So far, Munich has proved to be quite a nice little town. :) We haven't met many people yet, but the people we have met seem to be very friendly. Everything here feels more relaxed than it did in Russia. There's less attitude, less pretension.
Our second day here was bright, sunny, and warm, and succeeded in melting away all the bad feelings of the previous night. There's no wi-fi in the apartment and all the surrounding networks are locked, so we had to trek a short way up the road and sit curled up on the sidewalk to do our work. Aside from the internet issue, however, our apartment is quite cute. It has big windows that let in lots of natural light, a very European looking kitchen, and has, we both agreed, a very nice wood floor. It's also across the street from a field of beer - yes, a field of beer - which is one of the more amazing things encountered in my life so far. There's a brewery just up the street, and they store cases and cases of beer stacked two stories high in the empty lot across from us. There's almost no security, as far as we can tell, except for a small fence, so we have no idea why it doesn't get stolen.
I'm just now finishing up the cold that has been plaguing me since the day before we left Russia, so I've been rather subdued in Munich so far. I spent most of my first afternoon here at home, reading and writing, while Jon was out at an internet cafe. When he returned, we had a lovely European dinner of sausage, soup (tomato for me, goulash for him), and camembert on bread. It was quite good, from what my stuffed nose could tell! It is a cruel, cruel injustice to be in Europe, surrounded by so much delicious food, and not be able to taste a single bite of it! It rather ruins hard liquor as well, as you can't taste the flavor but do feel the burn...you're left with only the unpleasant part!! Thankfully my nose is beginning to right itself today, so I have high hopes of tasting something perfectly delightful tonight.
After our meal on Tuesday night, Jon and I stopped in a bar that was advertising mango daiquiris. Not only did we discover tasty frozen drinks, we found a native English speaker on staff, an American from somewhere in Florida. He was very kind to us, as was the other employee working that night, so I'm quite sure we will be returning to the place frequently during our time here. It's called the Green Leaf, and our new acquaintances are John and Noelle. We walked back home and passed out asleep immediately upon arrival.
My next two days were spent very diligently trying to get my first round of written correspondence ready to be mailed. I purchased new stationary (it's absolute perfection!) and new sealing wax (a metallic gold) for the occasion. I have decided that I need to find someone to make me a custom seal. What should I put on it? My first thought was a peacock feather, of course, due to my obsession with them. Perhaps with an E in the center of the eye of the feather.
Jon and I went on a very nice walk on Wednesday and discovered an amazing open-air market. Every stand looked so inviting...vibrant flowers, exotic meats, cheeses with names you can't possibly pronounce, fruit that is riper and more colorful than anything you have ever seen...it was, as Sebastian Flyte would say, "heaven with strawberries."** I could spend loads of money there, if only I had the appetite to match! We also came across something called The Victorian House, which advertises afternoon tea. I can't wait to go (dragging Jon along with me, of course!).
He very nearly took me voluntarily, after I received a very disappointing bit of news. I had been invited, on Elance, to bid on a project posted by someone in search of a writer to pen a novel. I was shocked to discovered that I'd been asked to take on such a daunting task! How could I turn down the opportunity to write my first novel? It was also a chance to earn a great deal of money (at least by my standards), which I certainly need. I was hoping to use part of it to take Jon and myself to London for a day or two, to see John Barrowman as Albin in La Cage Aux Folles (we are still planning to make the trip, thankfully, which I am positively giddy about!). And let's face it, my resume could use the boost in prestige that a novel would bring, and this project would have actually been enjoyable to work on! I completed a one page writing sample that I KNOW was good, but couldn't email it until a few hours later, when I finally had access to the internet.
The internet proved to be my downfall, I'm afraid. On Wednesday afternoon I received the message that the woman hiring for the job had received my sample too late, and had already chosen another writer. I'm utterly heartbroken over the matter. She added that it was "quite well written," which was nice to hear, but it's still all très, très disappointing. I'm hoping now that the provider she chooses will mess something up and that she will reassign the project to me. In the meantime, I placed a bid on another big book project, though it's a book on plastic surgery and not a chance for creative writing.
I just finished "Son of Oscar Wilde," a book written by - wait for it - Oscar Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland. It's made me fall in love with the man all over again, and has left me feeling very inspired. So much so, in fact, that I've begun the preparatory work for a new story (I envision it, one day, as a series of novels). I'm falling in love with the characters already. :) I still find that it's not all clear to me yet, though... As cheesy as it sounds, I really do feel that characters and plot write themselves, and at the moment neither has fully revealed itself to me. They are very clearly begging to be written, however, as they seem to occupy most of my thoughts these days. I'm afraid I've probably become quite bad company to Jon these past few days, as I find that I'm often falling into bouts of silent story contemplation! I am now very much mourning the fact that I neglected to bring a notebook on the trip, as I prefer to handwrite in the early stages.
But I am becoming pretentious and digressing...
Wednesday night featured a quintessentially German dinner: a meal of currywurst and fries, that came with a glass of beer and schnapps. I'm sure it would have been quite good, had I been able to taste! We then stopped by the Green Leaf again, to end our night.
As per usual, yesterday was spent hard at work. Jon made dinner for us that evening, then I got a little more writing done while he went to work at Starbucks. After getting a wee bit lost, I met him there and we discovered a cute little bar - all painted and lit in red, almost a replacement Keybar - that was packed with people. We had a round of the sweetest beer I have ever tasted, then moved on to the little place where we'd had dinner on our second night in Munich. We ordered the camembert and bread again, and two glasses of champagne that were a vast improvement on Russian champagne.
After that, it was a slightly rainy walk home and bed, my mind still occupied by a constant flow of story ideas rushing through it!
**Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
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