Life on the 5th Floor--Call me "Eloise"

Living in a hotel is the new normal. I’ve never read the book (though feel I must when I return home), but I keep thinking about Eloise at the Plaza, the children’s book about the little girl that lives “in a room on the tippy-top floor” of the Plaza Hotel in New York City with her nanny and her dog and all of the great adventures she has. My life on the 5th floor of the Residence Inn in Munich is likely not nearly as exciting as Eloise’s (probably because I don’t have a nanny or a dog), but it’s at least eventful enough for me to write about in a blog.

We just finished week 3 here in Deutschland and I’ve been here long enough now to sort of get into a routine. I eat breakfast (usually sticking with Muesli, yogurt, fruit and a sunflower seed roll with butter and jam), I exercise (run or do a DVD workout, or sometimes both--depending on the previous day's level of chocolate consumption), I study my nutrition course I’m doing online, and then I do whatever else I need or want to that day. I have a list of sights that I want to see in Munich and try and do a couple of those each week. And, in true German fashion, I go to a grocery store pretty much every day.

After hiding itself the first two weeks, the sun finally came out and has made a regular appearance each day. The first day it came out last week, I went for a two hour walk around the city just to be outside in the sunshine. It was glorious. The weekend was especially beautiful, with blue skies and the autumn colors at their peak, so Joel and I were able to get out and see a lot of the city, walking 11 miles that day. The leaves were positively glowing and it was hard to resist taking an inordinate number of pictures. We ate lunch in the Biergarten in the middle of the Englischer Garten (their Central Park) and went to the top of the Olympic tower where we ate divine apple strudel in a revolving restaurant that gave us a 360 degree view of the city.

To avoid a blow-by-blow description (which no one wants or has time to read), here are a few highlights of the last week:

• Visiting a new grocery store is always exciting. Today I went to an organic grocery store where I saw Sauerkraut juice and Potato juice. Yes, you heard me right. I did not buy any.
• I went to our friend’s apartment last week and we made pumpkin soup from scratch, using a cantaloupe-sized pumpkin that did not require peeling, and chocolate chip cookies (her request). It was nice to cook something besides omelettes and soup from mixes--I miss having a real kitchen with an oven. But on the other hand, I get to eat out and taste amazing foods, including potatoes prepared in an incredible variety of ways and authentic Italian pizzas baked in wood-fired brick ovens.
• I know most of the hotel desk workers by name now and I’m getting used to walking the equivalent of two miles up and down the stairs on wash day (the laundry’s in the basement). This is why we are building a one-level home.
• I am alone most of the day, and sometimes (though not all the time) I feel lonely. Which, under the circumstances, is perfectly natural. So I’ve been trying to just acknowledge that feeling and accept it (sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't). When so much of my life up to this point has been focussed on serving others, it’s really strange to not have the physical ability each day to interact with close friends and family. I do what I can through emails, Facebook, texts and phone calls, but the distance separating me from loved ones feels like a tangible thing.
• A couple of afternoons this week I mixed my cultures by bingeing on some Netflix series (American) while crocheting hats (German). Since I can't quilt while I'm here, I've had to make do with crocheting, which is fine because I’ve seen a lot more yarn stores here than fabric stores. The fabric I have found was super expensive--18 euros a meter (about $20 a yard)--so I didn’t buy any.
• We spent a lovely evening with the family of one of Joel’s co-workers at their house. The have 3 small children who reminded us so much of our 3 children when they were small. Except these children spoke German. But they were just as excited to meet new people as ours were back then. They all understood English (even the 3-year-old) because their father speaks it to them all the time, and the oldest (10 years old) spoke pretty good English, which impressed me because English is a really hard language to learn (so many dang exceptions!).
• We ate dinner with one of my friends that I met 30 years ago when I lived here in Munich for a summer, working in a grocery store selling fruits and vegetables. I realized we were the same age when we first met that our children are now, and felt suddenly confused, because I don't remember getting older and yet, here we are, more than twice as old as we when we first met.
• We went to a street fair on Friday night where there were booths selling all kinds of things--soap, socks, scarves, lederhosen, dirndls, pots, pans and beautiful dishes for the kitchen. There were also delicious foods, as well as many dogs, including this little lederhosen-clad fellow:

He didn't look very comfortable, though.

I love the sound of church bells here. This was at the street fair.

Beautiful trees and cheesy grins on our Saturday of sunshine

Leaf-strewn sidewalks

The Biergarten by the Chinese tower (no idea why there's a Chinese tower 

in the middle of the Biergarten, but there you have it)

A stream running through the English Gardens

Radiance!

The best apple strudel I've had yet on this trip, 

surrounded by a delectable pool of vanilla sauce. 

The Olympic tower, built for the 1972 Olympics

View from the Alte Peter church tower in the downtown

The glockenspiel on the Marienplatz

Life on the 5th Floor: The Weather

Perhaps for my American friends and family, I should have called this blog Life on the 6th Floor, because Europeans number their floors differently than Americans. In America, the ground floor is the 1st floor, but in Europe, the ground floor is level 0. In any case, there are 93 steps from the ground floor to the top floor, and I try and climb those at least 2x a day (to counterbalance the pastries and chocolate--there is no scale here, but so far, my pants fit the same). Since I'm living in Germany now, we'll go with the original title.

We should start with the most important thing first, and that is the weather, of course. I have, for some reason, become obsessed with the weather. I check the weather app first thing in the morning, and often check the weather of all the places where I have family living so I can imagine what kind of a day they are having. Perhaps this also goes back to German 101, when one of the first phrases I learned was "Wie ist das Wetter heute?" (what is the weather today) and so I equate the weather in Germany with something important like "Wo sind die Toiletten?" (where are the toilets).

The weather here was exceedingly dreary and cold all week and the lack of sunshine was a real downer for this Colorado girl. I did not realize how much I depend on my daily dose of sun until it wasn’t there all week. However, when everything seems gray outside you appreciate intense colors more. I climbed up a church tower to get the views depicted here, in spite of the rain.

When the sun does appear, the green grass and the autumn leaves really glow (these next ones were pictures from today--the first day that I actually woke up to sunshine since arriving here).

The highlight of the week was a spontaneous trip to Salzburg on Friday. On Wednesday, our friends, John and Marj Hasler, who are on a mission in Innsbruck, contacted us to let us know they would be in Salzburg for the weekend and invited us to attend a Mozart dinner/concert with them on Friday night. So Thursday we found a place to rent a car and contacted the Gasthaus just outside of Salzburg where the Haslers were staying and left on Friday afternoon. It was an hour and a half (rainy) drive from Munich. At the dinner, there was a string quintet and and two singers who dressed in period costumes and performed beautiful Mozart pieces between courses in the Baroque room of the St. Peters Stiftskellar (one of the oldest restaurants in Europe). It was fun to get out of the city and great to see friends from home. The music was simply sublime--especially the soprano. We especially enjoyed our Saturday morning run through lush green fields and autumnal trees surrounded by majestic Austrian alps. When the Gasthaus owner told us there was a two-hour wait on the autobahn to cross the border into Germany (because of all the refugees coming in), we decided to drive the back way across the border which took us through Berchtesgaden, so we stopped briefly to see the site of Hitler’s hideout during WWII. The sun was out all morning so it was a beautiful drive and we could stop and take pictures whenever we wanted.

 The view from Berchtesgaden

Only those of you who have seen the movie, Inception, will understand this next part. We started the month of October with most of our stuff in storage, living in our friend’s basement. Then we packed up some of our stuff and went “down a level” to live in a hotel in Munich, and then last weekend we packed up a few things to go down one more level to a hotel in Salzburg--a vacation within a vacation within a vacation, so to speak. If you haven’t seen the movie, go watch it and you’ll understand how we felt.

My German is gradually coming back to me, which is reassuring. I read all the signs I can, I shamelessly eavesdrop on the street and in the subway, and I find that words and phrases come more quickly now and it feels less like I’m digging them out of a very deep hole in my brain. As any traveler knows, the post office is always the real test of language skills, and I was able to successfully go to the post office this week and ask for a stamp and understand when he told me how much it was. It felt like a real triumph, especially when I think back to the time when I was 18 in southern France and left a post office in tears. I do have moments of panic when I’m forced to say more than a few sentences, however, and have to curb the impulse to turn and run away. But I can carry on extended conversations in my head, so I guess that’s progress. Here's a great little title from a German hymn book (a great way to practice German too)--it means "Somewhere the Sun is Shining" (and it goes along with the weather theme):

Surprisingly, our little hotel room still doesn’t feel too small. It’s really easy to keep clean--dishes take about 5 minutes (because there are only about 5 dishes in the kitchen); laundry takes a couple of hours to do (and is expensive to use their machines--16 euros to wash/dry 2 loads!), but not long to put away because we only have one closet; and twice a week housekeeping comes and cleans the bathroom and changes the linens. So pretty posh living, really.

Time is still funny--it slips away and drags at the same time. Two of our 7 weeks are gone. I try and get out for at least a little bit each day, although the weather last week just made me want to stay inside most of the time. I’m still averaging about 15,000 steps a day though. At home, mornings were my most productive time to make phone calls, check email and get things done. Here, however, if I have any phone calls to make to the US, I have to wait until night when it’s day there, so my “productive” time to do things like that has shifted. I can still do emails in the morning, but won’t usually get answers until late afternoon or evening. I also miss my family more in the mornings when I know I can’t just pick up the phone and call them without waking them up in the middle of the night. 

We have been grateful for the few friends that we do have here. We spent a lovely evening with our former exchange student and her family this week. We have been really lucky to be able to maintain these relationships that began 6 years ago.

After being so sick the first week, I have definitely been hearing the siren song of European chocolate and pastries this week (let’s blame the weather again, shall we?). I feel like I’m more on track to healthy eating this week though and was able to resist eating any of the following items and to be content appreciating them for their beauty instead.

There seem to be a lot of colds going around. I hear people coughing on the streets, in the stores and on the subways, and our friends have also been sick. Then Joel woke up Sunday morning and was definitely sick, so I went to church by myself and he spent pretty much the entire day in bed, finally getting up and showering around 4pm. Which was good, because he had to go back to work yesterday. He’s doing much better today. Thank goodness for the myriad of herbal teas around here--the peppermint tea has been especially helpful. 

Your German vocabulary word for the day is "Abenteuer," which means adventures. Stay tuned for next week's Abenteuer!

Life on the 5th floor--Part 1

It's been a while since I've written a post, but monumental changes have happened in our "empty nest" lives in the last 6 months, so it's time to start writing again. Since May, we have: (1) sold the home where we have lived and raised our family for the last 20 years (2) started building a brand new home (3) sorted through 20 years of accumulated stuff, giving much away and finding temporary refuge for the remainder of our stuff in a storage unit (and several friends' homes) as well as for ourselves in a friend's basement (4) helped my mom face a major health crisis and go through heart surgery (5) and (because apparently moving wasn't enough of a change) after 26 years of working for the same company, Joel interviewed for and accepted a new job with a company based in Munich, Germany (6) since we were "homeless" this fall anyway, we decided that the best way to start his new job would be to spend 6 weeks living in Munich so he can build new working relationships with people in person rather than from a home office in Colorado. So we are here until just before Thanksgiving and are grateful for all the circumstances that have come together to bring us to this point.

Observations made while living in Munich during my first week:

• We live on the 5th floor of a Residence Inn. Our room would be considered large by European standards as we have a large desk, a sofa, lots of storage in the bathroom and closet and nightstand drawers, as well as a tiny kitchen (tiny=2 burners, a microwave, a small refrigerator, and a few dishes, pots & pans). We have a wall of windows that overlook a lovely courtyard shared by the apartment buildings behind us. The trees are all golden yellow and beautiful.
• Dogs are everywhere--on the sidewalks, on the subway, running alongside their master’s bikes on leashes (I saw a tiny little dog doing an amazing job of this), in the stores shopping for clothes (well, their masters are shopping for clothes). Most of them are little dogs--I’ve only seen a few big dogs. Today I saw two feisty little dogs tell each other off in a barkfest on the 2nd floor of the C&A department store, right there among the winter coats.
• There aren’t very many tourists this time of year except around the Marienplatz. Those that are here for the beer are obnoxious. The others are all charmed and delighted by what they see, so that is nice.
• Our hotel is full of Arabs and Orientals, mingled with a few Americans, British, and other sundry Europeans. The Arab women are colorfully dressed with beautiful head scarves, and most wear lots of makeup and seem very attached to their iPhones and iPads.
• People wear so much black here. Everything is black--coats (especially those), sweaters, shirts, scarves, pants, gloves…. I saw an elderly woman today wearing a lovely sky blue raincoat today and that seemed really daring.
• Also, EVERY woman wears a scarf. And they really like big, fluffy scarves that they just wind around and around their necks. There are no fancy or creative ways of tying or wearing a scarf here. The bigger the better. Most colors, again, are really muted, conservative colors.
• Most people don’t smile much on the streets or the subway. I did get an older man to smile at me today when I was smiling at his dog. Now I know why they think of Americans as so friendly.
• Listening to an organ play in a church in Europe is a magical experience in acoustics.
• I love how this city blends nature and buildings. Most apartment buildings are arranged around a courtyard, and if someone has a balcony, you can be sure there will be plants of some kind on it. Or else window boxes full of flowers.
• Time flows differently here. I have no appointments, no schedule but what I choose, no lunch dates with friends, no jumping in a car to drive wherever I please or to go for a run in the mountains. I’m not sure I remember when time has been so completely my own, except when we first moved to Colorado Springs 26 years ago, before I had children and friends and any kind of established life there. It is a little disorienting. I feel like I’ve been here a month, but it’s only been a week. Yet the days go by so quickly too--before I know it, it’s 1:00 and then it’s bedtime. I am more awake at night because it’s daytime back home, and it’s hard to get moving in the mornings because my body clock says it’s still the middle of the night. I’ll probably finally be adjusted when it’s time to go home. :-)

I'll end with a few photos from the week so far:

An autumnal farmer's market

The Marienplatz 

Autumn ivy and colors abound

Piano in a park by the Isar river. It sounded surprisingly in tune (my father-in-law would have been delighted).