So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye…

Well, our bags are packed (full of way too much chocolate) and it's time to say goodbye. Joel and I went for our last run this morning and then I spent the day packing and taking a last walk through the city we’ve lived in for the last 6 ½ weeks. I realized that I’ve never been gone this long from Colorado in the 26 years that we’ve lived there. It’s been a great experience, but now I’m ready to go home. When we first arrived, autumn had just begun, and now we’re well on our way to winter. This is how I know that a significant amount of time has passed--on our first day, the courtyard outside our hotel looked like this. 

And this is what the courtyard looked like 6 weeks later.

Here are some other ways I know I’ve been here for a considerable amount of time:

• My German has progressed enough that this week I made it through a two-hour dinner with a German friend speaking only German. I’m still far from fluent, however, as was abundantly clear when we went to see a version of The Magic Flute on Monday that had a lot of narration. I was only able to follow the gist of it because I knew the story already and was basically useless as a translator for Joel.  
  
  
  
• I’ve been around long enough that I’ve started to blend in. Evidence? The nice frau in front of me in line at the grocery store today, who assumed I was German and started talking to me. Fortunately, it was the kind of talking that only required a smile and a laugh, and an occasional “Genau” (“exactly”--Germans use this word in almost every conversation). After 6 weeks of being forced to preplan what I might need to say at a store or a restaurant, I won’t be surprised if I start making conversation with perfect strangers when I’m home, just because I can. 
•  I said goodbye today to the exceptionally clean Isar river and realized there were no leaves left on any of the trees. In just 2 months, I saw them through from green leaves to their raucous bursts of color to the barren branch phase. It is beautiful in a different way now, with branches like black lace reflected on the water. 
  
• I now think it is normal to see lots of people smoking on the streets. I don’t know if there really are more smokers, or if I just see more of them because I’m primarily a pedestrian here and people can’t smoke in indoor public places like restaurants, stores and trains. I will NOT miss this.
• I also think it’s normal that people strictly obey the walk/don’t walk signs at crosswalks—Germans aso very obedient. This sign reminds people that it’s important to set an example for the children.
  
• And it’s also normal to stand on the right side of an escalator and leave the left side open for people who prefer to walk on an escalator. The Germans are very efficient about this.
• I’ve learned to expect potatoes of some sort at every meal. However I rarely eat potatoes at home and can’t wait to be reunited with my Nutribullet and start having my green smoothies again for breakfast. And I am overjoyed to be able to cook in a real kitchen again very soon, where cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my family will be a delight.

 After so many huge changes during the summer, it was nice to think of our room at the Residence Inn as our home and we were able to settle in and let the dust accumulate in the corners of our minds, so to speak. I know the city and the transportation system and when I come back, it will feel like visiting an old friend, which is just how it should feel when you’ve lived somewhere this long. We have just 3 more weeks before we will be able to move in to our new house and finally begin the next phase of this empty-nest life. Bring it on, baby.

Life on the 5th Floor--Ordinary Days

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the difference between living in Germany and being a tourist in Germany. The key seems to be that when you live in a place, you necessarily have to have the mundane parts of ordinary life because not every day can be spectacular and amazing just because you’re living in a foreign country. It's frankly just too tiring, both mentally and physically. Think about it--if you had to put as much effort into planning every day for two months the way you do when you are planning a vacation, you would collapse into a heap of exhaustion every night. Of course, even an "ordinary" day here usually requires a great deal of walking (as mentioned in last week's post), so collapsing is a common occurrence here.

Likely these thoughts have come to the foreground because I came down with a cold last week and so spent a couple of days resting so I could recover faster. Thursday and Friday last week were basically spent napping and watching Netflix and crocheting hats, in spite of perfectly amazing blue skies and 65 degree weather which I could only enjoy from my windows.

Because I didn’t have the energy to put into planning a weekend outing, we decided to pay someone else to do it, so on Saturday we took a day tour to Neuschwanstein and they took care of buying the train tickets and told us where to eat and narrated the history of the beautiful castles there and King Ludwig II’s tragic life. Joel and I had been there before--over 10 years ago--but we didn’t go inside the castle at that time (choosing instead to rent bikes and ride through the picturesque countryside), so this was a good trip to take under the circumstances. It was a beautiful, short-sleeve kind of day and we thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Sunday we went to church in the English-speaking ward here (the last few weeks we went to the German ward because it was closer) and then ate dinner with the woman I had lived with for the summer when I was here 30 years ago. She fed us a wonderfully delicious German dinner, with a chicken knödel soup (a knödel is like a dumpling), semmel knödel covered with turkey and gravy, blaukraut (also called rotkohl, or red cabbage), and green salad, with fruit quark (a creamy yogurt-like food, only better) for dessert.

I have seen most of the major sites here, so I thought it would be good to take some pictures of ordinary things that most people don’t think about until they come here. Here’s a sampling:

• I have seen more mail carriers delivering mail on bright yellow bikes than in the bright yellow Post vans.
  
  
  
• A typical street has rows of 6-story buildings on it. I don’t know if it’s a law, or if that’s just how it’s done here. Even when there are businesses on the street level, there are usually apartments on the floors above. Most apartment buildings have courtyards in the middle (like the one I see from my window) where children can play and it’s generally treated like a communal backyard.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Some of the street signs and general building signs that rely on pictures rather than words were a little confusing at first, like this one that tells you this is a building exit (not that you should attack these people).
  
  
  
• Every few blocks there seem to be playgrounds for the children of the neighborhood. Families are clearly very important.
  
  
  
• Dogs are also very important. They are everywhere and businesses will leave out water dishes in front of their stores and if the dogs aren’t allowed in a store (very rare, but I think most grocery stores don’t allow dogs) they often provide a “hitching post” where you can tie your dog leash. I got to hold and pet a friend’s dog this week (who went shopping and to lunch with us), and that made me miss our own recently-departed schnauzer.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Public transportation is amazing, which is why you don’t really need a car. You can get anywhere in the city by bus, tram, subway (the U-bahn, which is only underground), or train (the S-bahn, which goes both underground and above ground). A bike would definitely be useful here, though. Bikes are everywhere--most of the sidewalks have a lane designated specifically for bikes (and bikers ring their bells--like honking a car horn, but more annoying--at you if you are walking in that lane). Also, there are several pedestrian shopping zones throughout the city where no cars are allowed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Life on the 5th Floor--One Step at a Time

I have a Garmin Vivofit watch that measures my calories and steps each day. I’m a pretty active person, and before we came to Europe, I was averaging 10,000-12,000 steps a day. In the last 4 weeks that we’ve been in Germany, my average step count has increased to over 19,000 per day. I’m putting a heck of alot of miles on my shoes and enjoying every minute of it. We have been here for a month now, and only have a couple of weeks left. Time is passing quickly, one step at a time.

This last week’s routine of going to the grocery store each day and venturing into unexplored parts of Munich was interrupted by a brief trip to Switzerland. Joel had a business trip to another city in Germany, so I decided to spend the time with my brother in Zurich, where he and his family are living for the next 9 months. In years past, I would have travelled by train to Zurich, but there is an increasingly popular and much less expensive way to travel in Europe now--by bus. It cost me 34 euros, roundtrip, to travel there. In fact, it cost me more for two days of transportation within Zurich and the outlying area where my brother lives than it did to get to Zurich and back. We spent the time going for long walks and runs in the beautiful autumn leaves, walking around Zurich and window shopping (alas, I could not afford the sweaters and jeans for 1000 Francs, a woman’s wool coat for 3,000 Francs nor even a watch for a “mere” 145,000 Francs). It was really nice to be around family and I didn’t feel as lonely this week.

I got a haircut last week, which was also out of the ordinary. My hair grows really fast and I knew I would not make it mentally (only women with short hair develop such impatience) another 3 weeks if I didn’t get it cut, so I got a recommendation from one of the front desk workers for a salon near the hotel and made the appointment online. I practiced what to say in German and had to look up some vocab words I wouldn’t normally use (like how to say “I just want about a half-centimeter off the ends”), which was good because they didn’t really speak English. I was a little alarmed at how confidently he started hacking off about twice as much as I told him to take off, but my hair felt much better when he was done and it turned out just fine. I was not brave enough to get my hair colored, however, and will live with my gray roots until I get back and let my regular stylist take care of them. Ah, the vanity of the 51-year-old woman that makes a haircut the week’s highlight.

Other (more interesting, I hope) highlights from the week:

• On Saturday, the sun came out in the afternoon and so we took advantage of it. We visited the Schloss Nymphenburg and the beautiful grounds all around it. We went back to the park by the river where we had gone running in the morning (when it was cloudy) and took these photos of the magical autumn kingdom it had become with just the addition of sunshine.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• We saw dozens of teenagers on the subway, all dressed up for Halloween on Saturday night. As far as I can tell, they don’t really trick or treat, but they were clearly dressed up and headed somewhere. Halloween has definitely invaded here (all the stores had costumes and decorations for sale) in the last few years--there was nothing like this 30 years ago when I was here.
• I exercised and studied and did laundry and tried cooking a one-skillet chicken dinner with a lemon cream sauce in our tiny kitchen. It tasted great, but I wouldn’t advise any of you to cook with onions and garlic in the same room that you sleep in. Needless to say, we slept with the window open that night and were grateful our clothes didn’t all smell like fried food the next day. I will stick to omelettes, soups and salads for the next two weeks.
• I saw this headline on the CNN app a few days ago: “Thick Fog Shrouds European Cities.” There’s been fog every morning for the last week in Munich and I thought it was just a Munich thing, but then it was the same in Zurich. And apparently London and Paris and lots of other cities across Europe. So I didn’t feel so bad knowing there were countries full of people who had likely all been experiencing morning gloom along with me.
  
  
  
• I visited a couple of palaces last week where I saw dozens of ornately decorated rooms filled with enchanting (and sometimes forbidding) portraits and elaborately, carved furniture and I marveled at the talents that created such beauty. It was also strange to think that these buildings were once someone’s home. But then who am I to talk—I live in hotel. I came away being very grateful I didn’t have to live in a palace, though, and am looking forward to my own new home more than ever.