Englschalking, Munich

In the summer of 2003, after 19 years of inner-city living, I decided that it might not be a bad idea to consider investing in my own place, rather than continue paying rent for the rest of my life. For those of you in the US this might be a pretty obvious realization, but here in Europe, renting apartments or houses is still pretty much the norm.

Almost one year after the big move, I thought it fitting to celebrate with a few photos and a little tribute to my new home.

I had always loved my little 1-bedroom apartment, with its balcony 5 floors above a busy city street. Our regular weekly meditation meeting took place there and it was the overnight stop of choice for many friends, so the space was filled with happy memories of lively meals, guests, and family visits. It was there that my mother spent her last few holidays with me before she passed away and it wasn’t unusual for friends between apartments to “room” with me for sojourns ranging from 2 months to one and a half years.

But the constant “buzz” of the city, combined with the fact that the landlord was quite content to sit back, pull in the rent and let the place fall into disrepair was beginning to grate on my nerves. Then we had 2003’s “summer of the century” when temperatures soared into the upper 30s °C (almost 100°F) and stayed there for weeks, turning my apartment into a furnace and robbing me of my sleep. So the time get off my duff and start thinking about where I wanted to be when I retire (not really that far in the future!) was ripe.

Friends warned me that I was in for the long haul – lots of new apartment buildings are under construction at the moment, but to find just the right one, well, that could take years! Aside from the fact that it had to fit my budget and my commute to work, the Vaastu Shastra element (or Vastushastra – Vedic Feng-Shui) was of primary importance. But once I had the apartment-hunting bit between my teeth, I dug my heels in and started scanning newspaper property ads, surfing the Internet and visiting the model apartments of various newly built complexes.

At the end of July, while my sister Maureen was visiting me, we went to view the first prospective apartment. Throughout August I saw a few more, some of which, at the outset, looked quite promising. But there was always something not quite right – kitchen too small, layout wrong, no balcony, too loud, too expensive and so on …

During my Internet wanderings, one apartment kept cropping up which, from the photos, looked quite attractive. But it seemed to be too far from the city centre so I didn’t pursue it any further. At some point I thought, aw well, it doesn’t hurt to look and, during the third week of August, made an appointment with the estate agent.

The address was on a 4-lane tree-lined road in the northeastern part of Munich, almost at the city limits. When I parked in front of the apartment complex, I thought it little to “sixties-modern” for my taste and almost drove off again. But before I could make a dash for it, the agent spotted me and escorted me to the door of the apartment where the owner was waiting.

The unit itself was set back a little and separated from the road by a broad strip of lawn, a hedge and some trees, its front door leading in directly from the outside. When we went in, the first thing I noticed was the view out to the back garden, a grassy strip of green with tall leafy trees and a bushy green hedge. “Aha!” I thought …

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Before embarking on my flat hunt, I decided to make a written “new home wish list” to keep in mind what I wanted my new home to have. I’d stored it in my computer and totally forgotten about it until I did a “computer clean up” quite a while after the move. I was pretty “gob-smacked” at just how close my new place matched up to my “dream home”. It just goes to show that a concrete visualisation of what one wishes for sometimes does help!

The apartment in question had 2 bedrooms, one of them smaller and the perfect size for an office/guest room, the master-bedroom with a door leading out on to the quiet of a large patio and garden. There was also a quite spacious living room and a little store-room/pantry. After suffering a 40-year old bathroom with an ancient, stained bath and loosening wall tiles, this bathroom, with light-coloured tiling and a big round well-lit mirror was a delight. The only room I wasn’t too enamoured with was the kitchen, which was too small and narrow with only one window high on the wall, allowing in a minimum of light from the outside.