You can choose to believe it or not, but God's honest truth is that just six days ago marked the Pemulis Family's five year anniversary of living here in the capital of the Southern Europe of Germany. Wow how time flies (to be perfectly non-banal about the whole thing). I can't really remember much about events or feelings that I had that go back further than about month ago or so (on a good day), so I made liberal use of the GWMD archives to try to get a sense of how we were feeling around this time all those years ago and it seems that we haven't really achieved what we aimed to do in choosing to move here. Namely: learn German. You'd think that after spending five whole years living in a place that you would start being able to speak and at the very least understand the language, but somehow it's actually possible to get by with the absolute minimum (i.e. knowing how to buy pretzels and beer and just nodding whenever a question is asked of you). Oh well. We have had some good times though. Let's look back on a handful of those times, now...
We are just a few short weeks away from the most wonderful time of the year in Bavaria. The Oktoberfest Lauf, of course. We have been enthusiastic participants in this beer festival-inspired race 4 of the 5 years that we've been here (the only off year was when our lazy sister/sister-in-law with a name inspired by a tasty breakfast fish was here and we didn't have the energy to take the train up to the Schleiss [as I call the town of Obserschleissheim where the race takes place]). But we will be back this year (I hope) to defend our titles and perhaps use it as a springboard, if you will, to the Munich Half Marathon which I've also participated in a number of times (3, to be exact) which takes place at the end of October. Let's see.
This might be a horrifying revelation to some anonymous reader out there, but we actually came shockingly close to abandoning this beer garden paradise (recently named the most livable city in the world) nearly two years ago. In the end, of course, we didn't, but one thing that came up during that time is that while we managed to visit all 4 corners of the French homeland during only 18 short months of residency, we hadn't really explored Germany at all (other than the greater Bavarian state) in (at that time) three and a half years. One major omission was that neither of us had ever been to Berlin. Can you imagine? Anyways, as loyal readers of the blog you know that we rectified that ugly little oversight just this past summer and since it was such a gem, let's say, I might even be back in the very near future. As a Donald Trump tweet might imply, stay tuned!
Here's a new topic that five years in Germany somehow led me to: California (aka, the Promised Land). If you ever even spent on the order of around 3 seconds or so somewhere within a 200 mile radius of my vicinity when I was a 16 year-old young man, you would know all too well about my California Dream[in]. But despite visiting places from Brazil to China to Northern Sweden and beyond, I've still never made it to my teenage imagined paradise. Well, all that glitters isn't gold (I know you've heard that story told) and with time the shimmer and shine in my mind died down and although I finally had a path to achieve the California Dream, Cali's pull receded and faded away (more than burned out) from my desires. But it never quite fully died.
And so here's an announcement that most likely anyone reading this already knows but you know how they say that nothing's official till it's on the GWMD? After five fruitful fun-filled years at Microsoft, I will be hanging up my Surface Book and starting a new journey as an autonomous-driving car engineer for the good guys in the ride-hailing industry at Lyft Level 5 Labs Munich (recently named the most attractive start-up to work for! Don't you just love these arbitrary click-bait lists?). Yes, we will still be based in Munich but I will spend my first 10 days or so of work on the sun-drenched / fog-covered coast of California's Bay Area at Lyft's headquarters in San Francisco where I'll listen to Third Eye Blind (I guess) and drink Fernet (for sure). By the way, did you know that the worst hotel room in all of San Francisco costs something like ten thousand a night?
Recent Helga news includes the fact that she has now spent two full days as a student in French Kindergarten. Reports suggest that Day One was successful while Day Two was not. We will update these developments as they happen.
The Austrian Pinelands, or, as some prefer, the Pinelands of Austria, is presumably back to "normal" now after the Pemulis family bid adieu two and a half weeks ago. One of the perks of living just South of the town of Unterföhring (or I guess anywhere around here really) is the proximity to the fine country of Austria (speaking principally about the land, I mean). Our vacation to the Austrian Pinelands was very enjoyable. Helga especially enjoyed swimming in the little pool, the big pool, and the outdoors pool (which doesn't get a size designation because there's only one pool outside) and we especially enjoyed not having to cook or cleanup for an entire week. I also got to try out my brand new trail running shoes and I think that the high altitude mountain air did my rapidly aging body good.
What does the future hold for GrenobleWMD? The Pemulis Family? The city of Munich? Self-driving cars? How will Pemulis react when he first steps off the plane into the streets of San Francisco? Will he be overcome with a case of a strain of Paris Syndrome? Will Helga survive the daily stresses of French Kindergarten? Will her German friends abandon her due to her cosmopolitan ways? Will there be a no-deal Brexit? Stay tuned to find out...
