Michael Henderson

Munich notebook

Also in Michael Henderson’s notebook: time for a waitresses’ revolt; the city’s best beer; and a messed-up Meistersinger

It has been a strange week in Munich; a week of deceptively cool mornings, afternoons hot enough to fry eggs and thunderstorms at twilight that have turned streets into streams. A week of reflection, too, capped last Sunday by a service of remembrance in the cathedral, attended by Chancellor Merkel, to honour the nine young lives taken in the shooting at the shopping centre which sent a tremor through Freistaat Bayern, and through the nation.
One more tremor. It has been the summer of terror in Bavaria. Würzburg, Ansbach, Munich. But the Münchners have taken it well, in as much as one ever takes these things well. Along Maximilianstrasse, where the rich play; by the banks of the River Isar; in the lush acres of the Englischer Garten, life has gone on. A front-page headline saluted the city: ‘Head high, Munich.’
The mood has occasionally been uneasy. How could it not be? They threw a police cordon around the cathedral for the service of commemoration, and closed streets for the duration. Yet, given the number of people of Middle Eastern background wandering through those streets, many of them very rich indeed and making no effort to conceal it, the atmosphere has been benign.
Quartered in the most expensive hotels, their pockets groaning with dollars, some of these visitors are fairly unappetising. In particular the patronising behaviour of the menfolk towards the maids who wait at their tables, all gold watches and permanently engaged cellphones, is despicable. Many of these people loathe the West and all its doings. But they love the things they can buy here.
Attitudes will harden in time. And the revolt will be most apparent not in Saxon towns in the dead of winter but in the cafes and restaurants of Munich, when the serving wenches, fed up of being ignored by men who can’t be bothered to look at them, throw down their aprons and say ‘Genug!’



‘Waiting for the German verb,’ wrote Flann O’Brien, ‘is surely the ultimate thrill.’

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