Munich

Munich

The second city I’m going to write about is Munich. I can’t delay talking about Munich for it was the first city I visited in Europe and a city I empathize with a lot. I lived there for almost six months, went back thirteen years later and I still felt at home.

It was the year 1995. I was twelve years old and I was very different from now. At that time I didn’t like change (a thing that has changed with time) now I get bored when I don’t see change instead. Anyway at that moment I was more introverted, at the last minute I didn’t want to leave Maracaibo for six months, because when you are that age, six months is toooo long. Nevertheless, Munich was everything a city should be. I could get to know something that I had only heard about before… an organized city. I got to know what it was a society based on punctuality. I t was also a tidy, interesting and friendly city.  In Munich, at twelve years old, I could go out anywhere by myself using the underground, in Maracaibo I couldn’t go around the corner without a grown up.  I know what you’re thinking, that I’m making a bad impression of my country. Actually I love my country and I adore my city, but at that moment it was inevitable for me to compare when the only thing I knew was my home city.

In 95 I was in Munich with my parents and my sister. Luckily, my father who had made his doctor degree in Germany years before, already had friends in that country.  I can’t write about this trip without talking about Herman Drewes, or like my sister and I used to call him “Uncle Harry”, he was our host and he showed us many places and many things about German customs, during our whole stay.

In 2008 when I went back for two and a half weeks, I felt really happy. The same first day I find out there's a celebration at Marienplatz for the recent championship of Bayern München, I got to see all the players  who were celebrating in front of the crowd at the balcony of the city hall, it was the best way to start  my trip to Munich, without a doubt.

Walking down the streets that I knew by heart, even if I hadn’t step a foot on them for more than thirteen years, it made me smile. I’m sure that more than one person looked at me and thought –Why is this crazy guy smiling? But it was a great feeling, my memory started to work, when I walked through places like Marienplatz, Odeonplatz, Frauenkirche, Stachus etc. I could even recall the conversations that I had had with my father, while I walked through the same places thirteen years later.   

When I was twelve I witness a great experience called “Oktoberfest”, and going back to Munich for the Oktoberfest is something I have on my “to do list”. Oktoberfest is the world’s most famous beer festival and where you can see Germans and tourist getting drunk from very early in the day. So when I didn’t have the age to drink alcohol I was in Munich during the Oktoberfest, later when I had the age, I was in Munich but it wasn’t Oktoberfest. Obviously I still have to go to Munich DURING Oktoberfest.  And steal another beer mass … yes another one.

My suggestions if you’re visiting Munich start with trying the baverian food, all kinds of sausages and my favorite the leberkasse. Also going to the Olympia Park, Deutsche Museum, drink a mass of beer at the Hof Brau House or any biergarten, if there is good weather. You can’t forget if you pass near the entrance of the residenz at Odeon Platz, there are some Lions holding some shields with a lion head at the botton, you have to touch the lion’s head for good luck. You can stay there for a while and see how other people, who pass by, even if they’re in a hurry, do it too.

Maybe when I talk about Munich I’m a bit subjective, since it’s the city I lived when I was entering in my teenagers years, but definitely it’s one of my favorites and one of the cities where I feel good and where I’d like to live. If you haven’t been there, try to go… specially during Oktoberfest. 

Twitter: @MauroHoyer

Marseille

Marseille

Around the world, Europe is that place that evokes history, art, culture, languages, but also open minded people and where young people go to travel and to party. I consider myself very lucky cos I’ve traveled through several Europeans cities, so in this blog I want to tell you about my experiences in all those different cities, in order to get to know the perspective of this young curious man form Maracaibo-Venezuela, about the diverse places of this magnificent continent.

I don’t plan to write in a chronological order, neither am I going to do a “top ten favorite cities”, or anything like that. I’m going to start with Marseille because it’s the first one to come to mind.

It was the year 2008, I was studying French for two months in Antibes, south of France. I Usually  went out every weekend to discover a new village of the well-known French Riviera, or like it’s called in French Côte d’Azur. For the last weekend I wanted to go to Marseille. Why Marseille? Why not? It’s France’s second biggest city and it was less than four hours by train. Funny thing is that I thought I was going to go by myself, however by chance or luck it wasn’t like that. At school, I had another Venezuelan friend (Alexandra) I let her know that I wished to go to Marseille that weekend and I told her – come with me if you want to. She said that she wanted to go in deed, so talking about it as we were with another friend, we invited her and she accepted, later I remember we were talking about the trip in the dining room of the student’s resident, while other friends were listening and they wanted to join us as well. In a couple of days we already had a group of eleven persons to go to Marseille.

We were eleven persons from different nationalities, to visit a new city in two days.  It was both, a lovely and irritating experience. We were two Venezuelan, two Brazilians, a german, a Swedish, a korean, a Nigerian, a marrocan-dutch, a Spanish and a chinesse-canadien. You can imagine the trauma when we wanted to agree every time someone said – Where are we going now? 

Luckily the owner of the flat, where we spend the night, told us where to go. It wasn’t a suggestion, or a piece of advice, it was a very polite order. But I’ll be always thankful to him, for making us go to that place, since it was the most beautiful natural landscape that my eyes have witness so far.  It was a park called “Les Calanques”. As it was a clear sunny day, for him it was imperative that we should go there.  It was a park with some creeks and cliffs that meet the sea to create a landscape of such beauty that you remain speechless.  It’s one of those places that makes you feel small and huge at the same time, where you don’t even want to blink, so you won’t miss, not even for a second, it’s great majesty. The only unanimous thing in that trip was the feeling of satisfaction that we had being in that place. 

At the city we focused on getting to know the port and the places nearby. I recall that moving forward wasn’t an easy task with that big group. That day I got mad, but today I remember it with a smile.  When we thought that we had agreed on where we were going, we started to walk and then we saw half of the group going the other way.  Then when we were truly ready to move forward, someone had to go to the toilette. Apparently this is contagious, so we had to wait every time for the eleven persons to go to the toilette. We entered once into a café or a restaurant, we all used the services and no one consumed a thing. …it was a success for us.

For me the highlight of the city was going up the hill where there is the church “Notre Dame de Marseille”, both for the temple and for the view of the city. In spite of the cold weather of that second day, contemplating the city from this point you could breathe an air that makes you feel that the trip was worth it. 

Despite the disagreements, of us all, the eleven persons that did that trip, we kept it as a good souvenir. Not every day you make a trip like this one, this was one of these experiences that you live and you will never forget. And I hope all of them could read this, because I want to wish them good luck in whatever they’re doing and about the trip to Marseille… let’s do it again.

Twitter: @MauroHoyer