Out of Paradise - Ch. 7 - Arbeit Macht Frei Pt. 2

Out of Paradise - Ch. 7 - Arbeit Macht Frei Pt. 2

While admiring the grandeur of Neuschwanstein Castle I meet up with an American GI based in Kaiserslautern off on a bit of Bavarian R&R. He introduces himself as Joe, of all things, GI Joe, and we both have a chuckle. We get to talking then sneak off around the corner of the castle keep to a remote spot for a joint followed by a pint of lager at a nearby bistro. He’s on his way to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a gorgeous alpine resort nestled at the base of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain and location of the American Armed Forces Recreation Center of Bavaria and offers to give me a lift. Too easy. We criss-cross our way into Austria and back into Germany. The further east out of Fusen we get, the more prominent the peaks become, looming larger and more grandiose as the kilometers pass.

Our first stop in Garmisch is to the Armed Forces billeting office. G.I. Joe gets himself sorted and invites me to the Officer’s Club just in time for happy hour. He shouts me a scotch and from that point on becomes my beverage of choice. A couple more rounds and it’s my turn to get sorted. I thank Joe profusely for the drinks and the ride, sling my pack on my back and set out to find my own night’s lodging.

After checking into the local youth hostel, I set off on a reconnaissance mission around town to see what it had to offer besides the military R & R base and the Officer's Club. Not far away I spot a sign in the window of a small German restaurant reading "Help Wanted." I rub my chin, shrug my shoulders and figure, groovy, since I'm planning to stick around somewhere in the Alps (like the Matterhorn, for example,) and do some skiing for the winter, what could be better? Excited about the prospect of settling down and getting on with my main objective, I go inside and ask for the proprietor. I inquire about the "Help Wanted" sign outside in the window and the next thing I know I'm in the kitchen alongside a Turkish guy named Ahmad, sporting a grease stained apron, hands submerged up to my elbows in a sink of murky water and a stack of grimy dishes piled casually on the side. My first day in Garmisch and not only have I scored a free pass to the Officer’s Club, but also a job washing dishes and a complimentary room nearby thrown in as a perk. The room I’m allotted is just that and nothing more - cold, stark and dank with a small single bed, a small table, a hard wooden chair, a window looking out onto the street below and a frozen radiator driven by a neglected coal furnace in the basement that no one seemed to care about ever firing up. Ahmad lives next door.

Having settled myself into my new digs and budgeted my net earnings over the foreseeable future, I set off to get equipped for the slopes. In a nearby ski shop I splurge on a pair of 195 cm. Rossignol ROC 550s, Salomon bindings, Nordica Boots, a pair of Scott ski poles, a pair of psychedelic flower print ski pants I could pull on over my jeans, a turquoise blue waterproof nylon parka I could slip on over my sweater, a pair of thermal ski gloves, a pair of warm socks and a woolen beanie. Since my dishwashing shift doesn’t start ‘till after five, I have the days pretty much to myself which enables me to make the most of tending to my primary objective. I become such a fixture on the mountain everyday that I come to know all of the ski patrolmen and lift operators by name and am eventually offered a job helping skiers onto the ski lift.

December, 1972 is spent doing exactly that - skiing, operating ski lifts on top of the Zugspitze, skiing some more, washing dishes with Ahmad the Turk, more skiing, eating schnitzel and bockwurst and skiing and drinking copious amounts of Lowenbrau, more and more skiing, an occasional visit to the Officer's Club and, did I mention skiing? I even spent my days off skiing all around the adjacent slopes from Mittenwald to Innsbruck. I become so settled in that I even buy a 10 speed touring bike with the skinny little road tires (mainstream off road mountain bikes – which is what I really need - won't come into existence for another 6 or 7 years) that I plan to ship to the south of France and pick up the following spring, after the snow has melted, to continue the Mediterranean leg of my odyssey. Upon eventually leaving Garmisch and finding out the exorbitant cost of shipping and storage, I end up selling it to a friend for a fraction of its cost. Never mind, we had great fun slipping and sliding through Partnach Gorge and all around the snow and ice covered roads and trails in the surrounding environs together.

Partnach Gorge in winter is a frozen fairyland of crystalline stalactite daggers dangling from cascading ice flows and off the chins of fantasy gremlins like the unkempt beards of ancient druids frozen in time. Me, in my psychedelic flower print ski pants and woolen beanie pulled low over my ears, would go slipping and sliding along its icy tracks, over frozen streams and petrified waterfalls on my 10 speed touring bike with the skinny little road tires stopping for a joint or two along the way, thinking, damn, life doesn't get better than this.

New year's eve, 1972, I finish washing the last dish in the murky sink, hang my grease stained apron up on its nail, bid Ahmad the Turk adios and head out into a blinding blizzard of a snowstorm to meet some pals at a local bier haus. There’s a fellow American compatriot and longhaired, likeminded pothead named Bob, an Italian guy named Giovanni, who insists everyone call him Johnny and Harry, a stout German lad who isn’t quite operating on all cylinders, but a good laugh all the same. Two or three Lowenbraus into the evening and we all go outside in the snowstorm for a joint (Harry is holding). With the wisdom imparted upon us with that particular mix of smoke and libation, decide to take a hike up the mountain and watch the New Year festivities from above. So we do exactly that, the four of us, the fearsome foursome, 'Stoner' Bob, 'Johnny' Giovanni, 'Bad Hat' Harry and I, the 'Kalifornia Kid', in the middle of an epic snowstorm, on New Year's Eve, the last night of 1972, as stoned and drunk as we are, start slipping and sliding, stumbling and staggering our way up the Zugspitze. About two joints later, icicles forming on the ends of our noses, chins and ears, we see a faint light in the distance and hear a piercing chorus of "Überall auf der Welt" coming from it. We go into the warmth, thaw ourselves out with four shots of Jägermeister backed up with 4 pints of Paul Aner and join in on the last chorus. Another couple of rounds and the fireworks begin. Midnight is approaching and the entire sky becomes ablaze with multi-colored barrages of fire and brimstone erupting from mountain tops in an entire 360° arc surrounding the valley of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Amid raucous cheers of  "Frohes neues Jahr" and pints of Bavarian lager being hoisted high and clanged together, the heavens are exploding in a dazzling display of light and sound and wonder - like a galaxy of stars erupting simultaneously showering the peak silhouetted skyline with a blanket of ivory ash. The illuminated horizon, glistening crimson and gold and emerald and sapphire, while a tumultuous cacophony of exploding bombs deafens our ears, fills the air with what is to be 1973.

With another round down our gullets and thoroughly inebriated we stumble back out into the swirling blizzard, hands shading our eyes from the piercing sleet. "Hey guys," 'Bad Hat' Harry slurs, "look hier, sleds!" Sure enough, there on the edge of the mountain, under a cover of freshly fallen snow, are two unattended toboggans with our names glowing all over them like neon billboards saying, "Take me. Take me."

"Whose are they?" I ask quasi-concernedly.

"Dono," says Harry as he begins untying their moorings. "Hier, take dise one," he says looking over his shoulder making sure their owners were nowhere in sight and hands me the reigns. 'Stoner' Bob and I position ourselves in the cockpit of the first one, me still holding the reigns, while Harry sends us hurtling off the cliff and into the wild swirling abysmal darkness with a full force thrust and a heckling "Auf wiedersehen.” He and Johnny come plummeting down behind whooping and hollering and bouncing and tumbling through the icy tempest into the ebony night and down the slippery escarpment.

"Whoa, dude, watch out for that tree," 'Stoner' Bob screams in hysterics as we are catapulted airborne and crash uncontrollably into a frozen wall of powdered snow that happened to jump out unexpectedly right smack in front of us. With an abrupt halt that hurls us through the atmosphere like two cannonballs in flight we end up head first, interred under a meter of snow. "That wasn't so bad," I say digging myself out with my frost bitten hands. "Got a joint?”

Jumping up and down to dislodge the snow from his mantle and regain his body heat, Bob reaches in his pocket and produces a well earned spliff. We sit in the snowdrift halfway up the Zugspitze in the early hours of 1973, frozen and frostbitten, in the middle of an epic snowstorm, smoking a joint, taking in all the wonders of the world around us – Damn, life doesn't get better than this.

With the spliff spent and heads reeling in stupefied rapture we reposition ourselves in the cockpit of our snow rocket and continue our kamikaze dive down the icy slope. Reaching the bottom without too much more ado, we ditch the sled and find Johnny and Harry passed out in the snow in a state of inebriated slumber. "Steh auf, ya lazy bums," I shout, kicking Harry in the groin with a wisp of snow and a phantom pass of my boot.

He comes to and asks, "Wo ist mein auto? Mein auto, where, where?" in a dysarthric slur.

We retrace our steps back to the Bier Haus from whence we started our evening of debauchery, searching up and down the snow coated lane for a canary yellow VW bug.

"Wo ist mein auto?" he asks again. "Someone steal mein auto," he declares in his impeccable English.

We take another pass up and down the snow coated lane searching in vain for a canary yellow VW bug, shrug our shoulders and say, "Looks that way, Harry.”

"Maybe it was the owners of the sleds we just borrowed - Fair trade," Stoner says tit for tattedly.

Harry resigns himself to the fact that his canary yellow VW bug has disappeared without a trace and we give up the search. We offer him our condolences, say our parting adieus and final happy new years for the night and stagger home in our respective directions.

A week or so later as the initial snowfall begins to dwindle, a canary yellow VW bug is discovered frozen deep beneath a mammoth snowdrift in front of a small Bier Haus at the base of the Zugspitze.

Having tested and tasted every flake of snow between here and Innsbruck over the past few weeks, I get wind of a job prospect in a private castle converted to a 5 star luxury resort hotel complex nestled just over the hill in a private valley on the opposite side of the Zugspitze. Whoa, since I had never lived in a castle before, I figure, "Bitchin'! And they even have their own private ski slope! I'm there!”

I sell my 10 speed touring bike with the skinny little tires, pack my knapsack, sling my skis, boots and poles over my shoulder, say so long to 'Stoner' Bob, 'Bad Hat' Harry, 'Johnny' Giovanni, Garmisch and Ahmad the Turk, and set off to go live in a castle.

As I'm making my way out the door with all this shit strapped to my body - my backpack, a shoulder bag, my skis propped on my shoulder, ski boots and poles in my hand, my entire worldly collection, with my woolen beanie pulled low over my ears, I'm thinking to myself, I must be out of my fucking mind, who in their right fucking mind is going to pick up this long haired, drugged out, American hippie freak from Paradise, California, hitchhiking with all this shit strapped to his body (good job I had sold my bike)? I heave a woeful sigh and close the door behind me.

Out of Paradise - Ch. 7 - Arbeit Macht Frei Pt. 2

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