Dear Ghazal,
I think I forgot to tell you that I won”t be in the Institute on Monday, since I have to give some lectures in Bonn. I told MA and his secretary to make sure, that the documents for your contract are handed over to the personal department by tomorrow.
I hope that you had a nice weekend. I”m a bit concerned that you might feel alone in the guesthouse in this remote suburbia Unterschleissheim. Please, don”t fall into despair. Before you came, Prof. T told me that you so much wanted to do your Msc project in Paris, London (maybe even in New York, who knows). I convinced him to give you the project here in Munich, and I”m absolute serious you wont regret it at the end. Munich is a provincial spot, of course, it has little glamour and no mystery and on the first glance it can be a bit boring. But it has some absolutely unexpected spots worth to visit (like the Isar-Wave next to Haus-der-Kunst, where Surfer ride and what was recently documented for an international movie), the English Garden with Chinese Tower, the waterfall at Unterfoehring, and flocks of sheeps. There is Horse-Riding near the place where I live, a multicultural sceenery in Haidhausen, some good places if you like to hear life-music, in Summer time there will be open-air theater, good museums that I”m sure you will enjoy like the Lehnbach-House, the Pinakothek, the Museum for Archaeology, Museum for Antropology and the Yewish Museum. And of course outside the town there are plenty of castles and lakes and other cosy places to discover.
You know I spend some years in places that by far were not my first choice, a remote city in the north of the Netherlands were I did my first postdoc and later a small-town south of London. In both instances, I hatet these places when I first arrived there, but later, after meeting nice people at work and in the neighborhood, I decided to stay a bit longer. Only after a few weeks I started to discover that both places (Groningen in the Netherlands and Sutton near London) both had their own charme and their hidden secretes and soon I felt there at home. Therefore, the best thing one can do if your are “damned” to live at a new place is trying to find out as soon as possible what this place can give you. And there always will be something unexpected to discover and enjoy, something not neccessarily recommended in the travel guide.
Best greetings, see you on Thuesday
Michael (16-05-2010)
