Hunting a bargain

Whenever I go to India to visit my family, it always reminds me how sheltered I am as a result of having grown up in Australia. There are certain skills you pick up when you live in a busy, crazy whirlwind of a city like Mumbai, like how to jump onto or off of an already moving bus. Or how to squeeze your way through a dense crowd without losing your companions. Or how to cross a street that looks like a game of Frogger.

My family has some l33t sk1llz0rZ, and I’ve always been kind of envious. One of the things I was always in awe of was the playful art of bargaining. I would follow an aunt or cousin to the street market at Linking Road, with the mission of finding me a nice new salwar kameez or pair of chappals. I would be under clear instructions not to point at anything or to talk in English. All expressions of interest in an item were to be mumbled discreetly while keeping my gaze and trajectory full steam ahead.

When I saw something I liked, my aunt would stop and give it a casual and critical once-over, as if it might do. Maybe. If the quality was okay, a starting price would be sought and the parrying would begin. There would be gesturing, incredulous expressions, laughter, and sometimes my aunt would tell me we were leaving and we would start to walk away. That threw me off the first time, until I realised it was part of a wider strategy. Finally, a deal would be struck, and I would have my nice new bag/chappals/t-shirt.

Once, the stall-keeper told my aunt that he couldn’t give her his best price, since she was obviously buying for the NRI (non-resident Indian) tagging along with her. Please note, I was wearing a salwar kameez and chappals, and hadn’t opened my mouth a millimetre. And yet the stall-keeper had deduced from the way I walk that I was a firangi. These guys are smart.

In Morocco, I had decided that I wanted to buy something in the souk for my parents, and possibly something for myself. Although I could pass for a Moroccan in appearance, I obviously didn’t even have any traditional clothes or native speaker of Arabic to hide behind. Also, I have no poker face. None. I am really bad at things like this.

It was likely to be as much of a mismatch as Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed, but maybe, just maybe I could go the distance. And if I went the distance, I would know for the first time that I wasn’t just a bum from the neighbourhood.

We skulked around the alleyways of the souk for a while, scoping out what was on offer. As we walked past, the stall-keepers would cycle through languages till they figured what we spoke: “Buenos dias. Bon jour. Hello?”

We went up to a stall that caught my eye and disinterestedly shuffled through the piles of smaller items. The stall-keeper had eyes like a hawk, catching me out every time my gaze lingered involuntarily on something.  “You want this one? How much you want to pay? For you I make special price.” He somehow coaxed me to the back of the stall where the larger bowls and tagines were. I saw one that I instantly loved and knew Amma would love too. I tried to look and sound indifferent. “How much for this one?”

“400 dirhams.”

This was going to put my acting skills, which have historically proven poor, to the test. $50 would probably be a fair price for this bowl in Europe or America. But I somehow managed to emit a laugh, repeat “400 dirhams?!” and contort my face into a look of incredulity. (At least, I think that’s what I looked like. For all I know it came out as a look of “I have no idea wtf I’m doing omg”.)

I had decided earlier that I would settle for 60% of the starting price, so I made a quick calculation in my mind and counter-offered 150 dirhams. Now it was his turn to look incredulous. “I can’t give you this for 150 dirhams. Sorry. This is too low. 350 dirhams, that is a fair price.”

“180,” I countered, boldly. He didn’t raise an eyebrow, but his facial expression said “Bitch, please.” There was an uncomfortable pause. Overcoming my usual desire to break all uncomfortable pauses, I squirmed and waited out said pause until he came down to 300. I inched up to 200.

Then he pulled a classic move. “I ask my boss,” he said, “wait here,” and disappeared into the narrow passageway between his stall and the next one. Sean recognised this as a gambit loved by car salesmen everywhere, and pointed this out to me while trying not to crack up.

Finally, the guy was back. “Ok, we make a price between 200 and 300. You tell me.”

“220,” I said, still holding out.

He held out his hand for me to shake. Yay! Success!

I stuck out my palm, and as he pumped my hand up and down, he said “250”. And gave me a mischievous wink. Oops!

I had to laugh. The guy had made me shake on 250 without me knowing any better. I was dealing with a veteran, and he couldn’t have even been out of his teens yet. I conceded my paltry $3 of ego and laughed along with him. I had my bowl for $30, and that was okay with me. My mum would be proud of me for trying.

As he wrapped the bowl in tissue paper, I asked the stall-keeper a little bit about himself. He was a student, he said. He had lived in the medina all his life, and when he wasn’t studying, he helped his uncle run the stall over the last five years. Which means he must have started doing this when he was 15 or so. That blew my mind. When I was 15, I probably didn’t even know how to order a pizza.

It might take a little longer to buy something in the souk, but it’s definitely rewarding. I’ve never felt post-buyer’s high the way I did that day. From now on, buying from a normal store is never going to feel this satisfying!

(P.S. Tips and feedback from bargaining veterans welcomed :] )

Rock the Casbah

Don’t get me wrong, Deutschland: you’re a pretty great place to live. But there comes a point during your winter when I just want to kick you in the nuts, escape from your icy grasp, and go hide somewhere warm.

That’s how I ended up on a plane flying away from the orderly, efficient rhythms of Munich life, soon to be submerged in the chaotic hubbub of the old Moroccan city of Marrakech.

I knew we’d picked a winner before we even landed. The plane descended slowly over central Morocco to reveal a green and brown patchwork of flat, sun-drenched fields, punctuated by mud brick villages and neat groves of olive trees. By the time we’d had our passports stamped, our jackets were off and our sunnies were on. It was time to soak up some Maghreb culture, with a side order of Vitamin D.

The united, autonomous and relatively peaceful kingdom of Morocco as we know it today has only really existed for the last 50 or 60 years. Before that, the land was colonised and re-colonised over the centuries in many waves of invasion. The original inhabitants of the land are Berbers, the indigenous tribal people of North Africa. Then came the Phoenicians, and later the Romans. In the middle ages arrived the Arabs from the Middle East, and finally came the Europeans, when Morocco was a French protectorate in the first half of the 20th century.

This patchwork of cultures is instantly noticeable when you travel in Morocco. The people we talked to in Marrakech and Essaouira all spoke French and Arabic fluently (few of them knew English). Many Moroccans can speak Berber too, although thanks to the musical chairs of colonising powers in the bigger towns and cities, the realm of the pure, unacculturated Berber speaker has been pushed out to the countryside.

The waves of colonisation are also evident in the layout of Marrakech. Like most big old towns in the Maghreb, the throbbing heart of Marrakech is the medina, the Arab quarter of the city. It’s a beguiling warren of worn, saffron-coloured stone buildings lining narrow streets, each splitting off into even narrower alleyways that a moped could barely pass through, let alone a car.

Many of the medinas in Morocco have in fact banned motorised traffic, but Marrakech’s medina hasn’t. So as you wander the maze of streets, trying not to make it too obvious that you’re actually a little lost, you must navigate the puddles, the mule carts, the wares of street vendors spread on the ground, the kids playing street basketball under a sagging hoop above their front door… and crazy moped drivers with a death wish.

It’s wonderful.

Five times a day, like clockwork, the call to prayer goes out from the dozens of minarets rising from the laneways of the medina. Standing in any one spot, you can hear the warble of at least three or four muezzins in dissonant keys. It’s quite a thing to hear. It was the first time in Africa for both of us, but in the medina we could hardly tell. With Arabic script predominant in street signage, and the majority of women walking with heads covered, Marrakech felt distinctly like the Middle East to us.

In this busy medina, the busiest part of all is the Place Jemaa el-Fna – the “Square of the Dead”. The name comes from the public executions that used to be carried out here. Nowadays, snake charmers, cross-dressing belly dancers, monkey trainers and traditional African musicians wander the square, emanating a cacophony of exotic sounds and extracting spare change from locals and tourists alike.

It sounded a little hokey reading about it before I came, but the majority of the audience for these buskers seemed to be comprised of Moroccans, which made it seem less put-on, somehow. But I dunno. Maybe those guys are part of the show too, and I’m just a gullible Western tourist. Or maybe the performers started out trying to make a buck from the tourists, and ended up attracting locals as well. All I know is those hip-shakin’ lady-men definitely have a sharp eye for curious foreigners hovering at the back of the crowd with cameras.

The Jemaa el-Fna is also a good place to be if you’re jonesin’ for a snack. Stalls selling fresh dates, roasted nuts, dried figs and apricots tempt you from all sides, threatening to spoil your dinner. Colourful juice carts squeeze the freshest, most delicious OJ I have ever, ever tasted. Arequipa, you have been bested.

As night falls, the southern half of the square is transformed into a giant outdoor food court. Stalls replete with picnic tables, white-uniformed chefs and towering piles of fresh ingredients appear out of nowhere and start pumping out the most tantalising smells. At smaller carts, cooks ladle snail soup out of steaming brass vats for diners sitting on bar stools.

The winding alleys surrounding the main square form the covered market area – the souk. Like the square, the souk caters to tourists (souvenirs, spices) and locals (clothes, vegetables, mass-manufactured toys) alike. Morocco is a land of craftsmen, and the beautiful, exotic items sold in the souk tempted even me and Sean – neither of us frequently frequents souvenir shops.

As a tea lover, I went gaga over the intricately-inlaid silver teapots hanging from hooks beside the doorways of the souvenir stalls. It took a bunch of willpower on my part not to buy one. (And admittedly, I still kind of regret that I didn’t.) Sean was debating whether he could justify buying a colourfully painted clay tagine when his kitchen in Seattle is already overflowing into his coat closet. (If you know Sean at all, you’ll know that the answer was a no. But an unusually regretful one.)

I did end up picking up a couple of souvenirs from the souk. The first was a hand-painted Marrakshi bowl for my mum. Buying this was my first-ever experience with bargaining, which deserves its own separate post! We also bought some saffron and mint tea from a spice stall, whose wares were piled up in neat pyramids at optimal sniffing/oohing/aahing height. When I went back and made mint tea in Munich, it made my whole apartment smell minty fresh. Mmmmm.

While in Marrakech, we stayed in a riad, one of the hundreds of old Moroccan villas tucked away in tiny alleyways across the medina. The Moroccan government is investing big in growing the tourism industry these days, and this has brought many winter-weary Europeans across the Mediterranean seeking the ultimate sea-change: to buy and refurbish an old, rundown riad, fit it out with traditional Moroccan furniture, and hire local staff to run it as a B&B.

Staying in a riad in Morocco is an experience in itself. It’s tempting to just spend all day gawping at the beautiful furnishings, talking to the friendly staff and appreciating the cool, quiet sanctuary within its walls. Reading a book over breakfast on the terrace, accompanied by the crowing of roosters and the sun rising over the Atlas Mountains, is a nice way to start the day.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of colourful, geometric stuff. Stripy rainbow toe socks, Escher etchings, the Brandhorst Museum in Munich, these are all things that instinctively please me. So I loved visiting the old palaces and schools of the medina, which were all built in typically dazzling Islamic style. The Bahia Palace and the Medersa Ben Youssef in particular were amazing. My photos or descriptions can’t do their beauty justice.

What happens when you wander outside the medina walls, you may wonder? If you head west, you reach the area of Marrakech known as the “Ville Nouvelle” (new city). The walls of the buildings here are still painted an invigorating shade of pink, but the broad, café-lined boulevards and grand roundabouts are an instantly recognisable sign that this is the French quarter of the city.

When the French came to Marrakech, the high-octane clamour and confusing alleyways of the Arab quarter were not their cup of tea, so they expanded the city outside the medina walls in their own preferred style. Apparently they taxed the locals to fund the construction of their ‘oigh-brow new neighbourhood, which was kind of a douche move if you ask me.

But the Ville Nouvelle is an nice place to spend a sunny afternoon, even just to contrast with the atmosphere inside the medina. It feels like a completely different world. There’s more car traffic, but it keeps to some kind of discernible order. There is a smaller number of tourists. and a proportionately smaller number of touts. Our French riad hosts come here when they’re feeling homesick for Europe, or just get a hankering for some McDonald’s. (That was the first time I’ve ever heard a French person admit they like – or eat at – McDonald’s.)

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Marrakech, or at least its medina, reminded me more of India than any other place ever has. When I visited my family in Mumbai every few years as a young ‘un, I never really got to know the city in a practical sense, but what has stayed with me are the visceral things – the smells, the tastes, the unfamiliar sounds, the sense of unpredictability, the strange inherent cosiness of looking like everyone else. I couldn’t tell you what Mumbai smells and tastes of to me, but whenever I encounter those unnamed sensations elsewhere, I am instantly transported to the back of my uncle’s motorbike near Juhu Beach, or the vegetable market where I used to pick up coriander and brinjal with my grandfather, or the stretch of seawall along the Arabian Sea where lovers sit to watch the sun set. Everywhere I wandered in Marrakech, I encountered these familiar feelings. It’s no wonder that it only took a couple of days for me to love this city.

<Insert Czech/check pun here>

There are just so many punny possibilities for the title of this post: Czeching out Prague, Czech Please. And if I used one, the Czech Republic would read this and be all, “Yeah, I haven’t heard that one before.” (Cos y’know, countries subscribe to RSS feeds too.) So I’m being all self-aware and putting in a wry HTML tag placeholder instead.

A couple of weeks ago marked half a year since I moved to Germany, and yet I hadn’t spent a day of that six months in Eastern Europe. It seems silly when the distance from Munich to Prague is a fraction of the distance from Munich to Barcelona – yet I’ve been to Spain twice already, without having set as much as a pinkie toe behind the former Iron Curtain (with the exception of East Berlin).

I do actually have a long list of things I want to see in Eastern Europe, though, so it was high time that I got cracking. My mum and dad gave me a generous push in the right direction when they gifted me a weekend in Prague as a Christmas present. Train tickets and all, and I even got to be ‘oigh brow and stay in a hotel. How cool are my parents?

The train ride from Munich to Prague takes about six hours, with some beautiful rural scenery along the way. Watching the sun set behind the snow-covered fields of Bohemia was just gorgeous. I arrived at Prague central station around 11pm on Friday night, and headed through the maze of streets to my hotel.

The fact that the city is a major tourist destination hits you pretty soon after arriving. My route to the hotel took me along the main avenue of Wenceslas Square, which on Friday night was full of raucous, tipsy bachelor partiers, and touts in fluorescent construction vests branded with names like “Paddy’s Sports Bar”. Why you would go all the way to a country famous for its quaint old taverns to drink Guinness in an overpriced, cookie-cutter Irish pub, I simply can’t fathom, but luckily the touts always ignore me ‘cos I look like such a Hermione Granger type.

I checked into my hotel, which was in an quiet back alley behind an old church. They gave me a cute little room in the attic shaped like a triangular prism, with wooden beams coming down around the bed. I totally have a thing for slanty roofs (rooves?).

I woke up early the next morning to start exploring the city. Apparently I caught the breakfast lady in my hotel off guard, because no-one actually wants to eat breakfast at the advertised start time of 7:30. As I walked towards the Charles Bridge, I was amazed at how lovely the streets of Prague are. Leave aside the more famous buildings of the city – even the most minor residential streets in the “new town” (really not that new – just less old) are full of charming details.

I walked along the cobbled path lining the Vltava river, enjoying the crisp morning air and the chirping of the birds. Prague’s treasures were laid out like a postcard in front of me – the National Theatre, the castle, the Charles Bridge. I counted on one hand the number of people I saw as I walked along, and could just savour it all at my leisure. Sometimes, I think being a morning person is like having a superpower or something.

Some parts of the bridge were under construction when I walked on it, but it was mostly open. I could see the similarity to the Steinerne Brücke in Regensburg, which inspired the Charles Bridge, but Prague’s bridge is more imposing, with majestic figures observing your passage from either side. Despite the fact that I had specifically come here early in the morning to enjoy the bridge in solitude, I found myself wishing I could return in summer, and stroll on the bridge with some friends eating ice cream. It was really, really pretty.

If you keep walking along the street that continues from the western end of the Charles Bridge, you eventually find yourself looking up at the ramparts of Prague Castle, the power base of Bohemian royalty for hundreds of years, and today the seat of the Czech president. I gotta say, it’s a pretty sweet place to have your office, looking out over the red roofs of Prague (rooves? Why am I unable to spell this word with any certainty?).

The castle feels less like a castle and more like an entire town within a town. There are dozens of buildings on the hill connected by a whole independent network of streets. The nicest building (and happily, the one you can get into for free), is St Vitus’ church, a Gothic cathedral. I think Gothic cathedrals are my favourite (you know you’ve seen enough European churches when you have a favourite period). There’s something about the way the light filters through the stained glass and plays off the bare stone walls that’s really wonderful.

One of the most important parts of the cathedral is the chapel of St Wenceslas. Wenceslas is big here – he’s considered as the foremost of all the Czech kings, and seemingly almost everything in Prague is named after him. I had the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas” stuck in my head for the entire weekend.

One interesting thing I found out about Wenceslas as I wandered around the castle was that his crown jewels, the symbol of Czech statehood, are still locked away in a chamber of St Vitus’ cathedral. They’re considered so valuable that they’re only taken out for public viewing once every few years, on extremely important state occasions.

The vault where they’re stored has to be opened with seven different keys, each of which is placed in the custody of a prominent Czech citizen. It totally sounds like the plot of a children’s fantasy novel. “You must find the seven keys… and return the crown to the head of the rightful king. The fate of the world depends on you. Yes, you, eleven-year-old kid.”

For the most part, the grandeur of Prague’s old town does make you feel a little bit like you fell into the frame of an oil painting. But if you look closely enough, there are little sprinklings of modernity bringing you back to the here and now. The wacky and often controversial works of David Černy (who I wrote about in a recent post) are all over the place. I also loved this wacky addition to the streetscape, designed by Frank Gehry:

It’s called the “Dancing Buildings”, dedicated to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It took me a little while to grok why, but I can now see how the two columns on the corner look like dancers locked in a perpetual cha-cha. The disconnect between Ginger and the building at her back is a little jarring, but as you walk around the corner to Fred’s side (where the tram is in this picture), the rakishly misaligned windows gradually straighten out and meld seamlessly with their older neighbours. It’s a cute, whimsical break in the stately row of buildings lining the Vltava.

In Prague’s diplomatic quarter, a colourful remnant of Cold War-era resistance lives on. In the late 80’s, university students disgruntled with their Communist government started to air their grievances in graffiti on a bare grey wall near the Charles Bridge. The pacifist musician John Lennon was a kind of folk hero for these students, and they created a mock grave for him at this wall, risking arrest from paranoid authorities, who had banned Lennon’s music, along with other “subversive” cultural influences. The wall became a flashpoint for clashes between students and government forces until the fall of Communism and introduction of democracy in 1989.

By all accounts, the Lennon Wall was a canvas for some biting political commentary back in the day. But when I visited, it read more like a visitors’ book, with messages like “I ♥ Rock and Roll”, “Give Peas a Chance”, and “Brett & Maria 2009”. JL’s face pops out at you from all over the wall, in a variety of hand-drawn cartoons. Some of the tourist graffiti has bloomed into mini-conversations. Example:

“Cheers to the King”

“Wat king?”

“Fucking.”

Your world view isn’t going to get any more sophisticated reading the Lennon Wall, but it’s pretty amusing nonetheless.

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Prague did present me with one dilemma. I had the small matter of a long training run to fit into my weekend trip. And the charming cobblestones and happy throngs of visitors that make the city so fun to stroll around at a leisurely pace are perilous and frustrating when you’re trying to run. I had to plan out a route that took me away from the crowded, ankle-turning cobblestones of central Prague and gave me some real huffy-puffy.

I ended up finding my way to the residential neighbourhood of Smichov, at the south-western edge of the area covered by my big colourful tourist map. I was definitely off the tourist trail – not an English-captioned goulash picture in sight. The streets of Smichov wind up steep hills at heart-pounding grades (tougher for me these days, accustomed to training in pancake-flat Munich). The paving here is less uneven than in the old town, but in this weather there were large patches of slippery ice everywhere, and I had several moments of near-disaster. But I had wonderful views of the sun rising over Prague, and the chance to scare a second city of early morning dog-walkers with my bizarre running outfit.

Another part of Prague I made sure to cover during my run was the hilltop of Vyšehrad. Directly south of the city centre by the river, it’s the site of Slavin Cemetery, the Czech Republic’s answer to Westminster Abbey. The country’s most illustrious sons and daughters are buried here. I spotted Smetana’s headstone, but couldn’t recognise any of the other names. There’s also a wonderful view of the city from up here. I couldn’t believe I was the only tourist.

This entry is getting rather long, and I still haven’t even gotten to the now-customary food porn. Without further ado, then.

Culinary musts in Prague:

• Goulash – Of course. I had the best goulash I’ve ever eaten, for about 3 Euros in a little Czech pub in a back alley of the old town. Hearty, meaty, peppery, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm. In an amusing American twist, it was served in a bread bowl. Not SFO sourdough, but that yummy brown Euro cumin bread that makes me feel happy about the world. It’s a good idea to ask a local (I asked a walking tour guide) for tips on value-for-money places to eat in Prague. With all the tourists about, it’s really easy to end up paying for expensive, mediocre food here. A shame when there are really a lot of wonderful, authentic, cheap and cheerful places if you know where to look.

• Medovina (mead) – The Czechs are big on warm drinks. When you go to Prague in winter, it’s easy to see why. Unlike Munich, where glühwein and spiked coffee are hard to find once the Christmas markets are gone, there are small shops everywhere in Prague selling warming tipples. I tried hot mead (honey wine) for the first time, and it was wonderful. I’ve had cold mead in Ethiopian restaurants before, but the rich sweetness definitely lends itself to being drunk hot. Liquid courage to face the cold, cold world again.
• Medovnik (honey cake) – I wasn’t sure what to expect when I ordered this – I was just intrigued by the description “Slovakian honey cake”. What I got was a sticky, sweet, creamy, spicy, spongy cake of many thin layers. Undeniably delicious, yet light and subtle. Wonderful, wonderful. Note: not substantial enough to soak up a whole mug of mead.

 

• Beer – Of course the Czechs are famous for their beers. My train to Prague stopped in the town of Pilsen, birthplace of the famous amber liquid. I’m not a big fan of pilsener and lager, so I wasn’t expecting too much – but I was intrigued by the menu of a brewpub that offered crazy-sounding beers in tasting quantities, so I stopped inside. Sour cherry beer: awesome, amazing. Nettle beer: tastes like grass. But worth the experience of trying.

 

• Garlic soup – This is a very traditional Bohemian dish served as an appetiser in most of the Czech restaurants. It’s a tasty, cuminy, garlicky broth punctuated with croutons and cubes of potato. If you don’t like garlic, STAY AWAY. The bad breath aftermath of this dish is probably the means by which the Bohemians kept Dracula safely across the border in Romania.

I don’t feel like I scratched away enough at the touristy surface of Prague, but it was still a wonderful weekend. A city of easily accessible charm is not necessarily a bad thing!

Has spring sprung?

It’s certainly felt like it in Munich recently. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up – it’s only February – but I can’t help myself! A full week of blue skies and (positive) double-digit temperatures has obliterated the snow cover, made scarves and gloves redundant, and brought the beer gardens back to life. This week I ate my first outdoor lunch at work since October, and my bike got its first outing in months. Even my running pace has increased by a good 5%. (Excuse my one track mind. Nine weeks down, nine to go!)

My Bavarian colleague tells me it’s just Mother Nature lulling me into a false sense of security so she can ambush me with snow while I’m caught without my winter jacket. He’s probably right. But I don’t care if I’m a fool, ‘cos the wildflowers got punk’d too. And they’ve lived here a lot longer than I have.

Whether you want to call it spring sunshine or winter sunshine, either way Munich is a dream when bathed in it. I spent a glorious Saturday wandering my favourite spots on bike and on foot.

Viktualienmarkt, the city’s biggest farmer’s market, deserves its own separate mouth-watering post (it’s in the works) – but suffice to say for now that it’s nice to see the tables back out on the cobblestones, crowded with Münchners downing leisurely steins of helles and munching on leberkäs-semmel. I hadn’t seen the place this hip ‘n’ happenin’ since Christmas Eve-Eve, when half of Munich was queuing there in the snow trying to buy a last-minute goose.

(Btw. The dude in the suit striding along in this picture is, like, almost ridiculously Bavarian-looking.)

On a day like this, you’re reminded that Munich is a city by the Alps. Any and every high perch in town is packed with people taking in the sweeping views. It looks like there was plenty of Entschuldigung-ing going on atop the clock tower of Alter Peter, the oldest church in Munich:

To avoid crowded tower stairs, I headed to the highest point in the city I know of that isn’t a church spire – Olympiaberg, the hill that dominates Munich’s Olympic park. I’ve never seen the summit so packed – but I guess people are much more willing to put in the huffy-puffy for the climb when the rewards are like this:

Gorgeous. Reminds me of a Vancouver built a few hundred years early.

Dear Munich,

I politely request, once again, that you cease and desist from being so flippin’ sweet. I told you from the start that I’m not ready for a serious relationship. I have to go back home soon. We’ve been through this several times, if I recall!

Best regards,
Urmila