Sunday, April 02, 2006
Thai Fast Food
Day 2 in Munich was quite uneventful. I spent most of the morning trying to get used to the cars driving on the wrong side of the road and people in the shops grunting at you rather than smiling. The latter was definitely the harder exercise. In Munich, if you do not fit in (and at times even if you do), you will be made aware of people's disapproval of you at every given opportunity. And on top of that, the general tone is rather rough and the way people interact is often not what Anglo-Saxons would call polite. They call it "Bavarian charm", but I think it's just plain ignorance. There's nothing charming about being stared at, bumped into or being ordered about. I know it sounds utterly old-fashioned, but I like men to hold the door for me, youngsters to vacate seats on the bus for elderly people and everyone to say please and thank you to one another. That to me is charm.I never had any illusion that Munich was friendlier than Dublin. It is not. It may call itself Weltstadt mit Herz - cosmopolitan city with a heart - but that heart is often hidden under a thick layer of complex cultural conventions. What I did think set it apart from my new hometown was the inhabitants' attitude towards their city. Dubliners seem not to care too much about Dublin. Vandalism and the destruction of public property are a bigger problem here than anywhere else I have lived - graffiti, wrecked bus stops, old chewing gum, spit and more; you name it, we've got it. Just as we have abandoned baby strollers in the streets, shopping trolleys in the canal and cement in the d
rains. Broken bottles on the pavement, drink cans on the busses and dog shit everywhere. Most rubbish bins in public places have cigarette burns on them, most roads are potholed and most busses leak oil, petrol or both. In short, Dublin is filthy. Munich on the other hand is very well cared for. Its inhabitants keep their city clean and the city cleaners do the rest. Or so I thought. Compared to Dublin this is still pretty much true. In Munich, graffiti and potholes are virtually non-existent, the worst thing you will find on the bus is yesterday's newspaper and the most absurd things I found in the street were a coffee maker and a potato. And more importantly, when it rains in Munich, people just get wet. When it rains in Dublin, they get covered in brownish-black goo. But unfortunately Munich is starting to slip.Luckily, the same cannot be said about its
restaurants. On my second day in Munich, my mum introduced me to the city's newest trend: Thai take-outs. For lunch she took me to the hugely popular Kaimug in the Fünf Höfe, a Thai fast food place and take-out for business people and wealthy housewives taking a break from shopping in this upmarket mall. The food was good and fresh, but not quite as memorable as I was led to believe. My mum's vegetarian fried noodles looked quite fashionable, but were slightly overcooked and not half as flavoursome as the ones at Lofty's favourite Vietnamese take-out. Her friends both had vegetarian red curry, which looked and smelled great and, according to them, tasted just as good. I opted for a set meal of stir-fried prawns and vegetables in chilli sauce and vegetable spring rolls. While the latter were a big disappointment (somehow they reminded me of the frozen finger food Irish supermarkets sell for Christmas/New Year), the former were really rather nice. Firm, flavoursome prawns and crunchy vegetables in a tangy chilli sauce with fresh Thai basil and ginger. Definitely recommendable for anyone who needs a reasonable priced, tasty meal on the run and does not mind mingling with Munich's better off inhabitants.Christine at 8:06 pm
