I forgot to take my camera to Munich. In my haste to get the train to the airport, it was left on the side in the kitchen which was hugely annoying. It would have been really nice to have taken some pictures to show the children where we are going to be living, but as it turned out, I didn't get much time to take pictures anyway.
The moment I stepped off the plane, the house-hunting began. It's funny how you forget the horrors of searching for a new home in a new country, and how bizarre an experience it can be. I think I saw the whole spectrum too, from monsterous houses that were far too big, to houses so small they were perhaps only suitable for the
The Borrowers. Houses with resident crazy cat ladies, and show-houses with over-precious owners (and my particular favourite - houses with blocks of flats in the back garden that weren't actually there when the photographs on the adverts were taken!!)... Houses with small gardens, houses with no gardens, and houses with ginormous potentially child-swallowing ponds in their gardens. From houses with traditional Bavarian Decor, to a couple of houses with hideous eighties decor (what was it with stripes in the eighties anyway?). Then just when I was beginning to lose all hope and had visions of us living in a yurt, I saw "The One". The place that I know could feel like home. My lovely relocation agent didn't take long to work out that if my answer to "do you have any questions?" was "No", it meant I wasn't interested. So when I asked at least 100 questions about this particular house, it was quite clear that I was smitten by it, and so the formalities began.... I am not counting any eggs before they hatch though, and wont refer to it as our "new house" until everything has been signed off as we have been there before too!
After my first day of house hunting I arrived back at the hotel exhausted and hungry. I was determined to see some of the city while I had time, so I walked to Marienplatz where (after recovering from an initial banking error where temporarily forgetting that I was in another country, I withdrew 400 Kroner (around £50) which of course turned out to be 400€ (around £400!!)) my reward for a day of trawling and sifting through countless properties was a beautiful crisp beer and a bratwurst... As Oktoberfest begins today, it was perhaps busier than it would be normally, but it had a really great atmosphere..
Overall, my first impressions of Munich were really good. It's huge, and it felt quite cosmpolitan. Given its location it's perhaps not suprising that Munich reminded me of Italy in a lot of ways, the rural areas surrounding the city especially with beautiful rolling hills, and produce stalls at the side of the road. I think we are going to really enjoy it there, but it's going to take me a very very long time to get used to being called Frau!!....
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