I was crouching on the ground, underneath a wooden table, my sister in front of me, in a room with my youth group and 300 tourists in complete silence. I remember a woman yelling, “Everyone, get down on the ground down!” and how I rushed to the table where we just had our meal at the Hofbräuhaus am Platzl restaurant (picture of restaurant above), hearing glass break and chairs and benches move all around the room as everyone tries to get down and hide. Some people heard the gunfire down below in the plaza outside; some thought the gunman was coming up the stairs. We all knew one thing for sure: we were in the midst of a shooting in Munich, Germany.
Before all of the chaos happened, it was just another day on my trip with my youth group from Mary Star of the Sea church. We were on our pilgrimage to World Youth Day, the biggest Catholic youth event in the world in Kraków, Poland, and Munich was one of the stops on our journey. Early that day, we had toured the famous castle in Germany, Neuschwanstein, and were enjoying our night being in the city of Munich.
During dinner, my youth minister, Bob Schrimpf, was informed by his wife that a shooting occurred at the Olympia Shopping Mall in Munich. We all alerted our parents that we were all safe and enjoying our time at dinner. We took a group photo, which my youth minister posted to Facebook, all with smiles on our faces, glad to feel safe and to show our community everything was good.
We were about to leave the restaurant when someone in our group had to use the restroom. I remember standing up from the table, my purse around my shoulder, waiting for her to return to leave when I saw my youth minister talking to someone near the back exit of the restaurant. After speaking to a man, my youth minister called all of us together to say two girls just saw someone get shot outside. That was when others heard gunshots and we were told to get down and be quiet.
You are never prepared for a time like this. All you have to do is stay in control of yourself, focus, and think fast about what you have to do. After a few minutes of waiting underneath tables, we were told to get out of the building. I stood up and ran out the back exit with my sister and others in our group until we made it to the back alley of the restaurant. Everyone that was in the room we ate dinner at flooded into the streets, many, not knowing where the gunman was. I was with half of my group after escaping the restaurant and we all knew we had to get to our bus pickup location to make it back our hotel. Trying to find our way to our bus, we picked up a teenage girl named Emma who was separated from her group during the chaos; she was coming with us to be safe.
When we finally made it to the bus pickup location, we find our youth minister with an adult in our group, but no bus in site. At this time, when adults in our group were discussing where we should go for shelter, I decided to call my parents and boyfriend. I never knew a conversation would be so difficult with three of the closest people in my life. I can still remember trying to explain over the phone what happened and how I could feel my voice shaking as I spoke. All I thought about, while hiding underneath the table in the restaurant, was how I wanted to speak to them one last time if I had the chance to speak with them one last time. Hearing their voices again was one of the most uplifting moments that night, but also one of the most difficult moments because I was so relieved to hear them speak to me.
As I was on the phone, our group knew we had to get off the streets. We first went into an apartment building, but it was too tight for our group of 8 to fit in. We then made it to a pub restaurant, where others were gathered off the streets. All public transportation was shut down and the German police were blocking and manning all the streets in the city center where we were. All we wanted to do was get back to our hotel, knowing it was away from where the shootings occurred and the location our whole group could meet up at safely. We waited in there for 3 hours, trying to figure out how to get back to our hotel. Our youth minister then told us he wasn’t given a definite yes from police as to whether or not we should leave and walk back because the police didn’t know if there were more shooters on the loose, but they told him it was the best time to leave with police covering the roads. That was when my youth minister made a judgment call and decided to get us out of there.
It was a 20-minute walk to our hotel, all of us huddled together and looking out on the streets. Police cars and personnel were everywhere, guns drawn and ready. Seeing the police was reassuring, but while I was walking, I kept analyzing everyone else walking on the streets, almost judging them. The police didn’t know if there were more shooters, or if any were still among us. I still didn’t feel safe.
When we finally made it to our hotel, we were able to have Emma contact her tour group and make accommodations for her to return to them, and wait for our other half of our group to return to the hotel. I had also lost the sense of adrenaline I gained back when the shooting occurred. After losing all of the energy, though, that was when I then broke down in my hotel room. All I could think was how the feeling of utter fear came over me in the restaurant and how I still felt it. It was a sense of fear of thinking about your own death. If that gunman came up the stairs to our room, he could have shot so many people innocent people, including me. How could I simply let that go? I couldn’t shake the feeling off that I could have encountered death; that I wouldn’t have been able to speak to my family and friends again; that I was only 18 and my time could have come that night.
It is in those times, times where we experience life-changing moments, that we can either live in that moment or overcome it. As a group, we discussed if we should continue on our journey. After first, we all felt unsafe, fearing that if something happened at World Youth Day, having hundreds of thousands of people fleeing would be utter chaos and something we didn’t want to experience again. But after we left Munich and went into Prague, we discussed again if we should continue on to Poland. An adult in our group, Angela, was reading about the safety measures Poland had for World Youth Day. She came upon a quote from one of the cardinals that works with Pope Francis about why World Youth Day wouldn’t be canceled that said in a time where fear and doubt is all around us and consumes our world, what a better time than now to come together with the youth of the world to show there is still hope and love.
After hearing her say that, I knew I couldn’t let what happened make me fear the world or fear a new day. I had to continue on, and my group knew they had to as well. We weren’t going to let fear win, to stop us from what we set out to do on our journey.
Looking back to it now, the shooting is the most traumatic experience I have ever been in. On the rest of our trip and once I was back home, seeing people run really fast or hearing loud bangs or noises still made me and makes me jump. I will always remember that fear that set on me during that night, but each passing day, talking about it and knowing it happened, the fear goes down. We do live in a hostile world that can be unforgiving and truly scary, but as I have learned from my experience in Munich, we can’t let that stop us from truly living.
