Queen of the Road
/Munich is hot.
I peel myself off the pleather subway seat, transferring another layer of yick to the decades of skin cells that form its topmost beige layer, and pick up my bags. All hail the bag lady of the U3 Munich Underground line to Fürstenried West. I have done this journey many a time now and am familiar with the escalators and platforms that take me from where I have been (my initial flat located on the distant outskirts of Munich) to where I want to go (my new apartment near the city centre). It is a long, tortuous journey with multiple connections and no air-conditioning, which in this sustained stint of 30°C summer days makes for a hot and bothered Himmi by the end of it.
Yet again I am moving my life. The two suitcases that I initially came over with seem to have spawned, breeding contents that fill many of those old favourites - plastic bags. In these bags condiments kindly donated by my hello-goodbye flatmates of the last month are wedged in between folds of newly purchased linen. Everything smells faintly of garam masala. I cart it all, the bags symmetrically swinging from my arms, as beleaguered and forlorn as a donkey climbing the Grand Canyon.
And still it does not make an impact on the flat. My new, bright and beautiful attic apartment has the basic furniture needed to exist but it is bereft of any personality other than the anodyne air of IKEA. Despite moving all I currently have into the flat, it still bears no imprint of me and thus does not feel like home. So many of previous abodes quickly became a nest, feathered by frequent top-ups of stuff from the repository I left at my poor parents' house. But here I am, 665 miles away from Surrey, with very little else apart from some clothes and a few precious photos to actually call my own.
It has been this way for a while now. The transitory nature of medical rotations in the UK meant that every few years, I'd either move to a new town to be closer to the new hospital I had been stationed at or face a longer commute. Packing up my belongings in an old kit bag (well, my Peugeot 108) and relocating was nothing new. Most people begin to tire of nomadic living after a while and for me that usually corresponds with reaching the penultimate floor of the block in which your flat is located (in this case that is the fourth floor and as you guessed, there is no lift).
As I wheeze up that final flight, I realise that this is the off-shoot of setting up a new life abroad. Limited by Easyjet luggage allowance and shipping costs I cannot easily populate the apartment with cosy bric-a-brac from home, thus, there are two options available to me: either I try minimalist living or I buy things anew and lug them up five floors using nothing but puny muscles, determination and swearwords. I begin a targeted tour of homeware shops in Munich.
In the summer heat I visit every Butlers, Galeria Kaufhof and Oxfam within Munich's Inner Ring. Desperate and sweating inordinately I even travel to the end of the U1 line and through the calm cemetery of the Westfriedhof to reach what appears to be the biggest thrift store in Munich, the Kaufhaus Diakonia. This is a modern day German equivalent of Ali Baba uncovering the secrets of the cave but instead of gold coins, the majority of items here seems to be beer steins. I wander through the other aisles of relinquished knick-knacks and furniture and marvel at the sheer variety of things people can fill their homes with.
The ridiculous part is that Philippe and I already have most of the items I am looking for, in duplicate in our respective parents homes. I think fondly of a serving bowl boxed up in my parents' loft that would solve our current dinner issues (salad is currently mixed in a tupperware lunch box) and Philippe has the exact bookcase that could turn a spartan sitting room into a more homely space. What is the point of buying all these things in Munich only to have to cart them back to the next place when we move on? Then we will have serving bowls and bookshelves in triplicate and I'm pretty sure my parents will draw the line at that.
But needs must. Either I forgo a truly comfortable domestic experience in Munich and return to student days of drinking wine from mugs, or I go out and purchase new wine glasses. It is definitely not the biggest problem in the world, for one thing the measures seem to be more generous in a mug, but it is an issue I am facing. With my hand forced, I change my affiliation from materialism to minimalism.
Just don't comment on the salad when you come round for dinner.