First months in Munich

It wasn’t my idea nor my dream to move to Munich. I’m an Anglophil, I can see myself somewhere else. Well, after two months here I feel better now. I’m not as much afraid of people as I was when I arrived, I try to understand German when they speak to me (I usually still don’t get it) and I found some places where I feel good.

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I wanted to move out of the Czech republic since I was a kid. I wanted to study in the UK, get married, have children and work there. Well, it all happend differently. First of all, I got married to Jiří five years ago. Then I studied university (marketing and PR) and started working in Prague. After those years in Prague, which I loved (cause I found some friends, fell in love with that beautiful city and found a job that was, and still is, just amazing), we finally moved somewhere else. Jiří came to Munich in June, me in the second half of July. I had some stuff to finish first, like my work and baking for a wedding. Jiří works here, I learn German and copywrite (to Prague).

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First weeks were terrible. I’ve never learnt German at school, I spent in Munich just few days before that… First, we lived in a huge flat in Sendling-Westpark with two other couples for a month and half. It didn’t work very well. The first couple loved to cook, but wasn’t very fond of cleaning after themselves. So it wasn’t really pleasent to come to the kitchen to make a dinner and find it full of dirty dishes and crumbs. On the contrary, the second couple was neat, maybe too much for some people, standardly for the normal ones.

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Sendling-Westpark is a very quiet neighbourhood. There are lots of huge houses, blocks of flats, some parks and number of shops and restaurants. But the way from home to the nearest shop took about 15 minutes walking. Not very close. But I liked the Biergarten (beer garden) Augustiner Schützengarten, Alnatura shop, Tengelmann supermarket, and the S-Bahn station Mittersendling (just 15 minutes to the city center!). And the best thing was that it took us just half an hour by car to the Starnberger See. We spent there few really hot weekend and it was great!

Since the last day of August, we live in Olympisches Dorf – Olympic Village. It was built in 1972 for the Olympic Games held in Munich. The village consists of bungalows where university students now live. Exteriors may be painted by the inhabitants, so there are lots of unicorns, cartoon characters, superheroes, modern art, the Chinese Wall, even The Marauder’s Map or The Beatles. It’s a living art gallery. You should visit the Olympic Village as well as the Olympic Park, BMW Museum/Welt, Olympic Tower or the Olympiaberg (the highest hill in the park; you can see the whole city and the Alps from there!). I like the Olympic Village area much better than Sendling-Westpark. Shops and restaurants are just a few minutes away, and so is the U-Bahn station Olympiazentrum. There are also a post, bank, bakery, café and some pharmacies. Eventhough the flat is sooo tiny, we have no annoying roommates and the surroundings are just beautiful.

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Finding a job in a café isn’t as easy as I hoped. I don’t have any experience in working in a food industry, I don’t speak German (or Bavarian). Because of that and also because it’d make my life easier, I started learning German. Three hours a day, four times a week. My level is A 1.2 now. Also I’m attending coffee courses in October in Jílové u Prahy with Petra Veselá and Gwilym Davies. It’s even not easy to find a coffee course in English here…

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In those two months in Munich not much really happened:

• I bought a beautiful bicycle. White with black polka dots and a basket.
• I even tried German healthcare. It works! (Just in case, Krankenhaus Barmherzigen Brüder is a really nice hospital with nice people who speak English. Thank god for that.) 🙂
• I found out how to use a Streifenkarte. Don’t use it if you don’t have to. Too much to think about how many stripes to mark.
• I had some local delicacies: currywurst – a sausage with curried ketchup sauce and too finely grounded hams aren’t something I would like to eat again. But Spezi (Coke + orange soda), Radler (beer + lemon soda) and Weißbier (light beer) are great drinks. I DO recommend those a lot!
• Shops and many businesses are closed on Sundays. And after 8 pm on working days. It’s not easy to get used to that ’cause sometimes I realize too late I didn’t buy enough food for the weekend. Well, Jiří sometimes comforts me that I can make something (edible) out of nothing. 🙂