Hell in Georgia

“All I wanted was a freakin’ pretzel!” my daughter E said. Who could blame her? We drove all the way to Helen, Georgia, for some sightseeing and a little October-festing, and not a pretzel to be found in the whole godforsaken town. How was I to know that Helen was going to be a total waste of time? I expected cheesy; it is, after all,  a Bavarian-themed alpine town in the north Georgia mountains. It should have been dripping in fondue, but sadly, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even drenched in beer or drowning in oompah music. Instead, it was much like that boulevard in every town where all the big box chain stores have moved on to newer shopping areas, leaving dilapidated strip malls that fill up instead with odd Asian restaurants, check cashing stores, and head shops. Played out comes to mind, as does used up, road hard and put up wet, and spent. Helen is an old whore.

I had this bright idea, you see. It was fall break from school, and the girls had off for two whole days . We had to be in Atlanta by Friday night for my nephew’s bar mitzvah, but I still wanted to fit in a mini-vacation before the family fun/obligation took over the rest of the weekend. I thought about places between our hometown in South Carolina and Atlanta that we could visit, somewhere that might normally be a day trip that we had yet to explore. Stone Mountain first came to mind, but I rejected it because E is solidly in her anti-nature phase. It’s not that she litters or hates animals. It’s more the idea of hiking and seeing bugs and snakes that makes a trip to a mountain more trouble than it’s worth.   Another possibility was Chateau Elan, a golf resort that isn’t exactly a hotbed of family friendliness since children are frowned upon at both a wine tasting and a day spa. I kept coming back to the idea of Helen. Fake Germany, Oktoberfest, pretzels, all in a redneck mountain too. I figured we could stay in a hotel and really get the local flavor. 

My husband quickly pooh-poohed the idea. “Helen’s boring,” he said. “It’s a day trip at best, but we can’t stay there. All the motels will be disgusting. If you really want to go, let’s just go for the day and stay at your sister’s house.” I didn’t want to do that, since my sister had enough on her plate with the bar mitzvah weekend. The last thing she needed was an extra night of house guests. I also didn’t want to come back home. What kind of a vacation is that? I can’t even sit down in my house unless I hear the washer or dryer running.  We compromised on a night in downtown Atlanta followed by a morning at the Georgia aquarium, in exchange for a full day at Helen.  I booked a hotel room there and got everyone packing for we could leave the next morning.

We all woke up late because the steady rain blocked out the morning rays of the sun. The day could not have been grayer and dingier if it were a movie set in Poland in 1939. Nobody seemed too keen on walking around outside, but I remained optimistic that the rain would pass and leave us with a beautiful day of sightseeing. I knew there were shops to visit, a few small museum type attractions, some gem mining, and even an old village with a grist mill to explore. I took the wheel so that I didn’t have to listen to my children complain about my husband’s driving, and off we went. We drove a good hour before any real whining started, and by that time we were off the interstate and on small Georgia back roads, tooling up the countryside.

Before I knew it, we were at Sautee Village, home an old general store, a winery, and a grist mill. It was also the first stop on the assisted living day trip circuit, which meant that all the bathrooms were occupied and the smell of moth balls hung heavy in the air as my family, the youngest people in the place, picked our way through the candy barrels and overpriced t-shirts. The building was interesting, but that is where it ended, really before it began. It poured rain while we were inside, but let up enough for us to run back to the car and continue into Helen town limits.

When we first turned on into town, we were all excited. Here was what we were looking for, gingerbread cutouts and Tudor facades, with even the fast food restaurants and banks getting in on the theme. I wanted it to look like an Epcot version of Germany, and I wasn’t disappointed as I drove past the edge of town. Then we hit was must have been Main Street. We passed an indoor bear exhibit, a Mexican restaurant, a Korean restaurant, and some candy shops. After a few blocks, we realized that we were the tourist part, which meant that we saw everything Helen had to offer in five minutes.

I turned around and went back to the alpine village area to look for a parking place. No free spots were on the main thoroughfare, and all the lots on the side streets were paid parking lots, which ticked off my husband. After skipping the five dollar lots and the four dollar lots, we found a three dollar lot, parked the car, and got out. We walked up to the main street and decided to head to a little German bakery and café for some lunch.

We were seated and immediately a large woman, a former shot put thrower who now donned a pinafore and a steely look in her eye, handed us menus and took our drink orders. Near us were several elderly tourists and one young unwed mother whose preschool aged child was busy licking the wrapper of a pat of butter. My husband ordered a Reuben, my daughter S ordered the knockwurst after I convinced her it was a hot dog, and my daughter E and I decided to split the German bread basket, the chicken spaetzle soup, and a side order of German potato salad.

When the food finally was served, the Reuben was a sad little sandwich, not even grilled so much as toasted. The skin on the knockwurst freaked out S that I had to peel it off, leaving a pile of thin foreskins on the side of her plate. The spaetzle soup was a thin salty broth with a few noodles floating in it, hardly enough for one of us, let alone to share. And the bread basket? Not a single hot pretzel. It overflowed with standard dinner rolls, some with sesame seeds, some without, none of which look particularly German in origin.  No wonder that kid was eating butter.

We left and began to stroll the town, thinking we could find some nice dessert somewhere, or at the very least, some tasty German chocolate. We stopped in a Dutch imports store after bypassing the frequent and obligatory t-shirt and shot glass stores. S contemplated the tarantula museum, but I said no, figuring it was probably a collection of snakes and spiders belonging to some unmarried 45 year old man with a skullet who still lives in his mother’s basement. We did go in the Hansel and Gretel candy kitchen, but we all lost our appetites inside because it didn’t smell like candy. E said it smelled like a combination of burned oil and a turd, and she was right.  We also skipped the lone fudge store due to the lack of air conditioning but plethora of flies. After spotting a Confederate flag bikini fading in a storefront window, I turned to my husband on the street corner where I stood and loudly declared, “You were right!  Let the record show, you were right!” Behind me, a speaker shaped like a rock crackled with the sound of tuba music. I think I might have shed a small tear.

We got back in the car, not even two hours after our arrival, counting lunch, and headed back down the mountain to return to civilization. I felt good knowing we gave it our all and could feel confident crossing Helen off our must-see list. And after reading this, I certainly hope you will do the same. Because seriously,  there was not one freakin' pretzel in the whole damn town, during October no less. Maybe we should have all had a beer instead.