A love song, in Munich

The sun wasn’t as warm as memory promised it would be. The grass perhaps thinner, mud between the stalks, and itchy on my calves, which felt awkward in shorts after so long under professional trousers. I wanted so badly to enjoy my afternoon off in Munich, the city that most surprised me with it’s beauty when this new job introduced us. So I’d returned to the English Gardens, green and liquid among the concrete realities of urban modernity, seeking the easy summer joy I’d found there last time, when my friend/mentor and I had earned the respect of our Teutonic neighbors with our beer garden food trays.

“You are going to eat all of zis?” They inquired. “No, zis is not possible.” They informed. “Sehr gut!” They soon praised.

But this time, supper was solitary, crushed granola bar dug out of backpack bottom. And no bicycle, just the implacability of my own feet, again, still, always, forward because it’s easier than stopping. But now I’d paused, by a river that didn’t care, with no one to talk to about it. My nature, my vagabond urges, my desire to connect with the planet that threatens to disconnect me from my people, felt closer than my kin. And the water wouldn’t talk to me.

But this age, this semiconductor madness, it has its perks, and the phone in my pocket connected me with the woman back home. The woman I missed. The partner I loved. The deeper dream I wanted to reach. To reconcile with my wanderlust. And now the setting sun wasn’t abandoning, it was saluting. The air wasn’t sucking the warmth from my flesh, it was enlivening my skin. I wasn’t alone and forgotten, I was adrift in a city, the way I love to be.

My steps into the park had been dragging, an effort to reach someplace where Good would start. My steps out were light, aware that Good starts within. I was feeling that flow when I reached the musician.

I'd passed him before, but busy seeking the melody of happiness in my headphoned isolation, so had nodded hello and kept on. Now I took the earbuds out and listened to him. He was good. Soul and skill. I dropped a euro of gratitude in his case, and we got to talking, sharing who we were that day, until another voice spoke up.

"Excuse me," it said in a soft German accent. "I just wanted to sank you for your playing. She likes it very much."

The smiling man was pushing a stroller. Inside, an infant daughter watched the guitar player with a focus that seemed enlightened. Her infant’s inability to form facial expressions left her focus somehow pristine, unmuddled by self-consciousness or the details of communication. Just pure attention, approaching easy adoration. The joy coming from this tiny vulnerable creature felt invincible.

"Would you like another?" asked the guitarist. Then he sang her a love song, smooth and sweet, as evening light caressed down through the trees, which stood around to watch this tiny, perfect child listen to a musician’s harmony and care. And I, privileged witness, could only feel that the world was again in its perfect orbit.

(The guitar player can be found here.)

Turns out I like Germany after all, in Munich

Why don't more cities have these?

“Put your hand up, put your damn hands up!

Tonight is my life, because tonight I’m a sinner!

Keep your hands up, keep your damn hands up!

Tonight is my life, it’s an assault on my liver!”

As these remarkably honest rock & roll lyrics launched out into the perfect warm June air above the chattering tables of university students and studiers-abroad, I thought “Maybe I like Germany after all.”

My first big trip, solo backpacking across Europe, began in Frankfurt. I remember rushing currents of people with purpose, reminding me that I had none (amazing how challenging it is to be unemployed) and a jet-lagged nausea at not knowing what to do with myself. I stayed three days, which was two too many, then a fourth, because the guy who sold me my train ticket didn't tell me it left from the other friggin train station. “I'm American! I'm amazed you have ONE giant station. I was not prepared for redundancies!”

Then, months later, I arrived in Berlin with a dirty sweatshirt and two pairs of jeans to find a city locked in ice. That first night it was seventeen degrees below zero, Celsius. “I'm Californian! I was not prepared for Hoth!” Other than that, years later Germany was the place where Belgians went to buy their diapers. Not sure why, but they're WAY cheaper over there.

So when this tour guide job took me to Munich, I expected a good chance to focus on the work, less distracted by the place than I'd been in the beauty of Switzerland or at the tables of France. But Munchen had surprises in store for me.

Like the Marienplatz, with its jovial Germans and Neo-Gothic New Town Hall that convincingly looks like the sort of place some serious medieval shit went down, despite only being a mere century old. And the Viktualienmarkt where stalls were selling cheese, wine, and produce in true European splendor. And the Frauenkirche, consecrated in 1494, one of the few genuinely old buildings in Munich. Why so few old buildings in a city with such an ancient feel? As with most German cities, Munich was pretty much leveled by the end of World War II, but the American bombers had used the church’s spires to navigate their bombing runs, so left them pristine among the rubble. After the war, the broken cities faced the question: “Do we rebuild as it was? Or take this opportunity to modernize?”

Viktualienmarkt produce

Frankfurt chose to modernize, and is now another stack of right angles and capitalist fortresses, the town where I was bored and desperate. Munich went the other way, rebuilding instead of replacing, and preserving substantial portions of urban land for green spaces. This was the city where I marveled at spires and statues, fountains and pedestrian thoroughfares, but it was one of those green spaces that really made me love Munich. Appropriate, since from 2006 the city's motto has been “München mag dich” (“Munich loves you”).

Guten tag, Englischer Garten!

The English Gardens are 910 acres (larger than NY's Central Park) of urban parkland where on a sunny Thursday evening, hundred of Munichites were lounging on towels and grass, listening and making music, eating drinking and laughing with friends. It was gorgeous. And, being Bavaria, there are not one, not two, but three beer gardens in the park.

My mentor/friend and I bicycled through the park and took two of the 7,000 seats in the Chinese Tower beer garden. We didn't think our trays of giant beers, saucy bratwurst, potatoes, green salad, giant pretzel, and kaiserschmarrn (shredded sweet pancakes with powdered sugar and sweet apple sauce on the side) was that unusual, but the German couple next to us ogled it and asked in beautiful Bavarian accents “Really? You are going to eat all of zis?”

Because the only thing better than eating a banana
with a spoon is surfing in the middle of a city.

Yes, yes we did. Then rode back, pausing to watch the surfers. Because yes, there are surfers in the park in landlocked Bavaria. It's München, baby! Then we browsed the streets of the World's Most Livable City, according to Monocle in 2013, and when we heard music thumping out of another beer-gardeny spot on the university campus, why not?

Perfect temperature, belly full of good food, historical and contemporary vibrancy, and friendship everywhere, Munich was a pretty nice place to be. The assault on my liver was just bonus.