Munich – I Loved It and I Hated It

I lived in Munich for 22 years.

That is a long time. Long enough to know a city beyond the postcard version. Long enough to have memories, routines, favourite corners, good years and bad years. Long enough to understand why people love Munich.

And I did love parts of it.

Munich is beautiful. No one can deny that. The old city, the beer gardens, the Isar, the nearby lakes, and the Alps almost in front of the door — it is hard not to be impressed. From Munich, you can be at the Starnberger See or Tegernsee quickly, in the mountains for a weekend, in Austria without much effort, and even Italy feels close enough to dream about.

It is a city with many advantages.

And still, for me, Munich was always complicated.

I loved it.

And I hated it too.

Arriving in Munich at a Historic Moment

My mother and I arrived in Frankfurt am Main two days before the Berlin Wall fell. Germany was still divided when we arrived, but history was already moving fast.

Only a few days later, when the Wall had already been down for two days, we arrived in the Munich area and first came to Possenhofen on the Starnberger See.

That was my first contact with Bavaria after leaving the East. Lake air, quiet surroundings, and this strange feeling that a completely new life was beginning. After all the tension and uncertainty, Possenhofen felt almost unreal.

A few weeks later, we found an apartment in Munich.

And that was the beginning of my 22 years there.

Same Language, But Not the Same World

After the Wall fell, many people from East Germany moved west. We sought freedom, work, opportunities, and a future that felt more open. But West Germany didn’t simply welcome us with open arms.

Munich was difficult. The housing market was tight, jobs were competitive, and East Germans were not always welcome. Nobody always said it directly, but you could feel it.

I came from Thuringia, and my accent gave me away. People from Thuringia and Saxony have distinctive accents, and in Munich, it was often enough to open my mouth for people to know where I came from.

I tried to hide it. I really did.

I tried to speak more neutral German, even their accent, in a bumbling way. I listened carefully, adjusted words, softened my pronunciation, and hoped that one day people would stop hearing the East in my voice.

But an accent is not just a sound. It is childhood, family, streets, school, memories. It is part of you. You can try to cover it, but you never fully erase it.

In those years, being recognised as East German was not always easy.

When you looked for an apartment, you had to prove you were reliable. When you applied for a job, you had to prove you were good enough. And once you had a job, it sometimes felt like you had to prove even harder that you deserved it — harder than someone local, harder than someone who already belonged.

That becomes tiring after a while.

Munich Was Beautiful, But It Was Never Heimat

I had good times in Munich. It would be wrong to say otherwise.

There were summer evenings, walks along the Isar, weekends at the lakes, trips into the mountains, and moments when I thought: yes, this city is really something special.

Munich can be elegant, clean, charming, and full of life. It offers culture, safety, strong infrastructure, and nearby nature. That combination is rare.

And the location is one of Munich’s best features. The lakes are close. The Alps are close. Austria is close. Italy is reachable. A weekend in the mountains, a drive to Salzburg, a trip to South Tyrol — from Munich, all of that feels natural.

Maybe that is one reason I stayed so long. Whenever the city felt too heavy, I always had the option to escape somewhere beautiful.

But still, Munich never became Heimat.

Heimat is more than the place where you live. It is the place where you feel accepted without constantly having to explain yourself. It is where your way of speaking doesn’t immediately put you into a category. It is where you do not feel like a guest after many years.

And that never really happened for me in Munich. I lived there. I worked there. I built a life there.

But deep inside, it never became home.

Life Between Balance Sheets, Tax Declarations, and Pressure

Over time, my life in Munich became increasingly about work and pressure.

Balance sheets. Tax declarations. Deadlines. Office routines. Responsibilities. Numbers. Papers. Stress.

From the outside, it may have looked fine. I lived in one of Germany’s most attractive cities. The Alps were close. Austria was close. Italy was not far away. Everything looked good on paper.

But inside, I felt trapped.

There is something strange about living in a beautiful city and still feeling like your life is shrinking. Munich had everything many people dream of: beauty, culture, money, safety, and nearby nature. But my everyday life was not a dream. It became pressure. It became routine. It became a life that slowly took more from me than it gave back.

I was functioning, but I was not really living the life I wanted.

And then my health changed everything.

The Belly Problem That Changed My Life

In 1999, before my trip to Tahiti, I already had a serious belly problem. At the time, I probably didn’t yet understand how much this problem would influence my future.

Later, it became worse. Then came an operation in a hospital — and after that operation, things became even worse. So bad that another 9-hour operation at another hospital became necessary.

Suddenly, life became very small.

No more normal routine. No more work plans. No more thinking about the next trip or the next step. Everything was about pain, doctors, hospitals, and whether my body would recover.

And while I was still in intensive care, my employer fired me.

I knew he would do it, and I waited for it.

I was prepared for it. I had already told Lizz that if this happened, it would be our signal to leave Germany.

Not because it was a spontaneous emotional reaction. It was more like the final confirmation of something I already knew deep inside.

I knew that this incident would damage my vita, my CV, my professional future. After serious health problems, hospital stays, operations, and losing a job under those circumstances, I knew it would be very hard to find a good job again in Germany.

And that was the moment when Munich was no longer only a difficult place for me. It became the end of a chapter.

The Go Signal to Leave Germany

When that happened, it confirmed what I had already felt for a long time: this life was finished.

Not only the job.

Not only Munich.

Germany.

I had tried for many years. I had worked, adapted, pushed through, tried to fit in, tried to hide my accent, tried to prove myself. I had lived between office pressure and health problems, between Munich’s beauty and my own feeling of not belonging.

But after the hospital experience and the dismissal, I knew there was no real way back to the old life.

Lizz and I had already talked about it. If this happened, it would be the sign.

The go signal.

And it was.

And I was happy about it!

Sometimes life does not open a door gently. Sometimes it pushes you so hard that you finally move.

Looking Back at Munich

When I look back at Munich now, I don’t feel anger. I also don’t feel love.

I feel neither.

In the end, Munich gave me many things.

But it also pushed me away.

It pushed me toward a different life, outside Germany, together with Lizz. And maybe that is why this city will always remain important to me — not because it was home, but because it was the place where I finally understood that I had to leave and start again somewhere else.

Munich was beautiful.

Munich was difficult.

I loved it.

And I hated it too.