Bavaria Musings, Days One and Two

(Herald photos by Bill Howard)

I apologize for the delay in blogging about the trip the cover Pope Benedict's six-day pilgrimage to his homeland of Bavaria, Germany. My itinerary has us covering papal events the first couple of days before we divert to some Benedict landmarks in other towns while he stays for other meetings and Masses.

Our Air France flight arrived in Paris at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. I remember a time when you could work on your laptop on airplanes. On this flight, I had a nice little setup with my laptop, headphones and some notes to prepare me for this pilgrimage. I was about five words into my notes when the chair in front of me jerks back, snapping my laptop shut. It was a scene from a Chevy Chase movie (in his funnier days of the 1980s). He moved the seat up some but unless it was directly upright, there was no way I could keep my laptop screen upright. So I listened to a DVD movie and fell asleep.

We had a 9-hour layover in Paris, so Ann Aughteron of the Catholic Herald in Arlington, Va., Chris Gunty and Ana Rodriguez-Soto of the Florida Catholic, and I embarked on a mini-tour of downtown Paris. We started at the Louvre, where I didn't find the bones of Mary Magdelene (sorry Da Vinci Code fans, but they ain't there), and walked up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.

We arrived in Munich at 8 p.m. and witnessed a beautiful sunset during our drive from the airport to the Best Western hotel in downtown Munich (a very nice hotel, btw). We had a late dinner and, after being up for nearly 36 hours, we left for bed around 10:30 p.m. . . . with a 6 a.m. wakeup call so we could get our Vatican press credentials around about three hours before the papal Mass.

The Munich Trade Fair Center is a former airport, with the hangars beautifully converted and creating the longest hallway I have ever been in. The weather was crisp and cool this morning and there was a serenity as we walked to the field. I expected huge throngs of people from all directions heading into the venue, but it was pretty quiet, with small pockets of excited folks and lots of bikes. We were surprised when, upon entering the field, there were already more than 100,000 people there. A decent portion were dressed in traditional garb (lederhosen for the men and dirndls for the women) and pockets of them playing marching music or dancing to bongo-playing kids singing praise-and-worship songs.

For a country that Benedict has been very critical off in terms of its embrace of relativism, the turnout -- particulary of young adults -- was impressive. Granted, not everyone may have been there for the right reason -- during the Gloria at Mass, I turned to my left to see two teens making out. There's some theology of the body work to be done there, but it was still great they were there. Hopefully something from the Mass stuck with them. Benedict was quite direct in his challenge to the German people to stop pretending like the world can exist without God and, instead, to surrender to His influence in our lives and to learn to let God guide us. His homily was interrupted several times by applause and chants of "Be-ne-det-to" (which dates back to the crowd at St. Peter's Square the day he was elected pope). The German crowd was much more subdued in general than anything you'd see at a John Paul II event. It was surreal to see nearly 200,000 people almost dead silent while the pope cruised around in the grounds in the popemobile en route to the entrance to the altar area. I was assured by several people that this is the German way and does not mean that they are not moved or excited. I'll see how true that is tomorrow morning, when I head over a few blocks from my Altotting hotel to the cathedral for another outdoor papal Mass.

The meals have been excellent, with the exception of a liver soup I was given tonight in Altotting. We arrived in Altotting around 6 p.m. after a three-hour walking tour of Benedict-related sites in downtown Munich (mostly churches he celebrated Mass at) and a 90-minute bus ride. Altotting is a lovely little town, and I can't imagine how they will accommodate an estimated 100,000 people. Fortunately our hotel is within walking distance of the field near the cathedral. We have to wake up at 7 a.m, get to the press center next to the cathedral by 8 a.m. and then will spend four hours staking out a good spot for photographs. The Mass begins at noon. Following the Mass, we are jumping into our bus to head to Marktl am Inn to see the house where the pope was born. That story has recently attained some drama as someone vandalized the house yesterday by splattering paint-filled balloons on parts of the house. This is the first sign of protest of the pope's visit. There is also intrigue as to how much and in what way he will address the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11.

That's about it for now. I had more interesting little things to share but to be honest I'm too tired to remember them. If there is anything you would like to know about the trip -- the atmosphere, the towns, the people, the food, etc...-- please post it in the comment box or send me an e-mail and I will do my best to answer it.

I will close by saying that the men's room at the press center in Munich had the funniest urinals I've ever seen. Each of them had a green mat (for grass), a plastic goal and a little soccer ball hanging by what looked like fishing line. I can post a picture if anyone really wants to see it.