Crossroads

(where should you go?)

Lost in Bavaria's metropolis

Munich's slogan to greet people has apparently recently changed from 'world city with a heart' to 'München mag Dich' (Munich likes you). Does that mean you have to like it back right away? I guess it's like with every relationship: some click right away, some do after a while and with some you just have to realize where your limits are.

One can think what he or she wants...Munich, as beautiful and livable as it is, remains strange to me, even after more than 8 months in this Bavarian island of good food, best beer in the world and unheard-of life quality. Salaries are high here, so comparatively high that whole convoys of cars and weekly commuters travel from their distant homes in the rest of the country (predominantly the East, I guess) to work in Munich for the week and then head back to their homes on the weekend. Indeed, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the best salaries are paid in Frankfurt, Munich and Wiesbaden (all deep in the West), the worst in Zwickau, Cottbus and Schwerin (all 'famous' East German cities). Even my wider family and countless people in my home village live this odd ritual...leaving family on Sunday night to go on your weekly journey into the golden cities of West Germany, especially Bavaria's capital to earn a decent living.

Let's talk about the weather

Why strange? why odd? It could be that you have to be Bavarian and grow up here to really fall in love with this city. Or do I lack the attitude? Maybe I just don't take the time to look around and see the wonders around, maybe work keeps me too busy. Why did I not fill these pages continuously in the last year? Because the one thing happened that was almost expected and is quite typical to Germans to I guess: Going back home from a long time abroad, it all is so familiar that there does not seem to be much noteworthy. Although there would be...

Life in Germany does to great deal take place behind doors, anyway. Weather makes it impossible to have all-year open restaurants, food stalls etc. on the street, to sit around outside all the night as in Singapore. Germans only have that experience for a few precious months in the year, usually from around June to August, when people seem to suck in life, sun, especially the gorgeous beergardens and the blue sky...everything to make up for freezing months earlier in the year and to prepare for the terrible moments (my personal view of course) when you have to take the big jackets out of the wardrobe and the season of cold feet starts again. Mood generally swings a bit around in October and November when days get shorter and colder and night seems to follow you throughout the whole day the shorter the days get.

The famous German cosiness just cannot have a place outside, but has to be lived inside. Maybe that's also why privacy and the holiness of your own homes are so very sacred here. One has to be protected against the odds out there...

(cold beauty of a different kind)

The Undiscovered Land

What comes next then? After a crazy, almost finished first year of work in a new job, it seems to be finally time to start breathing and to look around in this city of quite homogeneous beauty and attractiveness. This all sounds stupidly melancholic? Welcome to the German soul...no wonder, the word 'Weltschmerz' has been invented here. It describes perfectly the state of mood of many people in autumn and winter, but also lays the foundation to the eventual and (my view) most beautiful time of the year..spring.

So this post was very much only about weather, a topic one could say is not worth intelligent talk. But coming back from Singapore, it showed me that the mere fact of changing seasons and unreliable weather does not only provide for constant source of smalltalk-babble, it is much more: constant complaining about the weather is part of the German soul, mood swings, desires (give me palm trees and a beach and I am happy) and even enough reason to move away.

To answer Wilhelm Busch's famous question whether the educated cannot talk about the weather anymore without any inhibitons?...yes, in Germany they can! Everyone can!

-MS