corners

I searched through my dirty laundry for a pair of socks to wear to work today, and I realized it was time to visit my friend Leah who has her very own washing machine in her apartment. Vie Glücklich! So, started the day. The usual walk to Hauptbahnhof with Luke. We were actually a bit early. I was looking forward to a cappuccino for the ride, reading Lord of the Rings on the train. We arrived to find it was going to be late, which hasn't happened in a few months. So we took our time getting our coffees and pastries. I asked for a Quarktaschen, but but a Croissant...I ate it anyway. The bus to take us to school had already come and gone, so the teachers there conspired as to how to get to school, quite miserably, calling taxi companies and trying to get someone to take us to school. I told Leah I was tempted to get back on the train and head back to the city. A taxi finally came and we all crowded in. On the way, our cab drive drove rapidly through the tiny town of Starnberg, which prompted us to grab on to the "oh shit" handles as they are called in the South. Leah and I got a kick out of that. As soon as I arrived, I was asked to cover another class for the sub who was also late. I taught 2nd grade...count it! So began the day. At lunch, I ran into Leah again. We were both fixing salads and I suggested we eat outside for lunch since it's been fucking amazing out lately in Germany. That's when I brought up the laundry idea. So the day went on and we spent the afternoon making 16 puppets for the kids, which is incredibly hectic...I was about to say fun. But it wasn't really. Then my after school activity of mixed games, which was equally as crazy. They must be putting something in the Brez'n to make these kids act up so much. So, I caught the bus back to the Bahnhof to find that I had missed the train because the bus was late. I got another cappuccino and walked to the back of the station to have a cigarette. I felt like I was in high school again, sneaking off alone to have a moment of cool to myself, to enjoy my smug satisfaction and absorb myself with such thoughts. I thought about the anticipation I had of looking up and seeing someone I knew walking in the street. Some customer from the coffee shop, someone I had seen around campus or at the bar, but I couldn't convince myself how impossible that was. How far away I am from everyone rarely enters my mind. I rode the train home and listened to my German lessons while eavesdropping on the two old ladies talking across from me. I got home thought about the meal I promised to cook for Leah and realized that I really didn't want to. Sushi sounded better. So, I walked down the block to her house with my Santa Claus bag of laundry over my shoulder. I put in a load and we walked to find some sushi. During dinner we practiced our German and felt a bit dizzy as the conveyor belt, moving different food items around the restaurant droned past us. We decided to look for a local bar to practice our German in. She had stumbled across one earlier in the week. We walked around the Frauenkirche and towards Odeonsplatz, then back towards Marienplatz and the Viktualienmarkt. We found a place, not her place, though. We ordered beers and sat, smiling at each other at the little corner of our city we had found. With four people sat in the bar, one Italian man practicing his own German, and us listening, understanding most of it. Then, the bartender lit up a cigarette, defying the Smoking Ban in Munich. The Italian man offered us a cigarette and we sat, smoking, speaking German about who we are and where we came from and what we do. Another adventure. Another corner discovered that couldn't be found sitting in my apartment.

Früling commt

Today is the nicest day we've had in Munich since October or so, yet so far, I've spent it indoors. Drinking coffee and reading and listening to music that reminds of Spring a year ago. Those first few warm days in Salem, sitting out on the balcony of the Glen Mary, drinking coffee and reading. I've come a long way since then. I looked at myself in the reflection of the window in the living room, with my face being warmed in the sun and realized I look older. My hair is longer, my eyes sterner and always looking forward into the unknown future, the strange-seeming, foreign past and the present confusion all simultaneously. The journey continues with nearly four months remaining before I'll be sitting on a plane bound for America. "The road finally gave me back, but I don't think I'll unpack. Cause I'm not sure if I live here anymore."-Bright Eyes. I feel that way about the States now, or anywhere I live really. My thoughts return to the plight of the gypsy and the constantly changing feelings of home. An odd concept. I suppose the word home can apply to just about anywhere, but lately it feels like it's anywhere that I'm not. I spent some time this morning looking at facebook photos of the times before I left. I saw one that Reid had taken of me standing in the airport talking to my mom on my cell phone. It seems so long ago, but really it was only yesterday, right? There were pictures of me and Brett in the apartment giving a thumbs up, dorky grin in front of the record player. Pictures of my surprise going-away party, pictures of Mac and Bob's. Nothing here makes me smile more than my few, fond memories of the house on Bruffey St. where I felt more at home than I have in a long time. My only doubts about coming here was that I was going to miss that life, living with Brett and Reid with Jenny in Leslie's old apartment, probably doing fuck all with my life, but at least feeling at home. I could have been happy there, I could have been at least content. But, here I am in Germany, looking back instead of looking around. I sat in the Englischergarten yesterday overlooking the park and the city. Dogs ran and played, a guy was flying a kite. Two men walked together with their arms around each other, a man played familiar tunes on an accordian. What's not to like? Except that maybe I didn't have anyone to share that moment with. The warm wind blows in through the window, moving the crappy, butterfly-adorned curtains and a sense of hope fills me to the brim more than the warm cup of tea sitting beside me. And yet, I'm still inside. I'm going out to enjoy the city and the warmth.

An e-mail to a friend in Japan

It's hard to write an e-mail with the subject of "life," but yet not. I mean, isn't every e-mail about life? But more specifically, my life. Life in Germany is dragging on through the cold days and weeks of February where a cup of tea sitting on the windowsill in the warming sunshine is more of a welcoming ray of life on my cold, tired body than I could ever hope for. I sit and wait for the day when I can move back to the States. I think I'm ready. But I begin to miss Germany already. I really miss Germany when it was warm. But, you must take the bad with the good. News from home is scattered and blurry. I don't guess that people's lives have changed all that much, but I'm looking in on it like a TV show that I only watch every once in a while. Never establishing a real connection with the characters or being dragged in by the plot-line. I forget that this person kinda liked this person, or that these people were together, but in a bad sort of way, that this person is still looking for a job after being tragically laid off. I sometimes lose interest, but then, I can never really forget that I like watching it. The world turns again, and the sun is getting closer and closer to warming the part of the world that I call home. My days here are numbered, but that only gives me more inspiration to grow and learn and change as much as I can. I used to be afraid of changing and people not being able to relate to me anymore when I got home. But now, I embrace change. Positive change. Becoming more of an adult, but still keeping the spirit of fucked-up college days, drinking in the afternoon, sleeping at night and waking up to drink and party more in the early hours of the morning. People may not like the changes we go through in life, but then, it's another test of who your friends are and who can handle changes in people when they grow up and leave people behind. I wonder if I'm mature enough to cope with people's changing emotions and ideas and tastes. Do I scoff at people's decisions because they're inconsistent with what that person used to do.
Have you changed? Are we still friends? Do we even know each other anymore?

Lord of the Rings

I started reading "The Lord of the Rings" for the second time since I've been in Germany. My Flatmate Luke is also a fan and Wednesday night, much to the perceived annoyance of his German ladyfriend, we began discussing the Trilogy and how it has reflected and affected our lives. I said that Frodo's journey out of the Shire was much like my journey out of Salem. Hurried, rushed, almost secretive. Cutting all ties to the old life and walking away without looking back, ready to take on all of the unknown challenges and difficulties. After returning in December for the holidays, I realized what it meant to not be able to come home and look at it as the same place. We've had many discussions about this transition. Leaving home and looking back on it fondly and longingly, even though, maybe, it was never as great as it was before. I sometimes think that everyone has a time when they leave home and change and then come back, a different person. Their old friends and towns stay the same, but they look and sound different; then I remember that maybe only certain people take the "hero's journey" into the fabled Belly of the Whale, to emerge on the other side changed and ready to face the difficulties of life that they had for so long hidden from. Which brings me to Aragorn. My flatmate said that he related more to him. He's the exiled hero, unwilling to take back the throne. I feel there's some truth to that in my own life. There's a mess at home. There's always a mess. And even there wasn't, there's always the looming, formidable foe called "Adulthood" waiting to be fought and conquered. Many people my age are running for that very reason. After college, our parents sell their house and move into something smaller, perhaps in a gated community and our rooms turned into manifestations of pictures in Southern Living or Ikea Magazines. Where are we to go? Wander in the woods without a guide, looking for a place to call home; moving every year as soon as our lease runs out, looking for roommates and other people wandering just like us. We hike, we camp, we work shitty jobs, we talk about going back to school, we spend our first, second Christmases away from home, buy our very own Christmas tree and start our own holiday traditions with what family we can find. For now, I'm hiding in the depths of Middle Earth. I got spooked by a phone call with my sister and had to hide. Home and adulthood and other decisions loom ahead. School, work, living, eating well, TV, movies, CDs, cars, equity, loans, mortgages, relationships, friendships, love, hate, lust, desire, loss, gain, profit, family, depression, laundry, perpetual cleaning. All of these things can be ignored or eluded. However, things things can't be hidden from forever. We must all at some point take responsibility and action for what life throws at us. It's scary because we're unprepared for it. Who is out there in the woods with us that can help us? We're all out there alone to figure it out on our own. But I feel ready to one day pick up the sword of Isildur and grow up. But for now, the Ring is heading toward the darkness of Mordor and the three remaining of the Fellowship, seek to find two small Hobbits in the Riddermark. The wool is over my eyes...

Gibt mir dein huddled masses

Walking to Hauptbahnhof from my apartment has become routine and commonplace, but what's commonplace in Munich is foreign and exciting compared to most people's commutes in the morning. It starts off going down the four flights of stairs in marble-encased stairwell that reverberates every sound made up and down the stairwell. I step outside and take a left, glimpsing St. Michael's cathedral that can be seen in many pictures of Oktoberfest, casting a moral shadow on the debauchery of drinking beer, eating pretzels and half chickens and slapping leather-clad asses. Often, the multi-colored sunrise sky canvases the panorama of the church and the not-yet-busy Landwehrstrasse. A bit of inspiration every morning that reminds me, no matter how bad my day will be, at least I'm lucky enough to see that looming, Gothic cathedral on my way to work.
I pass under the walkway of the Deustches Theather where I often see a man sweeping up cigarette buts and other debris with a broom that is well past its prime. The bristles have been worn down to the red stitching that holds it all together and I often wonder if the company is too cheap to buy him a new broom, or if it's just easier to sweep up cobblestone walkways with half of the broom. Maybe he just grew tired of having to sweep up the broken bristles from the broom in addition to the other debris. At any rate, it's a bit sad and comical. Most recently, I saw a big inflated yellow rubber ducky that said, I think, The Catholics are a cult, in German.
I turn the corner out of the walkway and walk left down Schwanthalerstrasse which is home to nearly half a dozen strip clubs in addition to hotels, video game and computer stores, etc. Most mornings, I'm welcomed by a breath of artificially fresh air. Clothes dryer air that is almost sickeningly fresh, but reminds me of the days, living in the States where everyone has a dryer and it's not as uncommon to smell dryer air. I walk through it and feel slightly fresher then I did before, as if my own clothes had been put in a dryer as opposed to picking it up off the floor, smelling it, putting it on anyway and spraying a bit of cologne on.
I wait at the stoplight crossing onto Schillerstrasse, where the entrance to Hauptbahnhof is. More strip clubs, bars, American style sports bars with shrines to Muhammed Ali on the walls, blasting random, American music onto the streets. "Kris Kross will make you JUMP JUMP!" "We built this city on ROCK AND ROLL!" Passing several Doner Kebap restaurants displaying proudly their over-sized cylindrical spits of meat, rotating while the onions and tomatoes marinate the lamb meat all day. It's most unappealing when the sun is shining in through the window onto the meat and its like seeing yourself in the mirror in a room with way too much fluorescent lighting. "Wow, I really didn't need to see my face in that much detail, thanks." The meat is sweats and rotates under heating lamps all day. I pass about four of these on my way to work. More common than Starbucks. One on each side of the street. Lucky me.
I walk down the stairs, taking two at a time, anxious to see how much or little time I have before my train comes. I walk into the musty-smelling station that arouses feelings of nostalgia. Thoughts of New York dust and city smells. Opening boxes of Christmas ornaments wrapped with ancient, yellow newspaper displaying articles about Operation Desert Storm and pictures of small towns of Christmas past, children in a Winter Wonderland and articles of better time to come. The smell of old, forgotten ornaments, given as a Christmas present to my parents at some fucking time no one can remember.
There sits a huddled mass of humanity on the other side of a set of stairs, coat over his entire body, strings of hair sticking out under the collar, short legs barely revealing the humanity of the being. The shoes are the most striking. Unnaturally, and no doubt, uncomfortably to large for the human-like form, sticking out from the drapery of clothing like two clown shoes. Jutting out in strange directions as if the feet themselves were broken or melted with the weight of too many nights slept uneasily in train stations or parks or foyers of businesses. There are several Starbuck's bags set out nearly five feet in front of him, as if he wanted them to be in peoples' ways. Bringing even more attention to the pile of rags with human features that sleeps soundly as people in suits and molded hair go to work.
Why did he choose Starbucks? Why does he have so many designer, post-consumer recycled paper bags set out in front of him as if he wanted someone to come by and throw them in the trash can? His obliviousness makes it okay to stare. He's dreaming of hot showers and steaming plates of food and a family to provide for, or maybe just a nice strong drink to help make sleeping huddled in a train station that much easier. He's not like the actively-begging Muslim ladies dressed all in black that often startle me as the come out of the shadows on my walk home from work, muttering, "bitte, bitte" with their hands or a paper cup outstretched and a deeply concerned, pious look on their faces. He just sits, like a modern art exhibit, waiting for someone to take a picture of him, blowing up the photo, putting fluorescent lights behind it and hanging it up in some posh art museum. Existing as a monument, being glared at sympathetically by rich people who have the luxury of pointing their fingers at poverty and calling it art, reminding them that not everyone has perfect teeth and thirty-two pairs Dolce and Gabana slacks.
I sit and wait for the train, sometimes with a one-Euro cappuccino, while all of these images race through my mind like a slide show. I sit on the warm train and read or write and wonder how I ended up here. How any of us end up where we are. I might have just as easily been a huddled mass trying to get a night of sleep in the train station. I sit and let the gentle rocking of the train lull me into a trance, a daydream of "could-have-beens," and "what nows." I watch the people on the train and wonder what kind of "huddled masses" were here forty years ago. How many "huddled masses" made their ways to the land of the free to change their names and hide their religions and thank their secret God that they can walk proudly through the streets and sleep comfortably in silence.

“Servus! Gruss Gott!” Man

Our nearest grocery store is around the corner from our apartment in an U-Bahn stop. I got over the weirdness of grocery shopping in a train station, having to carry my own bags to the store, bagging my own groceries, finding dozens of products that I could not translate into anything that made any sense. Most recently, I got over the weirdness of having to walk by a store called “Sex World” every day when I make the trek to Tenglemann. I don’t think it’s anywhere near out of the ordinary to walk by a display case with a dozen or so multi-colored, multi-angled dildos in a field of fake grass. I guess it was around Christmas time when they added a special festive touch to the dildos that made me move beyond my subconscious Southern American conservatism. Each of the dildos on display had its own miniature Santa Claus hat on it. As if that would make the average person finally break down and buy what they have never had the courage to buy. “Oh, I never thought that artificial penises could be so cute. It’s both functional and decorative!”

I even started laughing whenever I saw the sad, violin player standing outside of Burger King every day. He never plays like he cares anymore. He stands, chin and neck fat wrapped around his violin, dragging his bow across, moving his glove-wrapped fingers up and down the neck. Normally playing the same song, but during Oktoberfest, I heard the unmistakable tune of the “Chicken Dance.” No one was dancing, but plenty of people were going into Burger King and buying American-style burgers that they could have “their way.” I even saw him walking down into the U-bahn station, violin case in hand as if he were coming home after a long day at the office.

Going shopping in Tenglemann can be very hectic, so I usually preface the excursion by having a cigarette on the way there, and sometimes a beer. It is always very warm in there, so when you get bundled up for the walk there, be prepared to begin to sweat, immediately, upon entry into the store. Germans leave their coats on when they shop, having no large carts, nor room to maneuver them inside the store. It’s 75 degrees in the store and everyone is dressed as if they were going sledding.

After having a routine shopping selection: foods I know I like, bread, eggs, crackers, Philadelphia cream cheese, etc., it’s now a bit easier to get in and get out. However, there are certain days that, after having gotten home from work and hunger strikes me like a mind-numbing disability, I wander into the store like a small child in a Wal-Mart, looking for his mom. I know why I’m there, but I can’t seem to stay focused enough to get the job done.

“Ok, I need this and this. But is that what I really want:? Oh, wow! They sell packages of fresh chicken hearts here. I wonder if that’s a good deal for a half kilo of chicken hearts. Do people go fishing with them, or make a soup or maybe…Hey! They have a new type of beer for sale. I think I want a beer. Maybe with dinner. Dinner, right. Maybe I’ll just have crackers and beer for dinner. Maybe and egg sandwich. We had eggs and bread at home, what am I doing here.”

All the while sweating, both from nervousness and having four layers of warm clothes on and an itchy, wool scarf.

My favorite teller is pretty much the only man that works there. He has the most sing-song way of saying things. With peaks and crescendos of voice. For every customer that comes, he says “SErvus, Gruss Gott!” as if on a recording, but more like a recording of Robert Goulet reading Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Travelled.” Saying “bitte” the way a sweet Southern woman would say “please” with about two or three unnecessary intonations and syllables. The numbers are even better. He emphasizes the big numbers and lets the rest trail off. “SECH und neunzehn DREI und DREIzig, bitte!” It warms my heart to hear him say the amount I must pay him and am so often distracted with rush of trying to shove all of my groceries into my bags as he passes them across the scanner and shivering with anticipation at the thought of hearing the amount for the day that I often find myself caught off guard when actually says the price and get lost in the poetry of the numbers. Luckily, there is a display screen that shows the amount. I then unzip the coin section of my wallet and search for some possible combinations of coins that would make his life even the slightest bit easier. Often, it’s only four cents that prevents him from having to reach into another coin slot of his money drawer, thus saving himself two seconds of his life that he could use to say an extra “schonen Abend noch!” as a customer leaves his queue.