I’m still a bit dopey this morning, even after coffee. I had one of those weird things where you wake up a couple of hours early, and then you lie awake for a long time, and then you wake up thinking you haven’t had any rest, but you realize that toward the end, you were dreaming about not being able to sleep….
OK, maybe you don’t do that, but I do.
What interests me, though is that after the usual pattern, I shifted to a dream that had factual details that fit together, something that dreams don’t often do.
It all started when I woke up at about 4:40 and thought I’d check to make sure my phone was set to wake me up at 6:30 — and couldn’t find my phone. This was real life, although it seemed dreamlike. I searched the house, upstairs and down, a couple of times — thoroughly waking myself — before the “find my iPhone” app on my iPad found it, in a really odd place (in a box, buried under other stuff).
So I set it, put it on the charger, and went back to bed. And lay on one side. Then the other. Then back on the first one. This went on a LONG time. Then I was walking about in the wee hours, unable to sleep, in my grandparents’ house (now my uncle’s house) in Bennettsville. My whole family was there, and I was trying not to wake them.
Then, again, with my family, I was in Europe. It was our last day there, and I was wondering when our flight home was. Turns out we had time to sightsee most of the day. I realized we were in Munich (I’ve never been to the continent, much less to Munich). My older son wanted to go to the 1972 Olympic stadium, and plant a flag (don’t know what sort of flag, but perhaps having something to do with the Olympics) at the highest point of the structure, and photograph it with the city spread out below. (I realized, after I woke up, that that idea had come from the last level of “Call of Duty: World at War,” which both my son and I have played, in which Red Army soldiers plant their flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin.) I said OK, we could do that.
But after that, I wanted to take mass transit to a place associated with the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. I realized there probably wasn’t much to see there, but I wanted to see it anyway. (It seems I don’t have very positive associations in my mind when I think, “Munich.”)
These things didn’t happen in the dream; we just planned them.
I thought it odd that both of those sightseeing ideas actually had a logical connection to Munich. Usually, dreams are more mixed-up than that. Aren’t they?
Related Posts
“It seems I don’t have very positive associations in my mind when I think, ‘Munich.'”
Not sure anyone does. When I hear the word Munich, I think ofthis.
I adore Munich! It is gemütlich, and charming and has awesome art museums! The beer is cheap and excellent, too. Eins, zwei, gsuffa!
Anyone who gets a chance should go.
and blaming those currently alive for the sins of those who went before is flat out wrong (see also, Slavery in the US). There are far fewer right-wing whackos in Germany than in the US of A. The Munich Olympics’ being targeted by terrorists is no more fair to taint Munich with than to taint NYC for 9/11, either…..so what else don’t you all like about Munich?
but, Brad, your post reads like something out of Inception. I had trouble tracking what was actually being written about….
That was partly intentional.
When I REALLY wake up, I’ll go back and try to explain it. If I can remember any of this…
Speaking of cheap beer…
The detail I remember most vividly about the putsch was that while waiting in the beer hall for the moment to begin the revolution, one of Hitler’s two associates standing there with him went and bought them three beers so they would be less conspicuous. The three beers costs something like 3 billion marks…
I think of the German word for Munich which is Munchen which always makes me think of eating which when combined with Germany makes me think of eating this weird cheese that tasted like cows smell that I ate one time in Germany, but can’t remember if it was in Munich. I think it might have been Frankfurt. Where I didn’t eat any Frankfurters.
This;
http://www.muenchen.de/int/en/events/oktoberfest.html
I’m going to Munich for a couple of weeks in September — but I’m on purpose leaving before OktoberFest starts, as it’s kind of a madhouse during that time! But I’m very much looking forward to going and wandering around Munich and eating SpaghettiEis with my young nieces.
@Brad, there’s a German language podcast that’s called Sleepless in Munich — maybe you can go listen to that when you can’t sleep because of Munich dreams….http://www.schlaflosinmuenchen.com/ with Annik Rubens. Though her other site, slowgerman.com is more my speed…..
OK, here’s a really embarrassing confession…
When I was a kid living in Ecuador (maybe 9 or 10, really too old to behave this way), a German expatriate family came to our home to visit my parents. They had a son my age, and my parents kept urging me to come meet him and entertain him while the adults talked.
I refused to come out of my room. I wanted nothing to do with him. I had been SO brainwashed by the vast number of WWII movies I had seen that I could not conceive of a German as anything else but a Nazi.
My parents were deeply embarrassed and I am deeply ashamed to admit I was that shallow and ignorant as a kid, but I was.
This was 1963, I think — the year “The Great Escape” came out.
I tell that story in order to make the point that I’m not that ignorant little kid NOW. I was concerned that Kathryn seemed to think I was.
I can’t help what I dreamed.
If I were in Munich, I probably would want to see the original beer hall from the putsch, although I’d be disappointed, since it no longer exists.
For many of the same reasons, I visited Churchill’s underground “war rooms” in London. My interests run that way. It has nothing to do with the modern-day inhabitants of Munich or London. I want to see what I want to see, even when it’s kind of off-the-wall, even fictional…
It occurs to me that my dreams are rather low-budget. I often PLAN to do things in dreams, but they don’t actually happen.
It’s like “The Final Countdown,” the most disappointing movie in history. The USS Nimitz is transported in time back from the 1980s to Dec. 6, 1941, and is in position to fight off the Pearl Harbor attack, and for the whole movie, you’re looking forward to that…
Then, suddenly, just before the battle, the ship and its planes are transported back to the 80s.
I always assumed it was because the filmmakers lacked the budget to actually stage the battle. This was before CGI…