Notes from a Strange Continent, Part 1

I recently left Los Angeles and moved to Munich. The reason for my move was fairly straightforward - my girlfriend lives in Munich - yet there are still some difficulties in the transition. The primary difficulty is my job. I don’t have one. As a result, the terms of my visa only allow me to stay in the country for 90 days at a time. Also, my language capacity is still somewhat limited. When I was in a restaurant recently, I attempted to order “tap water”, but what I actually requested was “accomplishment water.”

These slight obstacles aside, I feel that I am adjusting relatively well to this new life. For me, at the stage in my experience, my idea of Munich is still somewhat vague. My knowledge of the city extends significantly beyond the superficial tourist framework. But it doesn’t yet feel like a home. The place exists in that weird middle territory, in which I’ve decided that I am going to live somewhere, I’ve done things like shopping for groceries and commuting through outer neighborhoods, but I still get lost every time I step out of the U-Bahn. At least I am no longer calling it the subway.

Still, I like this state of mind. It’s exciting, something like falling in love. Everything is new, full of possibility, potential. A trip to the drug store is loaded with thrilling and/or dangerous uncertainty. You may get lost on the way. You may discover that you don’t know the German word for “dandruff”, and so you stare at the shampoo assortment for a half-hour scratching your head with confusion, as tiny white flakes sprinkle down onto your shoulders. Or you might stumble across a cemetery that you didn’t even know existed, nestled between a river and several indistinct buildings, where tall, solemn trees cast their shade over the uneven surface of grass and concrete, where moss clings to the tombstones and the dates are worn away by the centuries that have gone by.

I enjoy this infatuation. As with falling in love, it may not have the same comfort and fulfillment as a long-term relationship. But there is also a certain electricity, a certain hyper-awareness that will inevitably fade. When you are new in a culture, particularly when you are allowed to have a greater consciousness of your surroundings. You turn a corner and—and it could be anything, you could be anywhere. A park, a statue, a cluster of office buildings constructed in that awful 1960’s architectural style . . . anything! The possibility of being impressed is balanced against the possibility of being disappointed. But therein lies the excitement. The possibility. Because eventually, you will turn the corner and know—like the back of your hand—every brick, every tree, every building, and every stretch of concrete that awaits. Which may be nice, but is somewhat less exciting all the same.

So these are my initial impressions of Munich, this is the landscape as I have come to know it in my limited time here: there is the old guy in a beret, slowly riding his bike; tiny cars; the lonely click of a woman’s heels against pavement, when the streets have grown dark and mostly empty; the waitress who, for no justifiable reason, seems to hate me more than she’s ever hated anyone, ever; eerily quiet public transportation; the quick, cheery “ding-ding” of a bike as it almost collides with me; the dark, woody atmosphere of a café in the afternoon; an old lady (beret optional) slowly carrying a bag of bread down the street with a peculiar, though admirable determination; the abundance of bookstores that string along the Schellingstrasse; church bells echoing in the morning.

Soon all of these things will lose their distinctiveness, they will blend together into a much larger impression. I will come to know them, the way I know the back of my own hand, and then I will know that I truly live here.