Ethan Hunt saves the day
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Three weeks in and it hit.
Munich continued in its stunning summer form, the trees still impossibly lush despite the third week of good weather, but something was wrong. I stared out of the bus windows on my way in to town that morning, observing the sights that were now hallmarks of my morning commute: the giant dressmaker's mannequin sculpture of Effnerplatz, the lichenified stonework of Max-Joseph Brücke and then the plunge through the Englischer Garten.
I was unmoved.
Flash back to three weeks previously when this very same journey had me texting my family rapturous blurry photos with captions like "look! The squirrels are red here!" Now, however, I looked on it all with a dispassionate eye, worse, I looked on it with displeasure. Objectively I knew the city was beautiful, no one who walks down Ludwigstrasse from the heavyset majesty of Odeonsplatz to the beckoning arches of the Siegestor can deny otherwise, but knowing and feeling are different. I didn't feel anymore, I knew.
I called home, desperate for a diagnosis. How could Munich have lost its shine after just three weeks? Was I doomed to walk the earth moving from city to city every fortnight to keep my interest piqued?
"Do you think you might be a little homesick?" came the obvious answer.
Homesickness. I rolled the concept round in my head, looking at it from a variety of angles. I was in a different country surrounded by a foreign language and everything was new. Even on the flight to Germany I was aware that I was doing something extreme, which entailed a wholesale upheaval to my life. Now I was facing the day-to-day reality of placing myself in this situation: living abroad was tough.
Well, duh.
The thing is I couldn't envisage all the challenges of living in another country throughout the buildup to the move. As I previously explained, the logistical planning of emigration took up a great deal of attention, which eclipsed the touchy-feely considerations of how I might actually deal with living somewhere new and altogether different. After three weeks of fumbled interactions with Münchners and a number of near misses with right-hand drive cyclists, I realised how tiring it was to drop yourself into a different country. Every conversation meant stepping my brain up into GCSE German exam mode as well as trying to remember the appropriate adjectival ending for bathroom in four different grammatical cases. Official documentation was inscrutable and I kept postponing my grocery shop after continually being caught out by the modest shop opening hours in Germany. I felt ignorant, alien and hungry. Little wonder that Munich's city break shine had worn off with the practicalities of living rather than holidaying abroad.
I was homesick not so much for any particular place or thing (although what I wouldn't give for a proper cup of Twining's Earl Grey), but rather I was homesick for ease. Home was somewhere I could sit down in a restaurant and have no issue understanding the waiter's recommendations. It was somewhere I knew the nuances of the public transport system and could legitimately complain about it. Home entailed an automatic familiarity with the customs, history and insider jokes that come from living in a particular land for a long period of time. It had been so easy.
Aching for something undemanding, I suggested to Philippe that we go to the cinema to see the latest Mission Impossible. Never had I more craved the hyperbolic, fluffy fare of an Hollywood blockbuster. Ignoring the serene summer's day, Philippe and I plunged into the darkness of the movie theatre in the hope that wilted popcorn and Tom Cruise would prove to be the cure for my homesickness. I could not wait to be immersed in the improbable, familiar world of an American action movie.
And then Ethan Hunt started speaking German.
After the shock wore off from seeing Tom Cruise uttering statements in a well-dubbed German baritone, I realised that I was going to go without a two-hour trip back home. There were no subtitles and like Ethan, I was going to have to sink or swim with regards to following the plot. I settled back in my seat and tried to keep up.
And the strange thing is, I did. Maybe it was the engrossing nature of cinema or perhaps it was a marked improvement in my German after three weeks of immersion, but for the most part I understood the exaggerated speeches and threads of the story. Of course, I was a little confused as to the translation of 'plutonium core extraction timer device' and how it actually functioned but then Hunt & Co. seemed to have a problem with that too. I emerged from the cinema picking apart plot-holes, something that is one of the main delights of going to the movies back in the UK and here I was in Munich doing exactly the same thing. It was fun, it was automatic and it had the familiarity of home.
It wasn't easy yet, but it certainly wasn't impossible.
Images from the morning commute
