Germany: January 6

Q: Why are so many American travelers so stupid when they go abroad?
A: Because we think we're so-o-o clever.

The following is my "stupid American tourist" story.  I am making it public to serve as an example and a warning.

Today was our free day in Germany, and I decided to take the opportunity given to visit the Sachsenhousen Concentration Camp.  It would take a couple of hours to take the trip, so I got up before sunrise (i.e. around 7:30 AM) to eat breakfast and start the trip.  No one else that was going there was up yet, so I decided go it alone (Hereafter known as Bad Decision #1).

The first leg of the trip was uneventful (besides the frustrations of trying to find a ticket machine that accepted Euro bills), and by 10:20 I was at the end of the S-bahn line in Oranienburg, where there was a bus service to Sachsenhousen.

Or rather, there was a public bus station, where I could catch a bus to Sachsenhousen.  It took some time for me to figure out which lines went where, by which time I missed the bus that was going to Sachsenhousen.  Sunday in Germany means that the buses don't run as many times, so the next bus wasn't coming for another 90 minutes.  Since I could decipher from the schedules that it was only 15 minutes by bus to Sachsenhousen, I decided that I could walk there to save time (Bad Decision #2).

There were many maps available in the train station, so I just grabbed one and went.  There were actually maps in English available, but I took one of the German ones, since it was specific to the local area.  "Besides," I thought, "I'm a geographer!  I can decipher a street map no matter what language.  After all, the names are going to be the same, and after that it's just route-finding."   (Bad Decision #3)

So, off I went.  I only took one wrong turn before finding the street that led to where I was going, conveniently titled Strachsenhousenstrasse.  I'd been walking for about 40 minutes, when I found a little sticker on the back of my map that showed that it was not, as I had thought, free, but cost 3.70 Euros.  At that point, I had two choices.  If I was smart, I would have turned around right there, groveled to the cashier in my best "I'm-a-dumb-American-who-didn't-know-any-better" manner, and waited for my bus like a good little boy.  Or, I could make Bad Decision #4 and decide to press on, and do my groveling on the way back.  One guess as to which I took.

After another half-hour of walking, I arrived at Strachsenhousen, and discovered that it was, in fact, an entire little town.  My German map didn't mark the concentration camp site, so I had no idea where I was supposed to go next.  Now, while it would be an exaggeration to say I don't know a lick of German, I certainly don't know more than two (One lick of a language is, in case you were wondering, enough to politely order food, beer, and locate the bathroom).  The last thing I wanted to do was ask random German passerby the way to the concentration camp, so I just kept walking, sure that I would see a sign somewhere that would point out the way (Bad Decision #5).

At the end of my wanderings, which took about an hour and a half, I was still no closer to my goal, and had somehow ended up in an Evangelical Senior Center, in which nobody spoke English.  The janitor very politely showed me the door, at which point my will to continue was broken, so I walked all the way back to the train station, where I paid for my map and returned to Berlin.

Thus, we see how several minor bad decisions all combined to turn my expedition to Sachsenhousen into, to use the post-modern expression, "One big pile of FAIL."  Upon reflection, however, I'm not sure my experiences were so irrelevant to my aim.

One thing which still amazes me about the mindset that I had at the time was that I knew each bad decision I was making was, in fact, a bad decision.  I thought I was being clever when I actually made them, of course, but I quickly realized my error.  What I failed to do, I realized as I departed the Senior Center, was repent.  I decided to press on instead of turning around, which only got me lost and exhausted.
I couldn't help but note the evangelical parallel, given that it was Sunday.  I suppose there really is a spiritual parallel there.  Sin is like stupidity; unrepentance will turn minor evils into major ones.  To allow even something as systematically wrong as Sachsenhousen, all it takes is to not turn back from minor infractions of human rights.  One starts by considering a group second-class citizens, and then goes farther, and fares worse.

I still don't know where Sachsenhousen is, but I think I understand a little more how one gets there.