Ukraine…”1,000 explosionen” was the last line of a bus news message. My German is extremely limited but I whispered to my husband, “I think Russia just invaded Ukraine.” Only one of us paid for an international cell plan for our trip so my husband pulled out his phone to confirm the news. The bus message continued to flip to other German news that I couldn’t understand and our bus continued on on it’s route from Berchesgarden to Salzburg.
Later that same evening we were out trying to find a place for dinner and we came across a priest leading a prayer group of about 25 people with candles. They were chanting/singing some sort of prayer. I was unsure if the vigil was for Ukraine or for the upcoming season of lent, but it was very somber, yet also very beautiful.
Weeks leading up to our trip we had been following the situation of Russia and Ukraine. Some of our family members were concerned about us going, but we had seen no security concerns in our planned countries of Germany & Austria so we went ahead with our trip.
Before the invasion the only thing we witnessed was a protest in Vienna, which we discovered was against the country’s vaccine mandate. Thankfully the event was peaceful and we actually found all the information about the planned protests from the U.S. embassy’s website.
The timeline of all this is going to be a bit a off due to the time change from the U.S. to Austria, but I do know that for us the following morning we woke up to knowing Russia had officially invaded Ukraine and that lights were still on at the White House in D.C. which was around 1 am East Coast time.
We ended up going about our day (hiking was in the agenda) but we spent most of our hike talking about Russia and Ukraine. The hardest part to grasp was how eerily the invasion seemed to be similar to all the WW2 history we had been learning about on our trip. We toured the Dachau concentration camp 6 days prior. Over 40,000 people died there, not to mention I learned that there were 100’s of concentration camps and death camps in WW2. The number of people tortured and killed ranges from 6-10 million. It’s unimaginable to comprehend how evil one person could be to another. As our guide informed us new prisoners were greeted by their Capos (prison group leader) with 25 punches to the face because that was the “least worse thing they were going to experience while at Dachau”.
In addition to Dachau we had gone to the Nazi Documentation center and explored the Nazi party rally grounds. I remember seeing pictures of Hitler and WW2 in my school textbooks and I saw first hand that some of those buildings are still around. It was very surreal.
4:00 pm hit and the text messages began rolling in. “Are you still in Europe?” “Things are ok right?” We had forgotten that everyone else was just waking up hearing the news, when we had known for 8 hours already. At that point life in Salzburg was pretty normal. We rode the bus from Berchtesgaden to Salzburg with kids coming home from school in fun costumes to celebrate Carnival. But that didn’t mean that the invasion wasn’t a topic among everyone. Again I know very little German, but when we were out to eat that night we could hear the table next to us discussing the situation.
On our last day overseas we took the train from Salzburg back to Munich. Germany military waited in groups on all the platforms at our first stop across the boarder. Immediately our train was searched by German police. I later spoke to someone on our plane who travels to Germany frequently and he mentioned that over the past few years the German government had been cracking down on refugees coming into the country, so the search might not have been due to the invasion at all. All I can say is that the police walked right by us and didn’t seem too concerned. Meanwhile my husband and I couldn’t understand the train message coming over the speakers and we were sitting there like, “Should we be concerned?”
The Munich train station was bustling when we arrived and among the workers and people with suitcases there was a lot of military coming in. I should preface, a lot of young looking military. Most of the men we saw looked to only be 18-22. I hope they are all safe. It had only been one week, but the sights around Munich changed. Marienplatz now had the Ukrainian flag and was lit up at night in blue and yellow.
I’ve been asked about getting out of Germany. Our trip home was very uneventful, but very long. Who knew the flight home was almost 3 hours longer than the flight out due to the jet stream.
The transition home has been an odd one. It’s challenging to process. Usually when learning about historical things you aren’t in fear that they might still be happening or could happen in the near future. I’ve found I prefer international news sources such as the BBC who provide better updates on what’s going on. There’s no good way to summarize this blog, but there is a quote that seems to capture our trip and the current times. “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill
My heart goes out to Ukraine and all the people who were forced to leave their beautiful home country. I pray for peace soon. “Slava Ukrayini”
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