Liz Everett, London Bureau

“White smoke!”

This was the cry that rang out as my friends and I began to get settled in to watch The Sound of Music, which played every night in our hostel in Salzburg, the last city I visited over spring break. Sure enough, I looked down at my iPod touch and I had a text proclaiming that there was white smoke coming from the Vatican; we had a new Pope. Maria and the Captain forgotten, my friends and I flocked to the bar to squeeze around the small TV which showed a fuzzy, rainy picture of the Vatican and the clamoring crowd. We waited in almost breathless anticipation for the announcement of the new pope, bemoaning the fact that we could not understand any of the German commentary.

The diversity of the people in the bar made the experience all the more surreal. Our Austrian bartender, who happened to be Catholic, stood close to the TV making jokes about the conclave, all thoughts of serving drinks abandoned. His female counterpart glowered from across the room, clearly resenting the choice of programming for the evening, and occasionally sent eye rolls over to our side of the room, as if in apology to the other customers who did not share our enthusiasm. A small cluster of interested people had formed around the TV, and the others in the bar looked on in amusement at our seemingly over-the-top excitement. It is a strange thing to think about what a papal conclave must look like to someone on the outside.

The camera began to zoom in on the balcony, and we could discern shadows and movement behind the curtains. Yells to turn up the volume and keep quiet filled the room as Pope Francis came out onto the balcony and waved to the roaring crowd. Our bartender translated Francis’ first papal address for us, and I couldn’t help but be amazed by the ridiculousness of the situation. Here I was, thousands of miles away from where I had been the last time a new Pope had been announced and yet the ceremony was the same. The tradition held no matter how the particulars changed. In a hostel bar in Salzburg, I had encountered the foreign and the familiar, just as I had throughout the rest of my travels.

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I traveled to Prague, Munich and Salzburg over spring break —three places that I had never planned on visiting and therefore did not have many expectations for. Each city had a very different feel, and all very different from London; however, in each there always came that moment of recognition when I would get my bearings and start recognizing the familiar amidst the foreign. If I found my way to the street Karlova in Prague, I knew it would lead me to Charles Bridge, which I could cross and get to my hostel. In Munich, none of the buildings were allowed to be built “higher than God,” so I could easily follow the Church towers throughout the city. In Salzburg, my familiar landmark was a bright yellow banner that signaled the spot where I should turn left.

The free walking tours we took in the cities were extremely helpful in making them more familiar. Our tour guide in Munich was one of the best I’ve ever witnessed and over four hours that day he went through over a century of history, economics and theology to explain Germany in relation to the rest of the world. He emphasized the striking contrast between Berlin and Munich’s rebuilding of their cities after the destruction of WWII. The former wished to keep nothing, and so rebuilt in the modern style of any contemporary big city. The latter, however, chose to remember the past, including all the “emotional baggage” (as our tour guide so eloquently put it) that went along with it.

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What is tradition? When you are forced to start over, what deserves to be saved? Is rebuilding a city in the old style of architecture merely a nostalgic dream for a past that no longer exists? What is so attractive about culture and tradition? Munich chose the conservative route, the one that honored tradition, because without tradition, one cannot have culture. And is that not that the attraction of so many European cities? When we travel, are we not we looking to absorb a culture, to understand a tradition perhaps different from our own?

In a similar way, the continuing tradition of the papacy unites different cultures across the world. It is amazing to think that there are people in every city that believe the tradition of the Catholic Church is one that deserves to be continually saved and rebuilt.

Liz Everett is a junior PLS and English major studying in London for the semester. She is morally opposed to having to pay for bathrooms. Contact her at eeveret1@nd.edu.