Days since last round up: 7
Estimated fluency: well I hope it’s around 80%, because I’m coming up to my last month and a half here
Best bit of vocab: kuschelig (‘cuddly’ - perfect for a child wrapped up for the autumn weather)
Major achievements: I might have received a compliment from one of the girls?
Failed ventures:
Reading: Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr Freud by Christa Wolf
Weather: a surprisingly mild spell with very autumnal vibes
The week got off to a good start despite the very long weekend, safe in the knowledge that I’d put in a solid shift and wasn’t left with any hours to catch up on in the coming weeks. I headed for a day at the lovely, if slightly bougie, Hope Fresh, just a short walk from the apartment, for some heart-warming porridge, ready to get into Jelinek’s take on crime fiction, Gier. It proved surprisingly readable (for those of you not familiar with her work, plots and recognisable characters generally aren’t high on her list of priorities, but I really would recommend her work if you can get into it), and put me in a good mood for a walk back in the sunshine to collect the younger girl. Evenings have been very relaxed, with the girls slowly starting to respond to me a bit better, tantrums aren’t infrequent, but the older girl is out of the phase where she absolutely refuses to talk to me, and the younger one is getting increasingly more used to me being the one who’s responsible for her with each week that goes by. She still won’t be rushed in the mornings, and sometimes getting her to eat her cereal within half an hour is a painful process, but other days I barely have time to wipe down the table before she wants to go. We’ve started playing a game where I’ll count how long it takes her to do various stages of getting dressed, which she absolutely loves and is proving a useful trick. Other highlights have included having my hair done and being covered with jewellery, reading German storybooks with the younger girl while the older one does her homework, and the bedtime routine is now working a treat, with Sophia voluntarily getting pyjamas on and cleaning her teeth, and even requesting a story before she goes to sleep.
This week was mostly a week of repeating old favourites, the best probably being Nostimo, a Greek deli on one corner of Maxvorstadt with some genuinely amazing (but sadly not vegan) honey and yogurt breakfasts. I also got to finally try out the soup kitchen on the Viktualienmarkt, which would have been perfectly timed for the crisp autumnal days earlier in the week, until the weather took a mild turn, warm enough for the girls to draw pictures out on the balcony after school.
As everyone kind of does their own thing for dinner and a family sit-down definitely isn’t a daily routine, I don’t feel like I spend much time with the parents these days, which is a shame in that it would be nice to feel a bit more like part of the family unit, but we have the occasional really good conversation about a bit of vocab, and the mum does make the effort to chat if we’re alone in the kitchen, it’s just not always easy to do small-talk when the kids are around, especially as we don’t have an awful lot in common.
The week ended on a high, with a trip to the park with the girls on Friday evening to get them out from under the mum’s feet while she finished work, which was a lovely opportunity to actually have fun with them rather than just trying to keep them entertained. It also meant an unexpected number of hours; they’ll often give me free time earlier on Fridays to do a film evening or something because the girls can stay up later, but this time I was going into the weekend having already worked most of my hours for the week, so after a relaxed morning to myself on Saturday and a few hours with the girls at the park again, all wrapped up and this time with one of the older girl’s friends, I was free to head a bit out of town to the Backstage arena, a concert venue doubling up as the location for a night-time flea market (like depop in real life, not exaggerating), with live music and street food. It was a bit of an adventure, a great chance to explore a new dimension of the city, get some bargain second-hand clothes and some tasty food, and above all to feel a bit more like a student again than a professional nanny.
The good vibes continued into Sunday, with a beautiful lie in, very much thanks to the clocks going back, and an easy journey to central station to meet the two Annas for a day trip to Tegernsee.
Turns out we weren’t quite original as we thought, and everyone else on the tiny but packed train had had the same idea of going for an alpine hike on a sunny autumn day.
As soon as we left the station though, we were away from the crowd to enjoy an unexpectedly steep uphill climb to a Biergarten near the Riederstein chapel right at the top of the hill.
The experience was quintessentially Bavarian, with beer, pretzels, Obadza and even a Dampfnudel (we earned it!), and such a lovely escape from the city and any year abroad anxieties.
The day was topped off perfectly as we reclaimed our British and vaguely nutritious identity with homemade vegan chilli and an episode of Downton Abbey back in Munich, a perfect end to the weekend which set me up nicely for the week ahead.