Back in Bavaria

As the taxi driver speeds by the rolling landscape, I feel truly “back in Bavaria.” It’s slightly colder than the Bavaria I knew in the summer (but not extreme at all, like in the 50 degrees. I just needed a coat and a long-sleeve shirt), but still the same Bavaria, ausfahrts and all. He deposited me at the JYM office on Richard-Wagner Strasse and the corner of Gabelbergerstrasse, and I ring the doorbell at the office to be greeted by a youthful, kind face speaking English to me (however briefly that lasted, “Deutsch ist die offiziale Sprache der JYM” is the motto), Sommer Sherritt. I meet a couple of students from the program who are hanging around, and then Sommer and I delve into the all-Deutsch explanation of How My Life Will Work Here as I attempt to stuff as many chocolate cookies in my mouth as possible.
Photo: Bikes in the tunnel across from Blaues Haus, my dorm. Across the street is the U-Bahn Studentenstadt.

I receive several packets of information, my dorm keys, directions and maps, my Studentenausweis (student I.D.) with Ausbildung II karten that let me ride the U-Bahn system until the end of the month, and a bunch of other stuff, including my first homework assignment, a scavenger hunt in the Altstadt. Sommer calls a taxi for me and also calls E.J., who has been here since September with the program, to greet me at Christoph-Probst-Strasse and help me get to Blaues Haus, my dorm.
Photo: Studentenstadt.

I arrive in the Studentenstadt (“student village”) and E.J. very kindly helps me with getting to Blaues Haus (so named for the window frames, painted in blue). Without his help, I would have been Bambi’s mom when the hunters came. We take the lift up to the second floor (but really the third, given that, in Europe, the first floor doesn’t start until after the ground level) and go down to my room at the end of the hall. E.J. invites me to meet him and the group who are here at 17.30 (“halb sechs”) to go einkaufen and then go out to dinner for a gemeinsames Essen. He then leaves me to ponder how klein this space is. The bed at first reminded me of The Next Generation episode “Unification,” where a Klingon captain invites Picard to sleep “Klingon-style” on a hard shelf. The bathroom is something out of the Jetsons. If airplanes had bathrooms with showers, they would look like my bathroom. You step up into the bathroom itself, and then step up into the shower. Immediately adjacent is the little kitchenette, with 2 stove plates, a small refrigerator, and cupboards, and a sink. The closet is right behind my bed and about the same size as the bathroom, to be honest. I have a small balcony and window view. I’ve never had the luxury of being able to position my laptop in front of a window, but, with the desk, I do now. As I type I am looking at smoke emerging from a smokestack and dead trees in the parking lot. The bed is really low but there is shelving space above it. The curtains are blue (duh) and the walls white. I received a bag with fresh bedding and put it on. The cushion on the bed is thin, but comfortable, and I put the fitted sheet over it, and then there was this gigantic pillow-case thing in a nice rainbow pattern which I thought was the flat sheet, but then it turned out to be pillow-case style, with sewed-up seams. I also received a top sheet that is Big Bird yellow, a pillow, and another pillowcase entirely too large for the pillow. I turned the bed around and slept in the giant pillow case thing like a sleeping bag last night, then realized this morning that it had buttons, so it’s meant to go over the Big Bird yellow cover. I still want the second sheet, though. Photo: door to my dorm, Blaues Haus, Christoph-Probst-Strasse.

After settling in, I used the toilet, only to realize too late that this wasn’t Trinity, and there was no toilet paper in the little dispenser. No maids will be coming by to restock my toilet paper and leave peppermints as gifts. I took a shower, which was so much like the scene in Lost in Translation when Bill Murray takes a shower that it wasn’t funny. I changed clothes and let my hair air-dry as I unpacked (read: “threw everything out of her suitcase and onto a shelf so she could ascertain what else she needed”). I sat on my canary yellow bed and wondered if it was too late to go back to Trinity. I was alone, in a strange country, had no Internet connection, no power cord, no food, no drinks, a barely functional alarm, and, as I tried to make shopping notes to myself, I realized I had almost no paper to write on to my name. More importantly, I had no toilet paper. I didn’t even own a trash can, and contented myself with a broken SpaceBag for rubbish. Photo: Karstadt Department Store, Muenchner Freiheit.

My first priority was food, and then the adaptor. I couldn’t mess around with the Ethernet until I had a stable power source. I didn’t even really know where the Studentstadt U-Bahn was, I realized with a sinking feeling. I located the stores I needed to visit, and made tiny notes on how to get to them, and set off with a great deal of trepidation. I saw some girls walking in the little tunnel/archway right outside my dorm that seemed to lead to a major street, so I followed them and happily saw the blue “U” right on the other side of the street. I got to the U-bahn and wanted to buy a Monatskarte (which would have been a foolish purchase, because they run on a calendar month, not when you buy the card itself), and tried to fiddle with the machine as someone waited behind me. Ah, I felt stupid! So I just stepped aside and was content to use my Ausbildung karte to get on the U-bahn. I knew I had to go south, and get off at Alte Heide for my first stop (food). I wanted to take the U-6 down, but there weren’t any coming, so I sorta hopped on at the last minute on the U-3 that was going in Richtung Münchner Freiheit. Unless I was grossly misunderstanding, I knew I would be able to get off at Alte Heide. On the U-Bahn, I contemplated briefly what would happen if I wasn’t going where I wanted to go? Freedom is a terrible thing sometimes. But my instincts were right, and I was able to get out at Alte Heide, where I was supposed to be able to find the Supermarkt Rewa (‘Ray-vah’) by taking a right out of the U-bahn across the side street. I did, and didn’t’ see it, but found instead another little grocery store owned by a well-heeled Middle Eastern man in his 30s.

I found PEANUT BUTTER in the grocery store and I was estatic! I didn’t have any knives at the room but I didn’t care at this point. As I walked around, I heard English. . . English??!? Where? In the background. . . what were the voices saying? “Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no river low enough.” Ah, “I Will Survive” by The Supremes. I was so happy to hear the song. I’ll associate it with that moment for the rest of my life.

I also bought some other things, including toilet paper, and went to check out, trying to imitate the older Turkish woman in front of me. I paid (it was a really cheap, but still nice, grocery store), and then desperately tried to find the plastic bags and had to ask, “Wo sind die Plastiktaschen?” All the little routine things of life become so much bigger issues in a foreign country—not because they are, but because the entire apparatus upon which you are accustomed to operating (you operate so well that the apparatus is second-nature) has shifted, sometimes dramatically: the currency is strange, the language is different, the way people go about doing things…. It’s not so much culture (although that does come into play), but the way a society has elected to operate.

After being stocked up on food and drink, I turned to solve my electronic issues next. I needed the cord that runs from the black box of the laptop’s power cord to the wall, the adaptor. Sommer had told me that I could get this at Karstadt, a department store. The map she gave me said that Karstadt started in the basement of Münchner Freiheit, so I went back down to the Alte Heide U-Bahn and got off at Münchner Freiheit. The last time I was in Munich, two years ago, my family spent a lot of time here, so I felt better being somewhere familiar. I walked around the U-bahn level briefly but didn’t see anything resembling a major department store, so walked up to the ground level. They’re doing construction on the Freiheit U-Bahn so there was a lot of mess up there. I walked around hopelessly, thinking I must have gotten something wrong, and right there, on the corner, was a large, glossy building, that, sure, enough, had KARSTADT emblazoned across the doors. I looked down the street at the McDonald’s at the end and realized I’d been on this street before. There should be a Starbucks across the street, right? I couldn’t see it. . . .then I saw it! I had been here before—I even saw the bus sign where I had taken a picture of a dog. I had taken no notice of Karstadt then. . . . I hadn’t needed to. I rode the escalator up to the fifth floor, which held the Promised Land of Electronics. After walking around a really, really, really long time, I finally found what I was looking for at 12,50 Euro. I went to check out and saw two guys carrying a large trash can, and I thought, oh, wait. So I got a small wastebin, too. Fully loaded now, I opted to go to the Starbucks down the street.

I went down the Starbucks, where I ordered a hot chocolate after several blunders, and I sat down on the table with its English writing and just longed to be back in America. Not because I didn’t like Germany or Munich, but because it was just a lot harder here—for me, being a stranger. I looked over my StudentenStadt Ethernet instructions in German while staring out the window and thinking, if I close my eyes and click my heels, this Starbucks will morph into the Starbucks on 5th Street across from Whole Foods in Austin. . . The Global Standard Deity didn’t morph time and space, so I walked out into Munich and hopped the U-6 to Fröhling back (knowing only that I needed to go north), got out at the StuSta, but I still haven’t worked out which staircase gets you up to the right place to cross over street

to my dorm.

I unpacked my things, stocked up my toilet paper, and got ready to meet E.J. and the group-so-far (arrivals are staggered across several days) for Einkaufen and Abendessen. E.J. guided us over to the bus, where we took Bus #50 to Albert-Adrent-Str. and walked to the corner, took a left, and we were at a nice little mall called Parkstadt, where the real Rewa was, as well as a Pennymarkt and a sort of Wallgreens-without-medicine place. We browsed around, talked in German, asked E.J. all sorts of questions, and got some items, then we hopped the bus back, dropped off our things, and set off to take the U-Bahn down to Marienplatz to go to Hofbrauhaus. We got off at Marienplatz, walked through some lovely pedestrian centers, and entered the gigantic, almost full, Hofbräuhaus. Most of the group sat at one table with a German couple at the end, and two others sat with a German guy and 2 brothers on “if it’s Friday it must be France” 2-week tour of Europe. I switched out with one of the others and ended up with the German guy, and Steve and I talked to him about all things German for a long time. He’s a member of the Free Democrats Party and sounded pretty active, and he told us a lot about German politics. It was great to be able to talk to him. I remember, last Spring at Gartenfest when Jordan, Mary-Beth (both alums of JYM), and I spent a long time talking to an advertising guy from Austin. Jordan and MB both told me to prepare for long talks with utter strangers in the beer halls, due to the huge tables and free flow of beer. Everyone had a Maß, but I abstained. I was probably the only non-Muslim drinking wasser mit gas in the place, but I barely had my wits about me as it was, and wanted the rest for solving my Ethernet issues.

At Hofbrauhaus, I had a Gebackenes Seelachsfillet, essentially the “fish” of the “fish & chips” entrée, but it really wasn’t that good, and was accompanied by a pathetic excuse for tartar sauce. I know I should try entrees more native to the Germans, they’ll be tons better. I did have several moments of longing for Australia and hot, crispy fish and chips. Ah, well, until England in less than a month! The Hofbrauhaus atmosphere was great, though, and it wasn’t terribly pricey, either.

We hopped back to StuSta. The U-Bahn is one of my FAVORITE things about Munich. It is so, so easy to get around. It’s almost a joke. I mean, I was a complete and utter stranger and I was able to figure out north, south, where I needed to go, and the lines that could take me there.

Well, I am off for more group exploration. That should be a thorough update for all my loyal followers :) I have since established stable internet connection so I can stay in touch with all of you!!