München Takeout
LA pigeons followed me to Munich's layer-cake grids and mile-high shopping districts. Smells of rental backseats turn to late nights in the city crawl surrounded by polite drunkards and beer-sworn allegiances. Folks grin with brushstrokes of various sauces on their flushed cheeks, midnight snacks finger-painted onto plastic cups that you can return to the bartender for 2 euros. I would say people are so eco-conscious here, but that assumption is clouded by the shared chimney dust of a nearby clique whose cigarette butts are still roasting, even on the cobbled road.
I suppose the party never stops in this dreamy village-city. There are hardly any children, fewer homeless, and less so any sense of dread or anxiety when inebriated and wandering the mazing streets whose buildings huddle so close together it's a miracle the air could be cold at all. I feel that I am being whispered to as I wedge myself past lines of sirs and ladies waiting to use the nearest restroom, and restaurant servers barely offer a glance as we trudge and tumble in hordes toward bladderly relief. The toilets clean themselves, the paper towels sit on a soaking pile by the sink, and everybody smells nice, even in such tight, sweaty proximity.
Street lights are small and tidy, sidewalks supple and inundated by the weight of half of every car that finds an empty space. I laugh with brothers and sisters-in-law and cousins and lovers of cousins, and I breathe deeply because the trees here suck the stink out of every bit of waste, save the tobacco and hops. Bicyclists angrily chime their cute bells at us as we lord ourselves over their lanes and ours, expressing in plain terms their disdain for tourists with no sense of pedestrian etiquette. The liquors are stirred with a gentle passion, and they sell for cash one could actually have in change. Some are bartended into Chinese takeout boxes, and most are spilled into mason jars, but all of them sing to the tune of hand-me-down hipsterdom -
- just like the new-age architectured walls of buildings that are made to look like they had seen German soldiers march past them some time ago, but really they had only read of it in the nearby state library. The beautiful columns they thought they dressed in were actually tattooed sleeves with no history or third dimension. Massive murals and arches look down on passersby who perch themselves at cold metal feet to nibble on wurst and giant heart-shaped gingerbread cookies.
Eventually, the air distills its intoxicating vapors, and the streets humble themselves into hallways and stairwells, home at last - a cozy, one-bedroom, München apartment whose faculties are never spacious and never wasted. Every couch, counter, and cupboard serves a purpose - each linen and pillow validating a sense of competence and meaning. Here, people don't swear at you, and "excess" is a bad word in every context that doesn't involve libations. The blankets are short and warm, the AC is never on, and the windows have no screens.
As I write this, I'm taking my first dump in two days, and through thin walls behind me I hear locals having the best safe sex of their lives, and for some reason I feel I am gaining a better sense of Munich this way, as if they are speaking in code and telling me more than any pigeon or partygoer in the soft-lit alleys and byways about how to behave, how to laugh, how to breathe, and how not to get lost in the neighborhoods whose businesses and residences blend like the cocktails I find dripping in my hands.
I suppose the party never stops in this dreamy village-city. There are hardly any children, fewer homeless, and less so any sense of dread or anxiety when inebriated and wandering the mazing streets whose buildings huddle so close together it's a miracle the air could be cold at all. I feel that I am being whispered to as I wedge myself past lines of sirs and ladies waiting to use the nearest restroom, and restaurant servers barely offer a glance as we trudge and tumble in hordes toward bladderly relief. The toilets clean themselves, the paper towels sit on a soaking pile by the sink, and everybody smells nice, even in such tight, sweaty proximity.
Street lights are small and tidy, sidewalks supple and inundated by the weight of half of every car that finds an empty space. I laugh with brothers and sisters-in-law and cousins and lovers of cousins, and I breathe deeply because the trees here suck the stink out of every bit of waste, save the tobacco and hops. Bicyclists angrily chime their cute bells at us as we lord ourselves over their lanes and ours, expressing in plain terms their disdain for tourists with no sense of pedestrian etiquette. The liquors are stirred with a gentle passion, and they sell for cash one could actually have in change. Some are bartended into Chinese takeout boxes, and most are spilled into mason jars, but all of them sing to the tune of hand-me-down hipsterdom -
- just like the new-age architectured walls of buildings that are made to look like they had seen German soldiers march past them some time ago, but really they had only read of it in the nearby state library. The beautiful columns they thought they dressed in were actually tattooed sleeves with no history or third dimension. Massive murals and arches look down on passersby who perch themselves at cold metal feet to nibble on wurst and giant heart-shaped gingerbread cookies.
Eventually, the air distills its intoxicating vapors, and the streets humble themselves into hallways and stairwells, home at last - a cozy, one-bedroom, München apartment whose faculties are never spacious and never wasted. Every couch, counter, and cupboard serves a purpose - each linen and pillow validating a sense of competence and meaning. Here, people don't swear at you, and "excess" is a bad word in every context that doesn't involve libations. The blankets are short and warm, the AC is never on, and the windows have no screens.
As I write this, I'm taking my first dump in two days, and through thin walls behind me I hear locals having the best safe sex of their lives, and for some reason I feel I am gaining a better sense of Munich this way, as if they are speaking in code and telling me more than any pigeon or partygoer in the soft-lit alleys and byways about how to behave, how to laugh, how to breathe, and how not to get lost in the neighborhoods whose businesses and residences blend like the cocktails I find dripping in my hands.
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