Starting in Munich

Although this post doesn't fit in the chronology of the wedding and arriving in Munich, I felt that I'd write it up anyway.

I've been in Munich for quite some weeks now. I'm sort of getting into a routine but not quite started my work that I had planned- sorting out my laptop seems to be a more demanding task than I thought. But I'll get there eventually...

My German is improving- meaning that I'm learning to recognise some written words- despite me not properly starting my German course. Yesterday my husband and I went to the laundrette to do the laundry and a (rather tall) man tried to help me with the dryer, in German of course, and I couldn't really grasp what he was trying to say but he eventually just smiled and let me carry on guessing which buttons to press until my husband came and confirmed I was on the right track.

I've also been exploring so many different supermarkets, finding the cheapest offers on this, looking for the best quality of that and so on and so forth. Consequently, I popped into our local Aldi, one because I know the prices there are reasonable for everyday things and two, because it's familiar to home. Of course Aldi is German but they've branched out across Europe and the UK is a happy host to the family supermarket. Familiarity often just feels better sometimes and while I was on my solo adventure, I got caught up in a small but typical conflict of trolly politesse. I was in a corner of the shop and as I was going to advance forward, I saw a man approaching on my left who would turn into the aisle I was in. I decided to let the man pass ahead of me just so that I didn't feel like I had someone waiting behind me as I was wandering through slowly. He kindly smiled and (I presume) told me to go ahead because he was going to stop on that corner to look at something. He then continued speaking to me jokingly and all I could do was smile and nod while slowly walking away a little sad that I couldn't really understand his banter and any casual conversation for that matter.

It took me back to when I was a young adolescent. I loved reading novels that had an ethnic flavour: books about immigration and being displaced, taken from your home and other novels about struggles in new environments. Sometimes they were about war and just moving towns, cities and villages like A Thousand Splendid Suns and A Long Way Gone, and at other times they were about international migration. Being in Germany sort of reminds me of the novel Brick Lane, despite me not living in an area populated with lots of immigrants, I feel slightly confined to these walls (by nature) and my going out doesn't "contribute" because I'm oblivious to much of the language and so I leave the flat in a bubble and I have limited access to information. Thankfully I'm literate in English and French and so I can recognise the numbers, the letters and my "European-ness" clearly makes the products familiar, but nonetheless this immigration still requires that adjustment, learning and experience of challenges like any other. Fortunately I have God and my husband here to support me through it and the internet...