Author: Juliet Bennett

It was my 4th visit to Paris. The city of lights. Allegedly a city of love. Just not my love.

On my first visit, as 2006 opened, my five-year relationship ended. In front of the Arc de Triompf. Champs de Elise will always carry memories of that moment.

My second time in Paris, a few weeks later, carries the opposite type of memories: new beginnings, “finding myself”, feeling naked and exposed with my shaved head I magically found my dreams  found myself living in a model flat in the 16^th district, looking at the Eifle Tower’s lights, strolling the Seine, running through streets and metro tunnels from casting to casting, job to job, café to café. I have fond memories with friends at the top of Sacre Cuer, fondues, parties, nightclubs, free dinners, free drinks… my brief glimpse of Paris’ glitz and glam.

Toward the end of the year I returned for another season of shows. This time with new head of hair, and an evolving sense of who I was and what I wanted to do in life.

Five years have passed. Five years! Where did those years go??? Time. It passes too fast.

My fourth visit, now, in 2011, it was good to create some new memories. I took Lisa to my favourite places, ate my favourite foods…

I caught up with some old friends and played “spot the difference”:

I added a long-awaited bridge-post photo to my series.

We took a “trip” to Disneyland with our Amsterdam doggie-bag.. enough said…

It seems an appropriate place for me to share an Alan Watt’s quote:

‘For Disneyland exists “as a mystery and a sign,” the land of the fake and the home of the bogus, prototype of the world to come. Even the birds in the trees are plastic, and sing through their hinged beaks with tiny loudspeakers. Plastic deer, bears, elephants, and bunny rabbits stand along the banks of artificial lakes and rivers, monotonously wagging their mechanical heads. Tourists, traveling by river boat through simulated jungle, have the thrill of seeing a plastic hippopotamus shot with a blank cartridge, and a varnished papier–mâché replica of the Swiss Family Robinson’s tree house which vibrates perpetually to the recorded music of an oom–pah–pah band (on a loop tape) going “Pom–pitty bom–pitty pom–pitty bompitty” for ever and ever. Though it takes hours to go through all the “shows,” a decent restaurant—let alone a bar—is nowhere to be found, since this is strictly sodapop–culture, where one must subsist upon hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, popcorn, or Fred Harvey–type meals.'[1]

I have had a few other bridge-pose photos lined up in my head for a while: on Champs de Elise, along the Seine, and the Eifle Tower by daylight with the background out of focus. When the day arrived my lens decided this wasn’t to be. A bad rattle sound. A plastic thing in the middle of the shutter…

“Maybe you would have broken your back? Maybe it’s a good thing?” Lisa tried to cheer me up.

Quite possibly I’d have gotten run over on the Champs de Elise – the spot where I wanted to take the photo was a little dangerous –  where Lisa sits, between the traffic.

The Eifle Tower shot I wanted would have involved a bridge on top of a stone wall. Maybe I’d have fallen.

The shot along the Seine would have been ruined by people and the smell of piss. Maybe I’d have caught a disease.

They’d have been great shots, if I’d survived them. Little did I know at the time, the death of my lens was the first of a string of bad luck to come…

[1]

Amsterdam greeted us with wide-open arms. The sun was shining, the people smiling, “coffee shops” inviting.

I immediately felt a sense of belonging. I guess because my mum is Dutch. Elderly women reminded my of my Oma, elderly men reminded me of Opa, and the language – while I don’t understand a word – reminded me of home.

Of all the destinations we had been this was the first I was visiting for my second time. Last time it was a last-minute decision inspired by Frank, a fellow Aussie on my train from Munich, who remains to be one of my closest friends. That time I stayed at “Bob’s Hostel”. This time we walked down the cobblestone streets, over a number of sparkling canals and rang the doorbell of my friend’s new family home.

In the three years since I last saw Nicola, she had fallen in love, got married, and brought the most beautiful little girl Zea into this world. There is something magic about that. And now, after living in New York for a few years, she had moved to Amsterdam. Her and Mike had created a list of wants, and the universe brought them everything on that list. Their apartment was HUGE. Three bedrooms, two massive living areas, a big park, pond and ducks across the road, and a roof-top terrace on its way. An example of “The Secret” in action. They were an inspiration.

Zea brought out a clucky side of me I didn’t know I had.

The two of us went to the park and I felt an insight into what my life would be like had I made different choices in my past or what my life might be like, depending on my choices, one day in the future.

Feeding ducks

Roar!

Smelling flowers

Playing in the sand

We went out, we stayed in, we cooked, we babysat, we ate brownies, we rode bicycles…

We planned to stay three nights but ended up staying four and I had my 29^th birthday doing all of the above. Thank you Lisa, Nicola, Mike and Zea for making it a special day full of fruits, fun and surprises.

Student life in Germany is another world to student life in Sydney: free travel, small fees, and for the most part a rent and allowance paid by one’s parents. At least that was life for my friend and his student friends. No part-time job and no living at home – lots of time to and party. Sounds good to me…

More benefits of being a student in this part of Germany include legal drinking on the street, go to a nightclub in the castle basement university’s library, and the free October-Fest-like-event-in-July a massive carnival of rides and fun…

It was a good time to visit my friend Marco. I first met Marco at a hostel in Rio de Janeiro and 6 months later gave him my “overseas friends Northern Beaches tour” when he was in Sydney. Now it was my turn.

In every city Lisa and I have tried the traditional cuisine. In Frankfurt this translated to sausages including those made out of blood, music cheese that has a squeaky factor and is smothered in finely diced raw onion, and apple wine that kind-of tasted like a watered down vinegar.

I liked the locally brewed beer better.

Joined by a group of Marco’s friends from university and the social groups of his seven flatmates, we started drinking in their large and impressively clean flat, and walked only 100 metres down the street to the carnival with “wib beers” (roady drinks) in hand.

Now I know why my friend married a German – they throw a GREAT party. Awesome music, awesome people, and while we could have easily kept dancing I wandered back for a few hours sleep around 4am, bringing to close an awesome night.

Next stop: Amsterdam.

I hadn’t heard of a “micro-nation” until I got to Dresden. As you probably guessed, a micronation is a miniature nation within a bigger nation. Apparently I’d visited one – Cristiania back in Copenhagen. And “New Town” in Dresden was my second – well had I been there 20 years ago it would have been.

On a pub-crawl “night-tour” of what’s known as the “new town” of Dresden with Danilo, a slightly odd but insightful and entertaining who taught us about the town’s crazy past:

Mickey mouse money was the currency, seriously!

Unfortunately after a very strange herbal shot, much of what I learned got lost:

I do remember that the night was extraordinarily random. Party food at the top of church look out point:

The night closed at the Metronom-Bar with Danilo trying to tell us about the proletariat of today’s neoliberal system – the”prekariat”. I didn’t get it but a follow up email clarified a few things:

We talked at the Metronom-Bar about an new name of the proletariat
Since exist the capital system,called the lower class "proletariat"
Now, we have since Reagan and Thatcher a development of the capitalist
system, what is called "neo liberialism system" now.
Here makes not a work the money, money makes money - investors are mostly
not interest about the situation of the working class, they are search to
make money in a very short time.
Just since this periode exanges the livestyle of many workers, artists,
owners of small companies, groups of peoples with an sickness,academics
and others.
They have an precarious situation.
So is developed a new name of this class of peoples.
They have work, but can not survive on the free market, like before.

This class called now "Prekariat" - precariat( lat. precarium ).
80% of the german artist living with the support of the State.
Also more than 60% of the temps in Germany for example get support of the
State.

I didn’t really get what Danilo was talking about. According to wikipedia ‘the word precarity literally means “precariousness“, but is now used to mean existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. It has been specifically applied to intermittent employment, sometimes plus a precarious existence.’

I’m a little precarious I guess. Am I a Prekariat?

Ok, so I still don’t really get it. At least the Mickey Mouse money was cool.

For more, or if you visit Dresden, check out Danilo’s tour and enjoy the ride: www.nightwalk-dresden.de

I hate the word “evil” for two reasons: (1) because of its religious connotations and (2) because its definition is relative and constantly changing. Same goes with “sin”. Two words with definitions that change depending who is in power.

Every culture, every civilization, every person, defines evil in different ways. Evil is whatever the people in power decide is bad for the whole, or for themselves.

That being said, sometimes no other word can be used in its place. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Auschwitz was an evil place.

The erry emptiness of these sites chilled me to the bones. In particular Auschwitz II – Birkenau. Deep in my skin the grotesque inhumanness of the events that took here disgusted my entire being.

Our guide told stories of the victims, the perpetrators, the justifications, and the people who stood by and watched.

Prisoner’s belongings were sorted: valuable sent to Berlin, pots and pans given to the colonizers.

In a museum a room of over 8000 shoes, another with thousands of luggage bags, one with zillions of pairs of glasses, and another full hair, “just a small sample of the 80,000 or more that were found after the war,” said our guide.

Auschwitz II – Birkenau is a sort-of extension camp close to Auschwitz built when the gas chamber capacity of killing 400 people a day wasn’t enough. Birkenau increased efficiency ten-fold – now 4000 prisoners could be executed each day. Plans were to increase that another ten times over with the continual expansion of the camps.

We walked along the tracks where trainloads of people were shipped from Amsterdam, Hungary, all around Europe, brought to Auschwitz to suffer in the most unthinkable ways.

“Which bed would you have preferred?” asked our guide.

I looked at the three levels of stark wooden beds lining up next to each other along both sides of the building – a wooden fixture designed to be a stable for horses. Each level of king-size bed shared by twenty-or-so people.

“The top?” Lisa suggested. “Because heat rises?”

“That’s right,” said our guide, “also because those on the lowest shared their bed with rats, and worse. Most prisoners had malnutrition and chronic diahorhiea so the lower the bunk you slept in the more people’s shit you were surrounded by.”

At the end of the tracks stood two gas chambers, or what was left of them. After the war the Nazis attempted to destroy the evidence of the crimes they’d committed.

How did humanity come to commit such horrors? How did Hitler get away with it?

“For a starters it was the economic system,” explained our guide. “After world war one the poor people voted for extremist parties, in particular those who blamed the Jews for their poverty. They were said to be animals. Sub-humans.”

“At first they were sent here for reasons like missing a day of work, or reading the paper or listening to the radio. Then they were put to work in the fields, digging, or as cooks or in factories. Most only lasted a few weeks or months because of the conditions of the food, sleeping, work and lack of hygiene.” Our guide brought us to photos of prisoners attached to their date of birth, date of arrival and date of death.

“Over time, it just got worse. It is hard to know the number of people who suffered and died. Women, disabled people, and those old or sick, were often not even registered.”

We were shown the gas chambers.

“Prisoners were told to go to strip naked and go into a ‘bathroom’, which was actually a gas chamber, and together they suffocated and watched each other suffering and die. After that the bodies were torched.”

How did seemingly good normal people stand by or even play roles in the atrocities?

I remembered my Opa’s stories of the German occupation of Holland. Everyone had to wear identification cards. Jews had ones with big J’s on them. One day your friend was there, the next he’d have been taken away – brought to factories in Germany. Not just Jews, it could be anyone. But mostly it was Jews.

I remembered stories Opa told of working for the Underground, helping them make fake IDs for the Jews. Stories of food rations, and of eating horrible-tasting biscuits made from tulip buds just to survive. I guess there were a number of people didn’t stand back and watch.

The big question I was left with was why?

What did Hitler or the Nazi’s have to gain by killing off the Jews? Was it just a way to unite the rest of the people in a common cause? Was it about power? Can it be traced back to Hitler’s childhood – did a Jew pull his hair and steal his money?

“It makes you wonder what evil things we don’t notice today,” said Lisa. “Will future generations look back at us and ask how we stood back and let something else happen?”

Poverty and hunger? Environmental destruction? Genocides? Wars over resources? Israel/Palestine?

Which situations are we too involved? Which are we not involved enough? What will future generations think of us?

What is good and what is evil now might be different in the future. I guess all we can do is constantly question our definitions, debate what we think to be “virtue” and try our best not to let atrocities like Auschwitz ever happen again.

“Give yourself time to scratch your head,” advised Prof Stuart Rees on one of our CPACS sailing trips down in Jervis Bay. These last few months I did not listen to this advice.

I have lived the last few months in a mad rush. I have packed up my life and put it in my grandma’s garage. Now I’m in Stockholm, on route to a conference in Krakow, Poland, and (after holiday in Europe) onto work at a university in North Carolina, USA, for the next 4 months.

Sitting in the airport awaiting my friend’s arrival, I can see the wisdom in Rees words.

I may have accomplished a lot these last few months – well at least in terms of words on pages and chapters and articles close to publishing – but in the process I lost something. In the rush to meet deadlines something had to go.

Besides pressing the pause button on my blog for a few weeks, I also pressed pause on the reflective process that allows a person to join the dots between the things they already know and the things they are learning. Whatever I learned these last few months feels as though it is lost in a blurred area of my brain. I was doing too many things, too fast, without even a second of time to ponder the ideas I was learning, summarising, and formulating into a chunk of writing.

Meeting one deadline after the other I have arrived at the end of the race with hardly a memory of the beautiful scenery I saw along the way. That being said I did finish the race. I upgrade from a MPhil to a PhD which might not sound like much but was quite an accomplishment, and was probably worth the head-spin.

During the twenty-something hour flight I observed my mind acting like a computer trying to process an overload of information. Dizzy from the whirlpool of ideas it has processed and outputted, my brain struggled to catch up with my new location in time and space.

It’s a strange feeling now that the rush of moving out of an apartment, saying goodbye to loved ones, finishing up work projects, and packing a backpack is finished.

Here I am, sitting in an airport with no deadlines and an uncertain future.

I sit, I wonder, where will life’s adventure take me next? And I scratch my head.