Diametric Opposites

Quickly I made it off the train and to my hostel just behind Hackerbrücke. I desperately needed to dump my luggage and take a shower, as the 32°C heat was absolutely killing me. Yet, no time to spare, as my friends were already waiting at the historic Hofbräuhaus up in the city centre.

For hundreds of years, it was the home city to dukes and duchesses, and kings and queens of Bavaria. Now, it is one of the major technological capitals in the world. With a massively diverse population and beer halls at every corner, Munich is arguably one of the greatest cities on the planet. And it was in Munich's Hofbräuhaus am Platzl, in February 1920, that Adolf Hitler held the first meeting of the NSDAP, the party who in turn will become the German Nazi party and plunge the world into the second world war. 

Fifteen minutes later, and back I was, on the first train I could find that would take me right up to Marienplatz. This was my second trip to the city of Munich, and I had made it a point to get myself a seat and a beer in the historic Hofbräuhaus, especially after the long queue had impeded me from doing so back in February. I read up on my history beforehand, and whilst approaching the building, I couldn't help but imagine how it must have been like all the way back in the '20s - a beer hall originally built for the kings of Munich in the late 16th century, which was then opened to the public in 1828. It was the meeting place of the, back then, NSDAP. It also was the local pub for the first Soviet leader Lenin; and also for Mozart (who lived around the corner from it) around a hundred and fifty years before him.

But the universe is the master of irony, in a good way. Following the mini-scavenger hunt I had to play to find my friends amongst the thousands of people who sit in there everyday, I found them in the central courtyard. As they saying says, when you're in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when you're in Munich, get a maß, and start drinking. And sitting next to me there was this elderly German who was simply enjoying some beer and the biggest pork knuckle I've ever seen.

Conversation quickly ensued, and after the usual niceties of "Where are you from?" and "Is Malta a country? Really?", I couldn't resist by tackling the bull by the horns. And amongst the awkward looks from all over the place, there came my statement of "Ah, so this is the place where Hitler started preaching his ideology right?". And that is when what I was not expecting happened. We talked, for hours, over a few more litres of beer too. 

From Brexit, to the moron in the Oval Office, and the rise in nationalism. The illusion, believed by so many people, the common statements that you hear by the older generations, "You know, it was better when we were worse off" and the subsequent thought that goes with it, "Who's fault is it?". Why do people always have to blame others, typically immigrants, for their own fuck ups in the first place?

Then about Orbán, and Erdoğan, and their systematic breaking down of the democratic institutions in their own countries, and their ever increasing grip on power. I guess it is part of human nature, after all, as John Steinbeck said, "Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power." And why do people keep voting for such autocratic leaders? Do they really not know any better?

We kept discussing all sorts of historical issues, and current affairs. And fascinatingly, the parallels to what had happened in Germany back in the '20s and '30s are never ending. The blaming of the immigrants and Jews during the post-first-world-war-recession, the coup attempts of the 20s in the Weimar Republic, Hitler's ascension to power, and subsequent dissolution of democratic institutions. We've already been through all of this, how can we not learn from our mistakes?

But, what gave us, all of us who were sitting there at that table, the courage to look forward and to know that we will not see those things happen ever again, was the fact that we were there ... two Greeks, two Germans, a Romanian, an American and a Maltese ... all drinking a maß of the best Hofbräu helles together. In the very same place that once was the meeting place for all of those who called for world dominance by an Aryan race, and who eventually committed horrible crimes against humanity itself ... we, irrespective of our nationalities, differences, opinions and ideologies, were there enjoying ourselves and our beer, together. Standing up, for what one might argue that is the diametrically opposite ideology, from that of nearly a hundred years earlier ...