Departure from Munich

All of these disorganized contemplations were originally written down at the end of August, just before I returned to the US:

Soon everything in my microcosmic splice of the world will change.

Sadly I must say good-bye to Ivanna and Nicole in Munich and my relatives in Zürich, but in the U.S. I will be closer to my immediate family and friends, as well as everyone from the program who has now begun repatriation. I take great comfort in knowing that Emily and I will never be far apart, despite the evil geography may inflict the year after next.

When I am back in Portland, I will…
- Take out graphic novels from the public and Reed library and read them voraciously
- Get anatomy and botany books from the library, sketch the images
- Buy a pack of Cloves
- Organize what stuff I want to keep and what I can spare
- Get my bike repaired, take it in for a tune-up and ride all over SE
- See Cecily, Jenifer, Sandra
- Go in for a yoga session at Yoga Pearl
- Eat at Blossoming Lotus
- Rent LOTS of movies, start up Netflix again
- Have my first legal US drink in a bar
- Visit all the places to which I feel so connected

Am I ready to sum up Munich yet? Not thoroughly, but I can start to process it all. Often I need to do this once I have left a place and gotten both physical and emotional distance from it. It’s certainly true (though no less pretentious) to claim that a year abroad can mature a person tremendously, but like everyone else, I did a lot of this in the last year of high school and first two years of college. This time, however, it’s been entirely my own doing. No boy has helped me learn what I wanted while I’ve been in Munich. If anything, perhaps I’ve seen a bit more clearly with P. and C. what dating is like when you don’t constantly see the person. My pacing is all sorts of messed up.

Coffee and Reading

I absolutely believe that the feel and quality of a city is dependent on the people that inhabit it. Yet all of the cafes, shops, restaurants, festivals, landmarks and the public transportation place such an important role as well. Would Portland be the Portland we know without Powell's or the Hawthorne Bridge? It would still be incredible, true, but not in the same sense because of that difference. Everything and everyone works together in Portland - the city that, ahem... works.

I don't think I will ever find a cool Portland-esque cafe here, no matter how hard I try. Now I am starting to realize that that's ok. The chique European cafes with warm paint tones, Indian art mingled with Rothko prints and pricy drinks that come with amaretti will have to suffice.

There is still that lofty and ultimately insignificant goal of finding that cafe, and I think the coming months will provide a good time to quietly and unassumingly explore and perhaps actualize it. For now, however, I have fallen peacefully into a Monday routine. I wake up around 9 or 10am and putz for a while, eating müsli, showering, checking email and preparing lunch. Then I bike over to Deli Star, a cut corner cafe on the same street as the LC Institute. I order a capuccino - though I plan to branch out, naturally - and set to work reading the intense psychology reading. Ideally, I would have already finished the article and not have to, as is often the case, print it out hurriedly at the university copy shop that morning.

At 1:20 I bike the half a block from the cafe to the Institute, which is housed in a beautiful old apartment building covered in ivy. By that time my mood is glorious and I am oh-so-thrilled to speak to people rather than read small text and examine graphs in German. This routine is a lot like my Ugly Mug [cafe] days in Sellwood during the year, and right now it is a welcome pattern. I just hope Munich does not become too routine for me and I adjust so much that I forget to explore. I doubt this will happen, though, as there are always interesting events and conversations to be experienced.

Photo Credit: wikipedia.org, manolotalks (Flickr)