I arrived in Munich on March 29th, 2010. I didn't come from America, as you all know; I'd been in Europe for the previous three months and thought of myself as a fabulous world traveller.
It was true that my massive blue suitcase was packed with various things - sand from the beach in Greece, a sateen skirt that Michelle had given me, now torn and feathered at the seams, scarves and a dress I'd acquired in Dublin, the sweater I'd worn while tending pigs in Cork.
Still, arriving in Munich, I found the suitcase cumbersome, unfitting to escalators, and myself frazzled by public transportation. I hadn't adequately prepared for this, my study abroad trip, I remember thinking in the sterile Munich airport. I didn't even know how to get to my apartment. I went to an Internet terminal and looked up the number of the program, reduced to search engines.
"Hallo," said the chirpy voice, "JYM, hier ist Patrizia..."
"Hi," I barked. "Hi. Can I speak English?"
"Yes, of course," Patrizia the program coordinator said in perfect, albeit accented English. (It was the only time I'd ever hear her speak it.) "How can I help?"
"I am lost," I blurted. "I don't know how to get to ... my apartment."
"Are you from the Sommersemester program? What's your name?" she said, soothing.
I somehow wrote down directions, somehow bought a ticket and took the S-Bahn from the airport for the very first time, clutching my backpack to my chest, my eyes wary of ticket-checkers even though I'd paid twelve euro for the trip. I dragged my suitcase over cobblestones and magically showed up at my program's building; spoke German to Maresa the assistant for the first time in four years; got a set of keys and a hefty package; took the train again, the suitcase weighing me down; got off in what looked, to me, like an industrial park.
I stared around Stusta blankly. This was not Munich, I remember thinking. I had been tricked. These were tall concrete buildings, not pastel-coloured pre-war apartments with cobblestoned lanes - skyscrapers that jutted incongruously out of greenery to disappoint and mar.
The impression was worse when I arrived in my room.
Is this it? I thought. Really? I'd seen bathrooms larger - in the brochure, they'd said "you will have your very own apartment," and I'd felt dubious, but secretly been hoping for a massive airy kitchen, wooden butcher-block countertops. This, in contrast, was a sort of insane-asylum Barbie playhouse - plastic pieces fitted together to make a leaky whole. The door opened immediately into two hot plates next to a stained metal sink; a door next to that showed a dingy full-plastic bathroom, all curved surfaces and a drain in the floor. Walking past that, one arrived at a window; a desk, a narrower than twin bed. That was all.
It was a shoebox for people; the bed was on its side, there was dust on the shelves, the floor was pale grey linoleum, and there was a bucket of hardware supplies left mysteriously mid-floor. This was home.
I had, at the time, a sense of panic. I had no idea how I would live here for four months. It was not home, and I could not get air, no matter how much I opened the windows; outside my apartment a microphone blared "Sechsundzwanzig... Siebenundzwanzig...", yelling orders for the bar outside. It was a cube. It was not home.
Considering all this, it's surprising that not only did I stay the semester, Stusta is where I live now. Granted, I'm in the room that was once just Nader's (a zen den of candles and guitars, blank spaces and vacuumed floors and a simple single blanket on the bed) - this is an improvement over my previous room, there is carpet and there is no bar directly outside, just trees and a graveyard of thousands of bikes. Still, it is the same room, the same tiny kitchen, the same bathroom.
It's a box for people, and we've lived in it for two years. Two years. I went home to America for a semester and then came back to find the room unchanged, the same little rugs and black guitar; slowly my stuff infiltrated, seeped in, my sweaters and my dried flowers and the coffee stains that follow me from house to house.
Now it is ours, and it is crammed with stuff. The porch is a warren of boxes, the shelves are a rabbit's nest of papers. I buy too many vegetables and stack them next to the plastic bags; the socks live under the bed, the booze sleeps next to the computer. It is a house filled with multiple things. Friends come over and say it's an accomplishment that we've stayed together so long in this environment, all while eyeing the narrow strip of floor on which they must sleep.
It is not large enough for two tall adults, but there has to be something about the place that keeps us.
I think it's the English Gardens, which are a massive park directly in our backyard, full of rivers and birds and surreptitious grass snakes; Nader thinks it's the neighbors, kind devious boys who drink until six in the morning and then cook epic brunches. Both of us suspect it's Munich's terrible rental market, full of scams and ridiculously-expensive buildings with nonexistent heating.
Whatever it is, we're here, and usually I say it sort of ruefully. "Well, we're here," to my parents on Skype. "We're looking," to my colleagues - "do you know anyplace?"
"Wow," though, said the girl today.
I was in my apartment. Nader was at the gym. I was cooking - chili, then salad - and listening to Mindy Kaling's fabulous audiobook. Dimly, from outside, I heard it -
"Anna." then, "Anna." An American accent. Aehh - na, not aw-na. I ignored it at first - I knew the new students in my program would be arriving soon, but something inside me led me to disregard it.
Then came the knock. I answered it, expecting Nader, and all of a sudden there was this American blonde girl outside my door.
"Um hi," she said, "is this 113? I guess not -"
"Yeah," I said, "this is 12, that's the floor above us."
"Oh wow," she said, "are you from JYM?"
I was, I said. Two years ago.
And you live here now? she said, ecstatic. You've made it here?
Yeah, and I explained everything.
Wow, she said. Wow.
Do you want to come in? I asked, and I searched for the Atomic Cafe, which she'd been looking for and which I knew was downtown but didn't know where. While I searched, she looked at my room - the photos, the piles of clothes, the wine bottles and bubbling stew.
"This is amazing!" she said, her blonde eyes wide. "It's like a real room! You guys, like, live here!"
"Yeah, well, not for long," I said, "the housing market is just..."
"No, it's like a real house! It's awesome," she said. "Mine is totally empty, just boxes and bags and dust... And you came back? How did you do it? How did you come back? And you have, like, a real-person job?"
I was disgusted by the fullness of it all, my bulging closet and the mounds of vegetables, but she was amazed, her eyes running over our pictures in their frames. I didn't know how much I needed it, her wide-eyed incredulousness, her sheer amazement, until it happened to me.
"How did you get here?" and "This is amazing" and "I want to hear your story".
What a godsend. Isn't that what anyone wants? Isn't that what anyone needs, especially when they leave America with a big blue suitcase and little to no direction?
