High Stakes Cleaning

Early last Saturday morning, Jamie and I set off for the local hardware store to pick up some painting supplies. We were taking the first steps on a long journey towards making it seem like we had never been in Munich--well, to be more specific, we wanted to create the impression that we had never lived in our apartment, a goal which we both dearly hoped was not a futile one. On the line was the massive deposit we'd had to plunk down last November when our 6-week-long apartment search had brought us to the point of accepting almost any place with four walls, a roof, and a working internet connection. Paying up the deposit at the time we moved in was an almost gleeful experience--the long search for somewhere to live was finally over, and we were cleared to move in!

Shortly thereafter the reality set in. Each time we scuffed the floor, left a mark on the wall or sat on the couch the wrong way, we heard the imaginary cha-ching of another few Euros being deducted from our deposit--the money we had been forced to save back in the fall seemed to be dwindling, despite the fact that no one could get anywhere near the account it was being held in.

So after months of feeling uneasy each time we dropped something or left muddy tracks on the hallway floor (a particularly easy task during a long, snowy winter and a cool, wet spring), we were definitely ready to clean. The potential payoff seemed huge--each hour of cleaning could earn us a few days' rent in Vermont (if we didn't blow it on beer and Brezeln before we ever made it out of Bavaria)!

Then again, our deep-seated worry that no matter what we did and no matter how hard we scrubbed, it wouldn't be good enough wouldn't let up, either. After hours of trying to remove a year's worth of grime from our oven rack, I wavered between fears that the rack was nowhere near clean enough because it still had a couple specks burned onto it, and hopes that no one would even bother to check that closely anyway. All this led to doubts about the economics of the whole cleaning enterprise--were we actually saving money, or just wasting time?

The suspense was miserable. Luckily, there is lots of good beer in Munich, and this being our last week here, even a solitary ray of sunshine seemed a clear signal that it was time to put down the mop and the paint brush and head for the local beer garden. We spent several evenings there last week imagining just what would happen on Sunday when our landlord came to check in on our work.

In the end, things worked out fine. Even though the sun was shining, the accumulated dust and grime of a year of our lives (not to mention the billows of dirt and grime constantly blowing in our windows from the construction site across the street) were not enough to dissuade our landlord from returning our deposit. Instead, he watched a few minutes of Shawn the Sheep to make sure the TV was still working and briefly turned on the radio--which gave him cause to ask us whether we liked Bavarian music--before showing us the money.

We were done, and it was a nice August day in Munich. The kind of day where even Jamie was forced to admit that the weather was "almost summery." We headed straight for the beer garden.

We had just about enough time to finish our celebratory drinks before the bad weather set in. We departed in a light drizzle, and then watched out our window as a huge thunder storm attacked the city. Later that night, we braved the weather to meet a friend for a drink downtown. At around 11pm on Sunday night, we waited for the subway to ride home and get some rest before another day of jumping through bureacratic hoops and rewarding ourselves with a few hours in the beer garden.

While the three of us were standing there, bemoaning the miserable weather that had once again descended on Bavaria, we watched a team of workers cleaning trash from between the rocks and rails down on the subway tracks. One stooped over to pick something up and emerged with a sheet of bubble wrap at least three feet long. But mostly, they were scooping up litle bits of wrappers or unnoticable cigarette butts that had found their way into hiding places between the pieces of gravel.

A display above the platform lets passengers know when the next train is approaching. As the minutes ticked down, we grew increasinlgy concerned about the cleaning crew. Even after the monitor informed us that our train was approaching in less than one minute, the workers continued searching for the wretched refuse of the Munich subway system. Finally, when it seemed like we could already feel the wind that the train pushes down the tunnel picking up, a siren went off, and the workers dived into a small cavity under the platform. The train sped into the station and we got on board. The workers must have been right next to its fast-moving steel wheels as we minded the gap and boarded above them.

Now, I realized, we knew what real high stakes cleaning looks like. After all, what else can you call playing chicken with a subway train in order to remove some bubble wrap? And perhaps these workers' experience was even more German than our whole struggle to clean our apartment. Where else in the world do people risk their lives to remove a couple pieces of trash from a mice-infested subway track? Our companion, a Bavarian who had recently moved back to the Southern Germany from Hamburg answered this question before we even had a chance to ask it out loud. "Only in Munich!" he remarked as we sat down in the spotless subway car.