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Munich Exposed – Part 9
- Retro-Pop aus Thailand: Chris Menist im Interview - 20. September 2011
- Thank you for rocking so hard! - 12. April 2011
- Brit Jazz Week – Soweto Kinch and the poetry of jazz - 21. März 2011
Der wöchentliche Blick auf München von außen – oder: a weekly rant of a non-Münchner Mädchen.
Always looking on the bright side of life (like Eric Idle sings) is not always the best thing to do – especially when you’re not at all loaded yet you somehow end up living among the filthy rich. The bright side of life is often blinding and, naturally, we all hate being deprived of our senses, except for the common one. And most of us never admit our handicap.
What I’m trying to say with the abstractions above is that it’s pretty hard to believe that such a wealthy, secure and thriving city doesn’t have its dark side. Just like with many of the women you see on Maximilianstrasse, under a heavy layer of plastic surgery and make-up, this city hides deep scars of infamy and degradation.
The dark side is not necessarily evil as it is hidden from plain sight. We’re always biased when it comes to the magnetism of the less-legal things. This dark side is just like finding a wallet on the street: it makes us linger between the feeling of sudden threat and the fascination of good fortune. Most of us would leave the wallet lying there and would walk away without a guilty conscience. But some would grab it.
And I’m such a grabber. I enjoy the thrill of the unusual, but in very moderate quantities. I sometimes like walking around the Hauptbanhof area because it perversely reminds me of home; but when I am there I feel tremendously disgusted and can’t wait to get back to my comfort zone.
I don’t know much about the vile (evil?) or alarming (marginal?) aspects of the city since I’m always a bystander. I know there are a few fancy brothels around the neighborhood, I heard of big poker stakes in the backrooms of restaurants, I’ve seen cokehead rich kids and random drug searches on the street, I was told about erotic private parties and of course I wondered about the kiddy porn busts in some surrounding monasteries.
But I wasn’t granted access to any of these. My personal sightings of the peculiar in Munich relate to obvious, daily things. For example, to the different breeds of beggars. Most of the Munich beggars (who are really few compared to other big cities, I guess that’s the work of the Polizei) are clearly insane. Astonishingly, they’re also German.
There’s this guy on Sendlingstrasse who is always wrapped in a white blanket. He sits in the same spot for endless hours, staring into an abyss, saying nothing. He has a female counterpart on Lindwurmstrasse, wrapped in a red blanket, who has a spasm every second. These crazies fill the streets and I can’t help but wonder whether loneliness did this to them. There is this couple of old punkers begging on the same street, near a supermarket. They seem ok and they’re always drunk. I often see them on a bench near Goetheplatz along with their rugged drinking buddies – it’s like a small congress of pissed, sad people. And there’s this new guy I’ve been running into lately, who looks perfectly healthy, is dressed in clean, somewhat fancy clothes, but chooses to kneel and hold out his hand. This type of hypocrisy really messes with me viscerally. And did you ever run into the British beggar? He’s quite famous, I hear.
And then there are the soup kitchens. So many people with amazing but inconsolable faces who clearly became homeless in the last few months gather there. Most of them still look somewhat proud and confident. They probably think this too shall pass. Seeing them like this reminds me of that quote with us being the only species that casually devours its own kind. Gladly, there are a few good men and women who stop their cars and hand out blankets, medicine and food to those in need. And they’re definitely not among the rich and glamorous.
There’s also another kind of filth (and I’d say a much scarier one) in the city. One night I went to the Kultfabrik/Theaterfabrik area for a concert. This place is like 50 hellish railway termini connected to each other by trails of vomit. It’s also full of the most atrocious specimens of teenagers I’ve ever spotted in the wild – this laughingstock certainly redefines the meaning of partying like animals. Stiletto-heeled, Swarovski-belted ostrichlike underage females yield to the rut of snotty, sweaty, sleazy machitos; they drunkenly stumble towards pungent corners for a new session of make-out. Wow.
Who are these people and where do they hide during daytime? Although it was a gig I wanted to see, I immediately left the place and swore I will never ever return there.
I read an article today about sex crime rates in Europe in the past few years. Germany places second after Ireland and I’m sure that doesn’t surprise anyone anymore. How can it be that the most atrocious things are so well buried under a formidable mask of decency and extreme righteousness? Yes, I know I’m redundant. Sometimes I can’t help picturing the ‘perfect body’ meat market in places like the P1, the nightly fights over a fly, the upscale gents shuffling young hussies and the nouveau riche widows picking out their playmates. There’s this bar in the building I live in where I can see examples of this ghastly theater every evening – only its protagonists are really small fish.
There are so many other things you don’t get to read about in the newspaper that I feel compelled to omit for obvious reasons. I too am among those who choose to ignore the dirty laundry and stick with the façade, just like Ludwig I. After all, when it comes to quality of living, Munich is always in the top 5 worldwide. Except for the occasional beatings in the S-Bahn, psychiatric drug problems and inheritance scandals, we don’t get much info on the social substrata.
And that seems to be perfectly fine, because we don’t want it either. We don’t cross unknown turf and we let the experts, both on the bright and dark side, deal with the controversial issues. You probably know the saying that a German can’t tell a lie without believing it himself. I think that’s true for maybe 90% of the Germans I know. The others are the complete opposite and it can get pretty scary.
But enough with the dreary. I know I was promising a historical view on Munich but it can be hard to track people down these days. But I won’t fail you.
It’s 26 degrees outside and the Isar and most Biergartens are already full of delicious-looking picnic baskets, so let’s forget about the crummy and concentrate on the yummy.
And they lived happily ever after.
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