It is 2 a.m. in the night and I’m cyc­ling home through a city that I should know. I’m passing by places and corners that are slightly flash­ing my memory but blur away in the dark as fast as they appear. It took a dec­ade to get me back to a city that I used to live in. It took years to awake my interest again on a place I quit with and moved on to a city that I now call home.

the streets are sleep­ing. i hardly see any people. i try to ride safe, watch for red traffic lights and whenever a car­light hits my back I’m afraid that I crash into some bored cops. everything is nice and clean. i don’t see any graf­fiti, stick­ers or posters. i don’t have to scan the ground for broken glass. i feel like rid­ing through a model rail­road world.

munich should have changed in the last years. i heard about glock­en­bachvier­tel and sonnen­straße, about new clubs with nice lineups and altern­at­ive cafes.

i pass by pacha club. drunk girls wear­ing short skirts and stiletto’s. the cab line wait­ing for the party kids is longer than at tegel air­port. i still try to fight against my munich clichés.

start­ing to com­pare munich to ber­lin is sense­less. not because one city is bet­ter than the other, but because you have to deal with two com­plete dif­fer­ent cul­tures. this view helps me not to block the bav­arian life­style but see it as part of their cul­tural characteristics.

what i can say is that i feel a friendly cozi­ness every­where . but instead of enjoy­ing this fact i get insec­ured — what was the fuck­ing prob­lem of the cash­ier at penny super­mar­ket talk­ing about local gos­sip with the three women in front of me?

i feel like a bad boy in this world. it seems that every­body lives con­form and walks the straight road of the social com­prom­ise. i remem­ber the pres­sure back in the days. and i start to remem­ber how i broke out of this per­fect little world. i real­ized that i needed con­trasts around me. i need inspir­a­tion and people push­ing for­ward. per­son­al­it­ies leav­ing the all so secured road search­ing for them­self or new ways of living.

i find all that in ber­lin. this is what i love the city for. this is also why we like it rough and dirty. it’s like on the cool partys. they are always a little bit out of con­trol but they kick ass and you will remem­ber them for years.

munich and me is still not a love affair. to jump into the isar river is great but for feel­ing home in a city i need some­thing else than nice. i always like to come back as a vis­itor to hang out with some friends. but i always come here as a vis­itor that knows where his place is.

thanks to our great ber­linian munich hosts anne and the awe­some buntlack crew over at puerto gies­ing club. keep on rocking.