Christmas in a Nazi Hotel

Jimmy and I married in May of 1971, spent a sweltering summer in an Indian Head Maryland basement apartment while he trained in explosive ordnance disposal at a Marine Corps installation. By September I was back in Denver living the single life while he went to Anderson Air Force Base (AFB) in Guam for a year. On his return we lived in Cheyenne Wyoming for a year before going to South Korea, followed by 18 months in Florida.

I considered this all a kind of extended if intermittent honeymoon of sorts – or the kind of really getting used to being a couple that should have happened before the wedding. During this time I dropped out of college before my final semester because the school had terminated my newspaper journalism degree program without notice over the summer of 1971. Too vo-tech for a liberal arts college, they said. We’ll give you an English degree instead.

Uh, no thanks. I didn’t want that. To be honest, I didn’t really understand what that was. I already spoke English. What would be the point? They didn’t explain the relevance, nor the value or learning the fine art of literary critique and persuasive argumentation. I couldn’t see a practical career path with a degree in English.

Nonetheless, I already had enough knowledge and skills to write, design, and layout a program guide for Cheyenne’s Frontier Days, and volunteer as a reporter at the Air Force Public Affairs Office in Osan, South Korea. I enjoyed both those jobs, and felt productive and self-sufficient pursuing them.

Finding ourselves in Ft. Walton Beach Florida at Eglin AFB in September 1974, and not being a sand and sun girl, I needed something to do during our time there. I decided to finish my bachelor’s at University of West Florida, an hour’s drive along the Sunshine State coast to Pensacola, where I added broadcast journalism to my credits. Finishing in November 1975, I simultaneously disappointed my parents by skipping graduation ceremonies and delighted myself in embarking on the life-changing opportunity to live, work, and travel in Europe when Jimmy got stationed at Bitburg Air Base in Germany.

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Jimmy and I had arrived right before Thanksgiving and I was eager to travel beyond the base and our little neighboring village. The initial chance came right before Christmas. By some miracle Jimmy heard about a vacancy for December 22-24 at the very popular US Department of Defense run General Walker Hotel down in the Alps at Berchtesgaden, bordering Austria, and he knew it would be the perfect Christmas gift for me to be in the mountains.

The General Walker was a famous location for several reasons. It had been a Nazi military hospital, after first being a luxury hotel for visiting dignitaries — including the British Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain — traveling to meet Hitler at his nearby Berghof residence. The Berghof was both a vacation residence and a war headquarters for the führer of evil.

I didn’t know these facts about the place when Jim got the reservations. But I knew the Alps were supposed to be spectacular, and I’m always happy in the mountains. Neither of us skied, the main winter pastime there, so it was a bit puzzling at first what he would enjoy from the trip. But I didn’t ask questions. Gift horses, right?

The structure had been a secluded sanctuary for the highest ranking Nazi officers and high profile guests, and contained a bomb shelter. It was connected to other buildings by tunnels, some of which, after the war when the property fell into the hands of the US Armed Forces Recreation Centers, could still be visited.

We traveled by train to get to Berchtesgaden, my first experience with a Eurail pass, which I came to love. Trains had been on my never doing that again list after getting stuck for hours one June wearing a short skirt, matching light jacket, and panty hose, in the horribly humid middle of nowhere wheat fields of Kansas when that train to summer camp in Colorado broke down. I’d been 14 then, and it was still the era when well brought up young ladies dressed up to travel, or such was my mother’s delusion. I’m still amazed I wasn’t made to sport a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat to get from St. Louis to Colorado Springs.

Anyway, the trip to the Alps changed my prejudice against the railroad industry, at least as it was in Europe at that time. (But 60 years later I have yet to brave another American train) Unlike the school bus style of rail car with every seat facing forward or backward, most of the European cars had Hogwarts Express type compartments seating six. The Eurail pass allowed us to hop on and off at will, unrestricted to any assigned seat on certain cars, but on that trip the train didn’t stop for more than 30 minutes anywhere. It was only enough time for one of us to run out for a bathroom, a postcard, or a snack while the other guarded our suitcases.

That trip also persuaded me to learn to travel light instead of like an American diva packed for every possible contingency.

The afternoon hour was dark by the time we got to Berchtesgaden. An airport-like  shuttle bus was waiting at the station to take us to the hotel. I wouldn’t have wanted to drive myself there at night, for the road was dark and narrow with lots of icy curves as it wended its way up the snow-smothered mountainside.

There wasn’t much of anything left from the Nazi era when we stayed there but stories of the history. Nonetheless, it began to seep into my brain why Jimmy was so happy to be there even though evidence of Nazi occupation there had not been intentionally preserved. The property had been looted in the immediate aftermath of the war by allied soldiers, although some fixtures, furniture, and design elements were found and used in the American reconstruction of the hotel.

Meals were not especially delicious at the General Walker. Arriving after dark and being uncertain of local transportation options back down the mountain to the village, Jimmy and I decided to just eat in the hotel’s dining room that first night, although one peek into the room was not especially appetizing.

It was a cavernous chamber, with a nearly two story high ceiling. Widely spaced tables attempted to fill the area, but the red paper fake doily place mats failed to add any elegance. Frayed and stained white cloth napkins didn’t help. The greying walls were drab except for one faded mural of flower festooned, dirndl clad German maidens leading cows into a stone barn for the night. Looking around, I had the nagging sense by the remaining blank walls that other scenes had been painted over to conceal previous depictions of various forms of saluting the führer.

“I don’t know what most of this stuff is,” Jimmy said, growing angry as he looked over the limited, one page, plastic covered menu, oddly printed only in German despite the hotel being for American military exclusively. I frowned and sighed, disapproving of the ugly American attitude sitting across the table from me. We were on our first adventure into the real German culture, sort of, and it embarrassed me to be with someone who wasn’t appreciating it.

I pulled out my Berlitz phrase book and turned to the foods section. “Shashlik is basically shish kebobs,” I said. “Rotkohl is red cabbage, kartoffelsalat is potato salad, kartoffelpuffer is potato pancakes, which is more or less hash browns,” I translated for him. Or latkes, I said to myself.

“What about Jägerschnitzel?” He mispronounced it with a hard J like juice instead of the correct Y sound like yes, and I winced. I’d never been taught the German language, but I knew that much. The Berlitz guide included pronunciations as well as word meanings. I was beginning to see how much intolerance I had for what struck me as The Ugly American attitude.

Somewhere buried in my better nature I knew this was a sore spot I needed to work on, but for the moment I was just doing well to swallow a sarcastic pseudo-superiority remark.

“Fried pork cutlet with mushroom gravy.”

“Okay, I’ll have that.”

I had the sauerbraten. It was somewhat like high school cafeteria fare. The typical ginger snap thickening to the gravy could have been more gingery. And thicker. Jimmy had made the better choice.

The next morning our German Frühstück featured brown bread, cheese, sliced onions, ham, and hard boiled eggs, with tea or coffee. This would be a morning meal I’d have often when traveling through all of the Germanic-influenced countries such as Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein. At the General Walker, the bread was especially dense and dry, and I needed to ask for butter to make it more palatable. But at least the cost of this was included in the room price.

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On our first day there we took a tour into one of the remaining tunnels where a large room with a heavy wood table seating about 20 was said to have been used as a meeting space for Hitler and some of his top generals. I could sense my spouse feeling somewhat reverent in the cold space, as if he was connecting on some level with the fascist ghosts of the past. I on the other hand felt the sickly residue of evil oozing from every inch of the atmosphere.

Black and white photos scattered around the damp stone walls gave a glimpse into that era, by then 30 years past, adding an even more eerie air to the dank environment brightened by two bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. Taking that hour long tour taught me pieces of WWII history that I hadn’t learned in school, and I was both fascinated and creeped out by walking where the enemy had been. Jimmy seemed pumped with the chance to have stood in their shoes.

I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling and sensing from him at the time. My ability to interpret different qualities of vibrational energy wasn’t as refined then as it later became. Back then I only felt sickened and uneasy, and noticed that Jimmy seemed to feel the opposite. I knew this was some kind of warning, but of what kind I couldn’t describe. So in my honed introvert fashion, I shut down my uneasiness about it.

Confronting his seeming affinity for this aspect of the resort wasn’t worth spoiling this time together.

Souvenir Shopping

Shops in Berchtesgaden were stocked with collectible souvenirs and we spent a good several hours on our one full day there wandering in and out like typical tourists everywhere, stopping once to get off our feet and warm up in a bakery with a mug of hot chocolate.

At one end of the third block of little shops were a couple of war memorabilia stores. The first one was full of items that looked like they had been salvaged from battlefields — dented helmets and canteens, spent bullet casings, ragged bits of clothing insignia, era coins, and the like from both Axis and Allied soldiers, but mostly from the British and Americans.

I spotted something I expected Jimmy would want — a cigarette lighter that was supposed to be from an American GI who had lost it during the war. I was skeptical about that story as printed on a card next to it, although there was a raised pair of wings on the metal case that could have signified the Army Air Corps. That in itself made it interesting to me because that particular part of the Army became the US Air Force, Jimmy’s branch, right after the war in 1947. The lighter still worked, the husband still smoked, and I liked the possibility of it being a war souvenir that was still useable. Jimmy hadn’t spotted it yet, and the price was right — only about twelve dollars in German currency.

“Are you done here? I want to go check out the other shop,” he said just as I was wondering how I could get the lighter without him knowing. 

“You go ahead. I like reading the labels on things here. I’ll meet you over there in a bit, okay?” Perfect, I thought. He left, unsuspecting of my motives.

The second shop had what I thought was better quality things that could well have been traded or sold after the war by those who wanted to cleanse themselves of their involvement with the Third Reich. There, things were displayed with more care, more like a museum than a jumble of second hand donations and found objects. Uniform medals and ribbons were clustered as if they’d just come off someone’s jacket. Polished up pistols were lovingly presented in velvet lined cases. Flags hung from the ceiling in pristine condition. Everything was clean. And priced for gullible tourists.

As I walked in, Jimmy was just paying for a Nazi dagger. “Why on earth would you buy that?” I whispered as the salesclerk was making change in deutschmarks for his $50 bill at what I was sure wasn’t a favorable exchange rate.

“It’s a piece of history,” he beamed, so proud of his knife.

“It can’t possibly be real,” I said, “not at that price.”

My mom had been an antiques dealer for a while when I was in high school. She specialized mainly in what was known as American primitives — things from the colonial era up through the Civil War such as a Revolutionary War musket in the family room. She had a good eye for replicas getting passed off as authentic, and while I didn’t learn her discernment tricks, I guess some of her insight rubbed off on me. It just didn’t make sense that a prized ceremonial item like an SS dagger would sell for less than the equivalent of $30. “You’re wasting your money,” I told him.

“If I am, I’ll resell it. But this guy assures me it’s real,” he said, nodding in the direction of the clerk.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head, certain he was getting ripped off. All I was focused on at that moment was the truth or fiction of the item, and the unjustified price. I was too naïve at the time to think much of what it might mean for a boy from Mississippi to want this. Racism and antisemitism had never come up in our discussions, although those threads were obvious when visiting his family in Jackson.  

But the purchase and his exuberance about it added to that ick feeling towards him that was growing within me. Trying not to make too big a deal about it, I seized on the chance to talk Jimmy into a 4:30 p.m. dinner before catching the shuttle back to the hotel.

Anxiety always begins in my gut. Overcoming it usually involves stuffing something chewy into it.

“Hey look, here’s a quaint little pub with their menu in both German and English right outside the door,” I called to his attention as we left the war shop. “How about we eat an early supper here tonight? We skipped lunch to take that bunker tour, and I’m getting hungry.”

“Me too. What do they have?” He stepped up to the menu only to have to back away to make room for an exiting family of four. He found something that sounded good to him — a röstiburger which turned out to be basically a bacon cheese burger — and we entered to wait what seemed like forever to be seated, and a second forever before any server came to our table. The much slower pace of service in Germany was something we would get used to, although at this introductory occasion it clearly challenged both of us.

“We should leave,” Jimmy said after 15 minutes went by and we had not been given water or menus.

“Let’s wait a little longer. They’ll get to us.”

The languid pace of service was pushing the limits of my own tolerance but I was  glad just to be sitting after the day on my feet. “It’s kind of nice to not be rushed in and out like at home,” I said, trying to convince myself while also pretending to model patience for Jim.

When a waiter did show up with a pitcher of water and two glasses, Jimmy waved away the offered menu. “I want the cheeseburger, and whatever beer you have on tap,” he said.

The waiter didn’t quite understand, and looked questioningly at him.

“Röstiburger,” I tried to translate, certain I had mangled the pronunciation, but the waiter’s eyes widened and he smirked a bit with judgmental understanding.

The penance for trying the German word gained me a flood of incomprehensible questions. I guessed at his intended meaning as asking for a specific beer choice, so I tried, “Hast du Spaten?” naming a pale beer, which Jimmy, being a Miller’s fan, usually liked.

The waiter nodded, and feeling more courageous I said, “Bitte, für meinen Mann,” hoping I was saying that would be for Jim.

Bolstered by what I trusted was success, I gave my own order. “Bitte, für mich, die Rouladen, und eine Cola.”

Rouladen was something my mom used to make. It’s thinly sliced beef, heavily coated in spicy mustard, layered with bacon, onions and pickles, then rolled, browned, and simmered in broth. If you’ve never had it, you don’t know what you’re missing, and this dinner was infinitely better than the night before. We topped it off with a piece of German crumb cake for me and slice of cheesecake for Jimmy.

When we were done, it took another eternity to get the bill, ramping up frustration again about the unaccustomed service ethic as we worried about getting to the village train station in time to catch the hotel shuttle.

An Improvised Christmas Tree

We had a cramped room with no view for two nights. The very affordable price was right for a staff sergeant and his spouse, although the atmosphere did not live up to the magical romantic fantasy of being in the Old World. Guests were expected to spend most of the day on the slopes, or traveling around the other alpine villages, so there wasn’t much offered to keep guests at the hotel. Even the holiday decorations were pretty sparse compared to what Americans were used to in the overly glitzed and glittered look of Christmas in the States.

Christmas in the Alps was the second time in my life that I didn’t have a holiday tree towering over an obscene number of wrapped gifts. But even the first time — spent in Seoul, South Korea at a hotel catering to American military — had a brightly lighted tree and gobs of tinsel, candy canes, and other decorations throughout the public spaces. Having no over the top holiday trimmings in the land of the nutcracker could have been bizarrely depressing, but wasn’t.

To compensate, I bought a pale green paper holiday tablecloth designed with reindeer and Santa sleighs, and cut it into the shape of an evergreen tree. Then I taped it to the wall over the hotel room dresser. I was determined to brighten up the rather dreary room.

I put wrapped gifts on the dresser top as a facsimile of having things under the trees like at home. Practical items were big in my family, so, for the husband I’d bought a pair of thick wool Bavarian socks, packed with me for the trip, and a pair of ear muffs because he worked outside in all kinds of weather. From the alpine village I added a small bottle of peppermint schnapps, and the lighter.

Jimmy used some of the tablecloth scraps to wrap a couple things for me while I walked the empty, undecorated halls of the hotel. His gifts for me turned out to be a Bavarian chocolate bar, a red and white painted tree ornament of a rocking horse, and an engraved pewter collectors spoon. We had agreed that the cost of the train and the hotel would be our main gifts to each other. It was the element of surprise that made all these little things delightful.

Since we checked out on Christmas Eve, we opened gifts that morning before headed for the train back to Bitburg. Jim acted pleased with the lighter, but I could tell he wished it had Nazi markings on it instead of American. I tucked that bit of emotional intel in a corner of my brain and tried not to think about it. We left the poor little paper tree on the wall in case the next occupant might appreciate it.

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Looking back on that quickie vacation as my introduction to travel in Europe, I have to say that the highlights came when we got away from the US military communities and shed as much as we could of our Americanisms. Delving into the history of the land we were on, and interacting as curious, friendly newcomers with the local businesses is what brought the most enjoyment. My usual shy, introvert self came out of my shell a bit, at least when traveling. I couldn’t wait to do more, with a travel companion and on my own.