Getting to know you- Münchners are like chocolates

And so, my life as a Münchnerin began.

It did take a while to adjust, I have to say. The train system still had- shock horror- announcements from the drivers, rather than automated ones like in Berlin. Though the prevailing mood in these announcements seems to be ‘bored out of my skull’ (if you are on the verge of slipping into a coma, please do not drive a train!) Often when I hear `Zurück bleiben’, it has been savagely whittled down to two mere pops of syllables- ‘Zük blei’. The stations were different too. My home station, Münchner Freiheit, is a stark contrast to all of the others- fluorescent green tiling, glowing blue pillars and a mirrored ceiling, in which you can see yourself reflected upside-down. No chance of missing that stop.

I had to register as a citizen again, but unlike in Berlin, it didn’t take all day. I did have to get up ridiculously early to queue outside the door, but that was to be expected- Germans’ internal clocks just seem to be set a couple of hours earlier. I was hoping this might rub off on me, and that I would be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gaily leaping out of bed to embrace the new day with a shout of ‘Guten Morgen München!’

Well... it hasn’t happened yet.

Another thing I learned the hard way is that Münchners do not restrain their curiosity. If you are wearing a brightly-coloured coat or your features are not wholly Caucasian (in my case, usually both), you are likely to incur accusatory stares. Men may whistle or mutter darkly to themselves (thought the muttering might be due to the preponderance of the hands-free earpiece. Either way, it’s a tad disconcerting.)

In my view, Münchners are a bit like chocolates- cold and hard on the outside, but in actual human interactions, the shell cracks and they are actually sweet and soft-hearted. They will give you directions before you ask for them, or start up a good-natured conversation in the lift (us Brits would stare at the floor or fiddle with our mobiles, anything to avoid having to chat!)
One wonderfully quirky Münchner, Ingo Maurer, has a local studio filled with beautiful madness- whole flocks of lightbulbs with wings and lampshades made of glass bottles of cherryade. He designed my neon station too.

So, my daily journey to work goes thus.

I wander round the flat in a haze of exhaustion and throw myself into the lift (not for claustrophobic- there are even scratches on the walls, as if someone’s tried to claw their way out...) The next thing worthy of note is the beautiful St. Ursula church with its pale green dome. If I’m ahead of schedule (or really behind, which I never am, of course) I hear the bell ringing in the quarter-hour. The street connects to an arterial Munich road, Leopoldstraße, home to rows of shops, restaurants and cinemas. Narrowly avoiding death-by-cyclists, I cross into another tangle of side-streets framing the enormous English Gardens. On the corner is a little art shop, whose works I always admire (this means I can let the postwoman on her yellow bike go past without flattening myself against a wall.) In the third window I pass are two little bronze people sat upon a bronze bench, folded like paper- one man and one woman. Between them is a golden apple. The sign declares this to be a ‘Liebesbarometer’- affection portrayed by the distance between the couple. I always peek in to see how they’re doing. Sometimes they’re overlapped, the apple forgotten. But as I write this, they’ve been at opposite ends of the bench, not facing each other, all week. One wonders if things are rocky between the shop owner and significant other...
It never fails to amuse me when I look up from my desk and see a stream of helmeted tourists whizzing past the window on segways with a mild `Bzzzzzzz’.

Sometimes my colleagues and I pop to one of a plethora of bakeries.
“Haben Sie noch einen Wunsch?” said the woman who served me once, handing over the Nusshörnchen.
Did I have another wish? It sounded scarily final. “Yes, I would like world peace with my croissant.”

After work I often wander to Marienplatz, the definite centre of Munich, dripping with high-class fashion and gorgeously gothic buildings, like the famous Rathaus with its glockenspiel. There is a gloriously talented musical group I keep bumping into called Scherzo. Their line-up varies, but most of the time there’s a double bassist, a pianist, a clarinettist (“Please ladies and gentlemen don’t make any video recordings our CDs are here to buy we are taking a short break thank you”) and a violinist, plus a different singer each time. They even bring their own grand piano to wherever they perform. That’s dedication to your art if ever I saw it.
I just had time to get into a comfy little routine before the madness of Oktoberfest hit Munich with more force than the WW2 bomb detonated just down the road from my office, which blew all the windows out and started some fires...