Or: My Trip to Munich through the eyes of Pemulis's brother, through the eyes of Pemulis, as he is imagined by the author (part 2)
It's now Monday morning and the changes I've felt within myself seem to not be fleeting. I feel healthier, more free, and again full of energy. I make a mental note to convince the wife and kids that we should move to Europe. Pemulis heads off to work for the Obama Administration (basically) and I'm left with nothing to do but make use of my quiet restlessness. I suit up in my running shorts, sweat band, and Beats Sports headphones, and head to the Nockherberg mountain to do repeats of the 93 or so steps up the hill. I run up the steps, run around the beer garden, run down the hill, and run up again until my lungs are full-on just burning. I feel a sweet metallic taste in my throat that pushes me to go harder until finally I collapse on the pavement below me. The sun burns fiercely high in the blue sky and the liberating of the toxins being sweat out from my body built up over the last several years working in an Asbestos-filled office in downtown Hamilton is more than simply cleansing. Seated on the sidewalk with the grandness of the city below, I take off my soaked-through T-shirt and yell from the animal within me towards nothing at all; my screams startle a murder of crows and they perform a beautiful flying dance as they escape the trees and set off into the summer morning. I finally make it back to the Pemulis and Family Abode and I'm still shocked at how young I all of a sudden seem. I look and feel amazing. I flex in the mirror and can swear that my arms have never looked so defined. I shower in as cold German water as I can stand and drink six espressos, two mixed with Ginseng. Joelle, Baby Helga, and I step out the front door to meet Pemulis in the alt stadt quarter of Lehel for a Bavarian lunch.
I have a hunger that I've not felt since my early 20's and at the traditional Bavarian Wirtshaus Tattenbach I order a Schweinshaxe, a potato salad, 8 Bratwurst, and a liter of Weißbier. Helga smiles at me for the entire three hour lunch as I order course after course; Käsespätzle and Sauerkraut, Weißwurst and Senf, Kaiserschmarrn, mashed potatoes, and all manner of Kellerbier. After lunch we make the short walk to the German/French café / patisserie Dukatz and drink thick delicious espressos. Pemulis returns to work, and Baby Helga, Joelle, and I walk along the Isar towards the city centre to look for Dirndls for my daughter and BMW toy cars for my son. We shop the Marienplatz and the Viktualienmarkt and already enough time has passed for Pemulis to have generated 100 billion euros or so in revenue for Malaria medicine and so we go to meet him to consume more consumables. We walk across the Praterinsel and past the Gasteig up the Rosenheimerstraße to the "best ice cream in Munich" at True&12. I've been highly lactose intolerant since the age of five but this ice cream is worth all the _____ in the world. The ice cream put me in such a state of bliss that I can't remember if we went back 2, 3, 10, or even 50 times for more. None of those numbers would surprise me in the slightest.
The rest of Monday is uneventful as the whole house is preparing both mentally and physically for the upcoming event of the week: Helga's Baby Swimming at the Michaelibad. Tuesday morning we wake up bright and early to ensure our admittance to one of the coveted 10 spots in the exclusive baby swim lesson. We arrive before 9 o'clock for the 9:30 lesson and begin Helga's preparation. Being the star of the class is something that comes naturally to her but that's not to say that keeping up the image that goes along with that status is easy or not-exhausting. The fact that she's a foreigner (in some sense) has its own associated set of problems that don't make being the star any easier for her or her entourage of three. The class gets underway with the standard welcome song Wir sind die Mäusekinder which Helga unsurprisingly executes flawlessly. Some of the baby-mom pairs leave early because it's clear that they just can't keep up. Helga does (the baby equivalent of) a 3,500 m interval workout including intense butterfly sprints and thigh crushing kick sets. When the class is finally over we race to exit the pool to get away from the media and autograph seekers and so that we can make the next BOB train to the Tegernsee and go hiking (end of part 2).
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