From Dachau to unmarked bars, one writer makes a sobering realization about a longterm relationship.
by Grace Molteni
illustration by Grace Molteni
The only thing worse than visiting a concentration camp sober is the shame spiral that follows as you realize you wish you’d brought beer.
Likely fueled by the combination of cheap tequila, cinnamon and oranges at the hostel bar the night before, and a sprint to catch a north-bound train out of Munich’s central station, Connor* and I made the mistake of boarding empty-handed. To be fair, the last thing one might expect on the morning commute to Dachau is a party. Christmas had slipped by, and now New Years had snuck up on me. After four months of living and traveling abroad I had admittedly lost all gauge of the calendar; I barely knew what country I was in half the time, let alone what holiday I was supposed to be celebrating. Rule number one for self-proclaimed professional alcoholics: When you find someone who is better at drinking than you, like for example, people boozing on the 9 a.m. train toward a concentration camp, you make them your new best friends. So there we were, squeezed in next to another couple on the last seats of a packed train, toasting to the upcoming New Year. Our seatmates inquired about our travels and while Connor was preoccupied with some merry (read: drunk) locals over a pilfered pilsners, I explained in the little German I knew where we were headed. “Not very romantic,” the woman remarked, nodding toward Connor.
There’s an Italian phrase that you use to say you are seeing someone but it’s not serious, not serious enough to label him or her your significant other. It’s “ci facciamo delle storie,” or “we have some stories.” And that’s Connor. I had preemptively looked up how to say some form of “just friends” and “he’s not my boyfriend” in at least three languages before he’d flown in to meet me in Munich. Despite the fact that he and I didn’t label our relationship in English, I still felt I needed to be prepared to explain our coupling to complete strangers. I have no idea why.
Connor wraps his arm around me just as I finish explaining exactly what we’re not, and the couple smirks. Timing was never our strong suit.
///
Though it might have been the looming hangover (I am arguably more garbage than person at this point,) after a few surreal hours of crematorium tours and iPad-clad tourists, my skin is crawling. I don’t know what turns my stomach more: that the scorched crematorium bricks still smell of lingering smoke, or watching a family of five mindlessly consume snacks and take selfies next to the executioner’s blood ditch. The thing Connor and I share best – a mutual disdain for any and all things tourist – is palpable at this point. But as far as perspective goes, nothing strips away your right to complain and your warranted annoyances like the Holocaust. Even a well-timed side-eye (my go-to move) feels inappropriate. This place has gotten us both itching for a drink, and now. Luxury rehab centers often provide great value by incorporating holistic and evidence-based therapies.
Luckily, the train station houses its own mini-mart of sorts, and vowing not to be as ill-prepared on our ride home as we had found ourselves on the way there, we turn in to the store. Connor and I speed through the aisles, and we meet back up and head for the entrance. Just as we’re about to dump the alcohol we have cradled in our arms onto the checkout counter, Connor disappears. He returns a moment later, a look of triumph on his face, and the familiar red-and-white design of Stiegl, an Austrian beer, swinging from his arm. And he has the look. I can’t remember when exactly he started making the look – maybe back in college; probably before I even knew him – but over the past two years I’ve developed a knack for decoding that look. It always means the same thing: NOW THIS IS HAPPENING.
I know that he is about to suggest something that will without a doubt get us in trouble, sound absolutely ridiculous, and make for a hell of a story if we survive whatever it is. The look is the reason we scaled an opera house’s catwalks and skinny-dipped in the fountain of a gated community in New York; drove from Minnesota to the Oregon coast just to visit a dog; shut down a major club in Vegas dancing on the DJ booth and drinking free champagne like it was our job. The look is the reason I went home with him that night, years ago, despite my boyfriend back home. And the look is likely how I agreed to all of this in the first place – his last-minute flight to join my end-of-semester travels. He doesn’t have to say a word, because I can already tell where the look is taking us. But, like always when it comes to Connor, I still have questions.
“You want to get a keg…?”
“A mini-keg.”
“Right. A keg…”
“Right.”
“…for two people”
“You don’t?”
“Well…”
“Well, we’d be the life of the party, and it’s more economical…”
He does have a point. And as the aforementioned one Euro tequila shots can attest, I’m a sucker for a bargain. I sigh, trade the six-packs in my arms for a stack of cups, nab a bottle of Sekt, which looks to be German champagne, and head back toward the checkout.
“Champagne, eh?”
I can practically hear the victory hanging from his lips.
“Go big…”
“Or go bigger,” he finishes, cracking a smile. With the kind of drinking history Connor and I have, we’d both be liars to say our liquor purchases come as a surprise.
The train, however, serves up its second surprise of the day. Where we had predicted a party we now find the complete opposite. The ruckus from our morning ride has all but vanished – replaced now with children, elderly people, and plenty of quiet. We crack the keg anyway. We’re up to three cups of foam, lined precariously next to his Nikes, before the keg starts paying off in the form of a steady stream of golden lager. After five beers, we finally get the first of many stern shushes from nearby passengers. After nine beers, he’s caught me up on all the “ignorant” songs I’ve been missing back in the States (trap music and The Ricky Smiley Morning Show haven’t exactly made it across the Atlantic yet). Two more beers and we’re singing along over our split-jack headphones. Eventually, to the rest of the car’s relief, we finally roll into Munich’s city limits.
Clambering off the U-Bahn, we spill out of the station and are met with empty streets. It’s barely ten o’clock on a Friday. When we first arrived in Munich, it’d been mid-week, so we are expecting a much livelier nightlife now. It appears though, that the German sense of punctuality applies even to boozing – early to beer, early to bed. Unfazed, Connor’s uncanny compass for cool points us, arms linked and leftover Stiegl sloshing, along into the night.
///
We soon find ourselves standing across from what seems to be a bar on an otherwise deserted street. There is no sign, no address, not even a doorknob. No indication of life, save a steady beat and four bottles of beer sitting on a sill and clinking in time with the pounding glass.
“Well?” he starts toward the door. As if in answer, four people emerge with empty pint glasses in hand. Pouring the beer from the sill bottles into their glasses, the group works quickly and silently. One pours, one holds, one ditches empties, and one replenishes the sill. Noticing their audience, they give us a nod. Taking a long swig from the now full pints, they push back through the door into the pulse.
There’s the look again. An unspoken moment passes between us. I know what Connor’s thinking. But like rule number one for self-proclaimed professional alcoholics says: When you find someone who is better at drinking than you, you make them your new best friend. And these people clearly qualify. I’m thinking it too, so we walk into the bar.
Inside, a DJ spins vinyl after vinyl, and we all spin around in turn. Drinks are poured, and then again, and again, carrying us into the small hours. We make acquaintances over Connor’s inability to whistle and my insistence on actually paying for beer. I return from the bathroom to catch him apologizing for “the war” to a pair of young Iraqis. I stare, stunned. “It’s alright,” one says, “I’m actually a fan of George Bush.” The two then proceed to chant “George Bush! George Bush! George Bush!” while passing lukewarm vodka around the group as Connor joins in. Unlike our first nights in Munich bouncing from beer hall to beer hall, my broken German can’t explain this one away. I swear I can’t take him anywhere. Connor answers my cringe with a shrug and a shit grin, pulling out the bottle of Sekt I’d stowed away earlier in my purse. I shake my head but offer it as a consolation to our companions. The Iraqis, Abduluh and Ronaldo, graciously accept. Sekt, we soon discover, is German for violently frothing at the mouth as you try to choke down something masquerading as champagne. Ronaldo discovers this the hard way. I can tell from the splash on the pavement his nose will burn for days.
When the laughter subsides, Connor apologizes again, and I have to admit this time it sounds sincere. Abduluh passes me the vodka, assuring us no harm is done and that, truth be told, they really do like President Bush.
It’s my turn to give Connor the look, and I find it staring right back. We move on to our next drunken adventure.
///
In two days time, I’ll untangle myself from the twin bunk we end up sharing, brush pine needles out of my hair and rub the Sekt-soaked sleep from my eyes. I’ll sit across from Connor on a train, ears numb and chest vibrating with white noise, racing forward through the Bavarian countryside. The hills will be, in fact, alive, but not even the sound of music will rouse us from our hangovers.
When my head finally clears I’ll start to see the shape of the buzzing in my chest. But we’ll be three countries and another continent deep before I’m able hear the sound of all the words I’ve packed up and parceled away. And I’ll wonder about people like me, the kind of people who lock their lips instead of their cars. The kind of people who down absinthe with strangers and cross borders on foot, yet still think it’s a risk to be worth the weight of their love.
I’ll sit across from that face l keep waking up next to and I’ll wonder about easy love and hard drinks. I’ll wonder how it is that I don’t recognize him when his eyes stop meeting mine. Connor will give me the look – and for the first time I’ll notice that everything has changed. That this is closest we have been and the furthest we are from being together; that when I finally find my voice in this, I’ll use it to say good-bye.
But for now, we’ll keep steadily winding through the frosted Alps, and I’ll keep drinking in a person I’d someday love to loathe. Connor will disappear as quickly as he had come, and I’ll continue my habit of doing the same. One way or another, no matter how wonderful it has been, one or both of us will still leave. I’ll wonder how he can spend weeks in a car, hours on a plane, cross countries and oceans with me but not know how to stay in touch when the trip ends. In that moment I’ll be reminded of a quote I’d later have to page through Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart to find:
“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”
And that’s where I found myself: sobering up across from a boy on a train, realizing we had already burned.
*Names have been changed for anonymity’s sake, out of respect for old friends.
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Grace Molteni is a Midwest born and raised designer, illustrator, and self-proclaimed bibliophile, currently calling Chicago home. For more musings, work, or just to say hey check her out on Instagram or at her personal website.
