MUC

We drove up to Munich way too early one morning—me, Ana, no reading material, no music, just the two of us and about three hours of highway. The blond people around us were interesting enough to not resent the commute. The sky kept threatening to go dark but never quite did.

By afternoon we’d already volunteered for some Powerrade focus group and walked away with a bag of gummy bears. The city was celebrating something—Karstadt’s 125th birthday—so we scored two bottles of decent sparkling wine, which we sat down with in front of the Frauenkirche because why not. That’s the kind of idle behavior you get away with when you’re just passing through a place.

We ate pizza somewhere forgettable. At GRAVIS, we browsed the way you browse stores you don’t actually care about. Hugendubel gave us two hours of picking up and putting down books with stupid titles: Why Do Men Have Nipples? Can Molecules Exist in Two Places at Once? That’s what you do when you have time and nowhere better to be.

Dinner was an overpriced salad from some German chain that tasted like sadness. By evening we were in a theater watching Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which is the kind of movie that makes you hyper-aware of time passing. Somewhere between the second and third act I stopped caring what was happening.

We went home and got quietly drunk and watched Lost in Translation, which is the only movie that actually matters, and I remember thinking Munich was fine but I didn’t need to come back. Though knowing me, we will.