STO<->MUC

No recipe today, sorry. It's a quarter past one in the morning, and I only just arrived in my small room in Munich. Tomorrow, I'll pack up all my belongings, and then I'm moving to another small room only a few blocks away. Then, I go back to Sweden to work some more. Not exactly the Oktoberfest vacation most people associate with Munich this time of year, but c'est la vie, eh?

After a year in Munich, and then a couple of months in Sweden, I've reflected a bit about the two cities I call home. Munich and Stockholm have so many differences, yet there are some key similarities, too. For lack of a better word, I'd like to say that both cities have a distinctly career-y feeling. Lots of business people running around talking in their mobiles, expensive apartments, loads of IT firms, salad bars and €4 cups of caffe latte. Both cities have a decent night life, yet neither is a never-sleeping vibrant party metropolis like Berlin or Amsterdam.

But I think the thing that most unites Stockholm and Munich is that despite their size (both in the range of a million inhabitants), they're not exactly super-urban. Both have large green areas, and also a distinctly greener feel than many cities. The first thing I saw when I got off the subway where I live was a hedgehog. And honestly, where else but Munich would you find a herd of sheep in the city park?



So... itchy...



... oh noes!

Again, I'm sorry there's no recipe here. I was going to write one up, but I had a layover in Shithole Schiphol airport, so I'm going to bed instead.

Locally Produced

One interesting thing about Munich is how despite being a rather large city, it manages to maintain a connection to Bavaria's agricultural roots. From the weekly farmer's markets to the semi-permanent stands at the Viktualienmarkt, local produce is never far away.

Munich also has a very large city park (the second largest in Europe, and bigger indeed than the Central Park in New York), called Englischer Garten (the English Garden). Very popular with the residents, a lush and beautiful park crossed by man-made streams, shaded by beautiful trees and with a generous amount of open fields, the Englischer Garten can become quite crowded on a sunny day. The park is divided into two parts, the southern, more park-like, stretching from the city centre to northern Schwabing, and the northern part, more forest than park, stretching out to the limits of Studentenstadt, where it passes some 50 meters from my home.

The northern part of the park, while lacking beer gardens, has some other very nice things to offer. There is a small area where hobbyist beekeepers keep their buzzing insects, and where you can buy delicious honey for €4,50 a jar. It doesn't get more locally produced than that, and as if that wasn't reason enough to buy, the beekeepers are organized in an association that adheres to even higher standards regarding water content in the honey than EU law requires.

Another interesting thing about the northern part of the garden is that instead of mowing the lawns, the park keepers allow a shepherd to herd his sheep on the lawns, thus keeping the grass low, reducing waste, and fertilizing the lawns all at once. A very nice type of organic gardening, and the sheep and their lambs are just lovely. Look at this little fellow for instance:


How cute is that? And don't he/she just look delicious?