The Sandspur

Issue date: 12/4/09 Section: Life & Times

Media Credit: MCT Campus CHEAP LODGING: Hostels provide an exciting and affordable place to stay while traveling abroad.

Like any country, Germany is famous for things both good and bad. Beer, depending on which category you'd put it in, is free flowing in the Deutschland, where some of the world's best are featured. Sauerkraut and Bratwurst are two culinary exports from the country as is Weiner schnitzel and curry worst. It's a country that has produced men as loved as Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Sebastian Bach, as revered as Ludwig van Beethoven and Albert Einstein and as controversial as Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx. It's a land that has seen the good times - the fall of the Berlin Wall, prosperity and prominence in the creation of a European Union and currency - but which has also suffered through the bad: the rise of the Nazi party and two World Wars that left the country economically and politically devastated.

But Germany is responsible for something else, something that has greatly impacted the world, and particularly youth culture. Because aside from being the country that designed your dad's flashy BMW, Germany is also responsible for giving millions of backpackers and student travelers refuge each year in the form of their most famous, yet least credited export: youth hostels.

The Youth Inn (or hostel), Jugendherberge as it is translated in German, has impacted our world more than all the German beer, cars and politics could have hoped to. Just think about it. The word itself is synonymous with travel, and a stay in one is vital for any "student abroad" cliché. Hostelling has entered the public lexicon, too, and has inspired both rose tinted portrayals of the wandering American seeking refuge in a foreign land - the excellent documentary "A Map For Saturday" - and blood tinted portrayals of the wandering American seeking refuge in a foreign land - the not-so-excellent, but nevertheless engrossing, Eli Roth film "Hostel." I bring this all up to call attention to 2009's most significantly underreported anniversary. As you no doubt learned when you peered down at the title under final-weary eyes, 2009 marks the 100th Anniversary of Germany's greatest export. And it all started because of some rain.

It was Aug. 26, 1909 and German schoolteacher Richard Schirrmann was leading an eight-day hiking trip in the German countryside with a group of students when the rain began to fall. Schirrmann and his students generally stayed in farm buildings they came across but on this particular night they had to resort to an empty classroom the local schoolmaster allowed them refuge in. The experience implanted in Schirrmann's mind an idea that started a revolution.

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