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Currently, I am sat on the hardwood floor of my & B’s
new apartment. As I type I am looking around and noticing that there is
sawdust surrounding me from the floor’s installation (sorry black jeans). I am
in a happy, love-drunk stupor that we found an apartment and someone is letting
us live in such a stellar place! Honestly guys, the apartment’s interior is hübsch (i.e. so stinking adorable) and
the area is what princess dreams are made of. We scored a flat right on the canal
leading into the palace Nymphenburg in the western part of Munich. That's the canal in the photo above, our house is next to the sixth tree on the right, and that's the palace straight ahead!
The trams
nearby go to both mine, and B’s, work. Our neighborhood is very clean and
extremely respectful. Just cycling through it everyone feels to be “by the
book” kind of people. Granted, this is pretty much the German way. But our
neighborhood has something different – it is so strikingly beautiful and
palatial that everyone appears to have a sense of pride and protectiveness
about the streets and canal.
We were made acutely aware of this mentality when we met our
first neighbor, Brigita. Brigita is a serious Bavarian woman. She lives
upstairs and across the hall from us, but managed to mention multiple times in
our 20 minute “conversation” that she had heard us speaking inside of the flat
and that she hears all of the racket the neighbors surrounding her have made
for the last twenty years. This woman has a nack for talking at you - not with or to you. She is a
character, that Brigita. I haven’t decided yet if her complaining and advice to
wear earplugs whilst listening to music in my own home terrifies me or entertains me. On a
positive note, she also mentioned to us how clean and well taken care of our
little neighborhood is.
This fairytale flat is still empty though, we move in all of our boxes and bags and furniture on Saturday. I am more than ready to
start building this new home with B. It’s a long time coming. The past few
months have been trying, exhausting, rewarding, stressful – so, so stressful –
and fun. We have both had the sweetest words, gestures and skype calls from
our friends and families wishing us luck in this (what sometimes felt like
fruitless) endeavor. I have been feverish to find and decorate and inhabit
our own escape inside of a new flat, but this has also been the most
homesick time for me.
After 14 months in Germany I really haven’t felt homesick
that often. But looking for a new place and having things out of my control
happening in California has really sent me over the heimweh edge. I love Munich, but I miss California and my sisters,
my pups, and my parents so much.
Sometimes it just creeps up on me and I begin thinking of a food or a smell or a memory and
my god can it get you. The memory is such a weird thing!
It is a welcome relief to finally have an apartment to call
home with B, but nannying is still feeling unfulfilling to me. I’m a ball of
stress some moments over what in god’s name I’m going to do for work. It is important to work extra hard right
now to remember that I truly am doing the best that I can. I want to
live in Munich, I want to live with B, I want to keep mastering the German
language – and I am a lucky enough gal to be doing all of these things. But in the
day-to-day task lists and appointments and random frustrations I’m finding
myself losing sight of what I want and how happy it makes me when I let it. I,
like all of us, need to keep pushing and knowing that it’s about doing
what I can. Not about what I cannot or do not complete. Life is sweet to me,
and however bitter some things may feel for a moment I have an experienced and
expanding cast of characters that make it even sweeter.
Taking it one day at a time,
Katie
