is it’ post. That is where this story turns golden.

Remember that crazy awesome German girl Jacky I met in Zurich? Well, she saw my cry for help and remembered she had a friend living in Passau. Wait, what? Passau is a tiny town on the border in the middle of nowhere really. It was so isolated and its people perceived it as being so unremarkable that whenever I told them I was from Australia and was travelling through they recoiled with genuine surprise. So for Jacky to have a friend living in this small outpost was beyond coincidental. It was remarkable, bordering on ridiculous.  Within about five minutes, Jacky got back to me: “Here is the address. She is waiting for you. Her name is Sam. Good luck, have fun. Nice girl.” I tap the address into Google Maps and the apartment is less than 800 metres away… Insane.

So there I was five minutes later, bounding down the hill towards the apartment, momentarily wondering if this was all just a hoax. I arrived about ten minutes later, ring the bell, and standing there is this young 10/10, drop-dead gorgeous German girl named Sam. She lets me in, gives me a moment to regain composure and thaw out, and then says: “I’m sorry, you’ll have to sleep in my bed, I hope that is okay.”

…

And so that’s how I ended up in bed with a German supermodel. It was now midnight, and Sam had to get up for work early in the morning, so it was quickly lights out. As I lay there quiet as a mouse, I remember staring out into the darkness of her bedroom and stifling a laugh. This is ridiculous. This could only happen to me. Why am I like this? What an awesome, silly, amazing, heart wrenching and ridiculous week it had been. The ending seemed fitting.

Passau was beset by rain on Sunday morning, so I lazed around writing and waited until the worst had passed before heading out to explore. I must have looked out of place wandering the Passau streets with a travel backpack on because I got plenty of strange looks as I explored. Tourists were clearly a novelty around here, which is surprising because Passau is gorgeous. The town is known for being built at the intersection of three rivers. Besides that, it is small, quaint, cute, cosy, old and full of narrow cobblestone streets and a truly amazing church. St Stephen’s Cathedral is without doubt the most beautiful church I have ever experienced. Completed in 1693, the cathedral is giant and ornate, with incredibly detailed sculptures and statues adorning every wall and roof. Until it was trumped in 1994, St Stephen’s was also known to have the largest pipe organ in the world.  As I took it all in, a church choir was practising and provided a spine-tingling soundtrack to the experience. I’m a firm but silent atheist these days, but it was hard not to feel something spiritual in a place like that. Wonderful.

I was surprised at the depth and intrigue of Passau's history. In an interesting twist, a young Adolf Hitler briefly called Passau home between 1892 and 1894, long before he went apeshit. A few years later, the dastardly Heinrich Himmler - who would eventually become one of the most powerful and brutal commanders in the Nazi Party – moved his family to Passau for several years. Passau doesn’t like publicising its links to the Nazis, and who can blame them.

I also returned to and explored Veste Oberhaus, the castle where I should have stayed on Saturday night. Perched on a hill, it offers a stunning vantage point of Passau and the confluence point of the three rivers below. Veste Oberhaus was first built in 1219, and was renovated several times over the centuries, and thus offers an insight into the fortification techniques dating back to the 13th century. It's pretty cool wandering along and imagining the battles that took place in that very spot over the years.

For now, my time in Passau - and Germany itself - was at an end. When this trip is all said and done though, I feel Passau will be among my most vivid memories... for mostly unconventional reasons. Next stop: Cesky Krumlov.