Saturday, July 09, 2005

Goodbye Toytown

Leaving Munich almost killed us. We started our round of farewells just after we returned from the States in May, and made our trip in France part of the official goodbye tour. It was fun but ultimately exhausting and damaging to our livers!

We had our official leaving party on June 18th and it was a ton of fun. We went to Murphy’s, a pub Chris spent a lot of time in before we got together. We ordered a wooden keg of Augustiner and invited our closest friends. It was fun. Chris’ sister Maxine flew in from the UK, which was really nice. The nicest part of the evening was when Chris received a really lovely Mass krug from his great friends Brian, Steve and Lisa, Pete, Gary, Andy and Nicola, Greg and Rita and Steve. It had a really sentimental inscription engraved on the lid and it actually reduced him to tears. I was really happy they gave him something special. He has spent a lot of time with them over the years and adores them, as do I. They were like family to him for a long long time. They also got me a special gift of a Bavarian cookbook, which I thought was really thoughtful and very sweet. Lisa was at the helm and you could tell by the choices she made. Planty also made a poster of Chris which was absolutely great and made everyone smile and laugh out loud. It was fantastic. I will put it up as soon as Planty sends me a copy.

We also had a great night at Lise's place watching the charming Australian film The Castle and drinking mass quantities of wine. It was our last chance to see Graham, who is one of my favorite Munich people. He is smart, funny and really nice. He has been kind to me since day one and we hit it off like a house on fire. Chris has known him forever and loves him too. We love getting early Satuday morning texts from Graham with pithy summaries of his wild Friday nights. Go Sunshine!

We spent a lot of time the following week just pulling things together for the move, a nightmare if ever there were one. I am fairly organized but Chris is allover the place. We almost came to blows a few times. He gets annoyed when I nag and I just cannot keep my mouth shut. We sort of just agreed to disagree.

Cal and Ingrid had a barbecue on the Saturday prior to leaving for the Fantasy Football League participants - us, Lise and Richard, Cal, Planty, and Gary and Bev. Since Ingrid was not a player, they invited some otehr non footy types along for the ride - Martina, Jen and Paul and Pete. It was one the nicest times I had in Munich. Cal and Ingrid's place, high above the city on Ainmillerstrasse, is most amazing with huge terraces covered in plants and trees including a Japanese maple and a raspberry bush bearing fruit! We could see three quarters of the city and all the way down to the Alps. We had a great time and were there for hours eating food we'd all bought and drinking Cal and Ingrid out of house and home. Planty had an awards ceremony for Fantasy Football that was absolutely sidesplittingly funny, with prizes of cheap plastic metals for all sorts of categories, a wooden spoon for Lise's team Bouncebackabilities for coming in dead last, and a ceramic krug personally decorated by Planty in the shape of a soccer ball for Chris, whose team Interracionale, ran away with the title. I won for best newcomer. Chris got a special award for finishing his MBA. It was like the Olympics with the awarding of the medals. Absolutely hilarious! All that was missing was the playing of the national anthem. It was a wonderful night and we didn't get in till after two.

We had a last curry at Swagat with Lisa and Steve, Andy, Brian, Gary and Steve Duffy. It was a kind of subdued night, but very nice. I think Chris had expended all of his emotion with that gang at the leaving do. No one was eager to repeat the drunken blubbering!

Our last night was spent at the Georgenhof, a great Bavarian place on our street. We had a huge motley crew - Jen and Paul, Lise and Richard, Bev and Gary, Alan and Annette and family, Cal and Ingrid, Pete, Simon and Anna. It was a nice night and our last chance to drink Augustiner which we took rather too much advantage of.

It is hard for me to leave people – and I cry easily so there were a lot of tears during the final days especially when saying goodbye to Lise and Richard, Jen and Paul, Bev and Gary and Pete among others. Everyone had been wonderful to me in Munich, but I had grown very close to certain people and my friendships with people like Lise and Jen and Paul really strengthened during my time there. I also felt very sentimental when saying goodbye to Alan and Annette who just had a baby daughter, Lucy. Living in Munich would not have been as great if I hadn't been so fortunate to have such good friendships with people who were unceasingly generous of spirit.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home