MUNICH (Part I)

MUNICH (PART I)

2/10/2008

Munich-an interesting city as always thought.  After locating the administrative offices I finally got to my room accompanied by my mentor Barbara and my friend Miriam.

After some problems with the key we left for Miriam’s apartment.  Barbara had agreed to help find it.

Olympiazentrum accessed by the U3.

Probably my impressions are exaggerated by fatigue but I know this year will be tough.

2 October 2008.

Flight from Dublin to Munich 0720 hours.

Bus to Dublin 0335 hours.

Sleep achieved ca. 2 hours.

This was a recipe for disaster and in retrospect I managed quite well.

Rattled by a short bittersweet nap I make a hasty breakfast at 0310.  I light the gas and boil the kettle.  My mother is up now too, she also has a mug of tea.  I have never been one for the early breakfast so I eat little if anything.  I am nervous.  I have only travelled by plane a few times, to Austria and to Australia beforehand.

But this makes me nervous.  I am moving to Germany, albeit temporarily.  This is a big change.  I am setting out on a once in a life time adventure and yet I am worried about the little things: boarding, flying, disembarking, de-boarding, breathing German air, getting to the Student Accommodation office before it closes and I am homeless for the night.

I doubt if I would have had to sleep on the street but in my mind then, it was almost a dead certainty and far more likely than the possibility that things might run smoothly and I move into my new studio flat without a hitch.

No, ever the optimist I am.

It is October, so Munich is buzzing with the final days of Wiesn or Oktoberfest so things are bound to be busy.  And hostels are likely to have been booked up for 12 months prior.

We’re waiting for the bus.  A few lorries pass but no sign of a bus.  I panic I begin to wonder if I had read the time table wrong.  The thought that any busy could possibly be active in these small hours is preposterous, there’s no bus, I’m missing my flight and the opportunity, I can’t go tomorrow, it is over.  It is over and I am not sorry and I can stay at home and do something take a year out and then the bus turns onto the street I see its headlights and the golden number.  It has come.  And its only about ten minutes late.

The bus journey is largely uneventful  I am assuming the people here are all on their way to the airport why else, and for what other reason might they be up at this ungodly hour.  I can think of none.  Airport it is.

It is about 5 o’clock when we get there.

I go in and I search for Miriam.  I don’t like airports.  I find them confusing.  Miriam, kindly offered to book flights, she’s an organiser, she likes to organise.  I fret and I worry over miniscule things so I gratefully oblige.  There is no sense in me worrying and exasperating us both.  I am confident in her ability.

We get to our Gate.  We sit about and we chat.  I am nervous and I am sleepy.  Sleep wins and I get drowsy.

There is a stag party en route to Munich too.  They wrestle and joke, jibe and jest while other potential passengers evade and elude the behemoth mass that is the Bachelor party.  When we arrive in Munich, they will launch their own exclusive WWF tournament, wrestling and rolling on the conveyor belt while some old lady eyes them hungrily insisting they’re merely part of her luggage.

The grass is golden brown in Munich.  A true Autumn colour.  But the heat is intense.  It is October 2^nd and the sun is beating down feverishly.

We collect our luggage and exit.  I see Barbara, my mentor, waiting with the distinguishing scarf wrapped around her neck.  She smiles and I think, that looks like Barbara (we had communicated via facebook before and she agreed to meet me at the airport), I was right.

Barbara’s father kindly agreed to take us into the city and deposit us at the Studentenwerk Olympische Dorf.

I am tired.

No, I am exhausted.  No sleep makes me cranky and mopey and depressed.

With much adieu I get my keys.  At the best of times German comes difficult to me and I had hoped to clutch Babara close and ask her to work as my brain but I managed.  Simply because the Studentenwerk had prepared for every eventuality, even the eventuality that some lunatic would attempt to come study for a year in Munich with incoherent German.  It is almost implausible but German efficiency won in the end.  They met my challenge!

I got my key.

And demands that rent be paid within a few days once my bank account was opened.

So, we three, Miriam, Barbara and myself venture to Helene­-Meyer Ring and into the halls of what looks like some Soviet gulag and down to my room, 107.

This is my room.

I press the key into the lock, the door opens.

We breach the room.

Bare.

A bed, a desk, a chair.  And a sink.  And a WC that was ripped out of Space Odyssey. 

I cringe (I later grew to love it).

A window, a wall made of glass exposes me and my room to those pedestrians walking along the bridge.  I only wish I had realised that they could see as much as they could with the venetian blinds open.

Quite the eyeful.

Then, having scoped the room out I decide it might be a good idea to close the door.  The key is still in the lock.  It won’t come out.  The key is stuck.  So, we each in our turn struggle, exhausting our physical and mental endurance but despite our best efforts, the efforts of three, the key remained steadfast in the lock.

Barbara rings the Hausmeister.

,Enschuldigung, ich heisse Ottmann, Barbara Ottmann…’

I can’t even make my own phone calls.

The man explains that it is an old lock, these buildings were constructed in the ‘70s after all, the infamous Olympic village.

We try.  You must turn the key, twiddle it and push in before removing it.  So we caressed the lock for a bit, wooing the key.

And finally, we beat the experimental Soviet gulag cell lock.

I win back my key.

And I can safely close my door with the key in my hand.

I win.

 We travel to Miriam’s flat then, an U-bahn journey, one change and a further brief journey to Kieferngarten.

Her flat is amazing.

She actually has the luxury of a door between her microscopic kitchen and the rest of her living space.

I am jealous.

And I voice that envy.

We leave and we go for lunch.

Barbara takes us to a restaurant, and one I am not sure really existed as we could never ever find it again and we order dinner.

I get some pasta concoction.  And because I am unfamiliar with pasta and its subsidiaries, eating as hungry as I may be, becomes an ordeal.  The spaghetti slipping off my fork and back onto the slop in my bowl.  I can’t fork it out; I can’t scoop it and in the end as frustration gets the better of me I try to slurp it out.

A petty meal.

I am hungry an hour after and with no culinary or the like in my flat I will be hungry.

October 3^rd is a bank holiday.

Bank holidays, and church holidays are strictly adhered to in Munich.  It is forbidden to do anything.  No shops are open, society rolls to a halt and a whisper.

But I do have a mug.  And some highly coveted tea from home.

I buy milk, and cereal as well as some fruit.

Breakfast the night day will consist of a handful of honey loops scooped into my mouth, hastily washed down with a few mouthfuls of milk.  This is the student life.

Culinary and cutlery are superfluous.

I take my food home.

We meet a friend later on Marienplatz.  They want to go out.  I want to go sleep.

I take them both back to Olympiazentrum to show off my new flat, only to be told that I live in ‘the ‘mun of Munich.’  I reluctantly concede.

As we ascend from the U-bahn, we come out the wrong end.

This is my first day in Munich.  I am dying for sure, the lack of sleep has given way to some serious illness, I feel it in my bones.  Tomorrow, I won’t be alive.

I try to navigate my way back to the flat Barbara had helped us find earlier.

But I am lost.

We are lost.

This is no laughing matter.

I am lost in a strange city, and no one knows where I live.

Eventually, we make our way into the Olympic village, and after much stressing and sweating, the blood curdling in my gut we got to where I was, where I lived.

They laughed.

My discomfort brought them immense pleasure, feeding off my suffering.  I am the hapless fool, the zombie craving sleep as I cradle my sleeping bag on my quilt-less, sheet-less bed.  Sleep does not look appetizing and yet it is all I want.

Yet, the girls are on the road and I am compelled to follow.

I can’t remember where I live, I can’t be left alone.

We walk the streets of Munich.

It is early evening, but to me it feels like the wee hours and my home and my bed, and the bus stop and that boiling kettle on the gas a life time ago.

That was a distant dream.

We talk about the others coming.

And agree to meet the next day and to explore Oktoberfest.

I am so very tired.

I make my way back to my flat and I take out a notebook.

I scribble the date and the events, briefly onto paper.

Then I sleep.