Birthday Madness

Embarassing Train Ride

The next day I got up early and went to the train station by bus - I had to get into the train at 9:17 am to Munich where my Mum and her boyfriend were already waiting for me. I arrived much too early because the buses from my stop didn't go that regularly, so I bought a coffee and went to the platform. After a while the train arrived and because of a Whatsapp message from my Mum I knew where to enter. I found them soon and sat down next to the window after I had hugged my Mum and given her the present I had bought the day before in the shopping centre. As expected, she was happy about the present, even if it wasn't anything special.

The two hour train ride started, and we were talking about the weekend with my boyfriend and my exam the day before. Talking about the wonderful two days made me sad again, especially because she was sitting in front of me with her boyfriend and I was there completely alone. Furthermore, I didn't like her boyfriend that much because I didn't know him well yet, and he had some embarassing behaviours. Sometimes - as in the train that day, too, he just started to talk to strange people and asked them silly questions. Most of the people he tried to talk to reacted as every normal person does: they simply looked into the other direction and hoped that he stopped talking. My Mum and I always did the same thing, even if he wasn't talking to us, but it was just embarrassing! Furthermore, I simply hoped that nobody would think that he was my real Dad - for me it was already bad enough to be obliged to spend time with him. I just looked out of the window and hoped that we would arrive soon with out any more embarrassing questions.

Munich Experience with Mum

We finally arrived in Munich after 2 hours and could leave the train - I am sure that not only my Mum and me were happy about that, but also all the others that had been sitting next to us in the train. We went through the train station to the underground in order to arrive next to the Stachus - the start of the shopping zone in Munich. I hoped that at least in the middle of the city centre my Mum's boyfriend would stop talking to unknown people and we could relax a bit. As it was her birthday we did whatever she wanted, so we started our trip by walking along the shopping street in order to arrive at the Viktualienmarkt. For me it was a bit boring because I had been at the same place only two days before, but it was okay. I just would have prefered to be there only with my Mum as the times before - I simply didn't feel good next to her boyfriend. He was asking too many strange questions and I started to be a bit annoyed. Of course, I couldn't show that because it was Mum's day and I didn't want to bother her with my bad humour, so I tried to be happy.

Viktualienmarkt

We finally arrived at the Viktualienmarkt and had lunch at the fish restaurant "Nordsee". Well, my Mum and I had lunch, but her boyfriend didn't want to eat anything because he thought that there was only trash to buy in that restaurant. We ignored his strange humour and enjoyed our food which was delicious as always. After we had finished our dishes we stayed a bit at our table in order to watch the (sometimes really strange) people passing by - it was fun to see and talk about them, even if my Mum's boyfriend didn't seem to be happy about the day so far. I was a bit angry about that because it was my Mum's birthday and I wasn't that happy, too, but I didn't show it to her. Why couldn't he just pull himself together? I decided to ignore him as good as possible and to concentrate on my Mum. Usually, when we did our trip to Munich (without HIM) we discussed a lot and didn't have one single opinion about what to do etc., but today it was her boyfriend who disturbed everything.

After a while we decided to continue our trip through the city centre and walked a bit along the booths at the large market. I was only interested in the fruits, but it was much too warm to take some of them with me for the rest of the day, so I focused on looking at them. My Mum loved almost everything that was sold at the Viktualienmarkt: Turkish olives and cheese, exotic fruits, spices, decoration, Bavarian cheese and so on, and so on. But as we didn't know when we would get back home she didn't buy anything neither because of the high temperatures and the sunshine, so we continued our way back to the Marienplatz.

The Trousers Mission

Our next mission after the Viktualienmarkt was (unfortunately) to find new trousers for my Mum's boyfriend. I wasn't happy about that plan because that meant a lot of potential for embarrassing situations and walking through men's stores, but as it was her wish to do it, I agreed and followed them to the large men clothes store in the middle of the pedestrian's zone. The shop called Hirmer does only sell clothes and accessories for men at five or six incredibly large floors - when you don't find anything there, you won't find anything anywhere else. We entered the shop and looked at the information board where to go. As my Mum's boyfriend needs special sizes for his trousers we had to get upstairs into the last floor. We took the elevator and arrived there. My Mum (and me too, but actually I didn't care) wanted to ask somebody of the staff there to help him, but he wanted to look for his own. It would take hours if there was nobody to help and give advise, because even if it was the special size section they had a lot of trousers to offer. I sat down at one of the seats and started to check my Whatsapp messages while the two of them were looking for suitable trousers. It could become a long stay there..

After a while (they hadn't found any suitable trouser yet that he even wanted to try on) a woman from the staff came over and finally asked if she could help them. Even if my Mum's boyfriend immediately said no, my Mum talked to her and told her size and wishes about the new trousers. He was a bit annoyed by that but I was happy that it might end up earlier than expected. The woman started to look for his size and showed him a million of trousers - most of them he just commented with "No! " in a very unfriendly way. I was already embarrassed by that behaviour, so I just concentrated even more on my mobile phone and hoped that they would soon find some trousers for him. Unfortunately in spite of his special size he was quite exigent in regard to colour, shape and especially price of the clothes and even if the poor woman tried everything to satisfy her difficult client, either the trousers were too small, too short, or too expensive. He even tried to change the price of the less expensive ones and I just wanted to leave the shop in that moment. And that's what we did some minutes later, because the woman told him that there were no trousers in his size left that he might be interested in, so we decided to leave the shop and look somewhere else. I was sure that the woman was more than happy about the fact that we left and didn't bother her anymore because he might have been one of the most difficult customers ever.

Back to the pedestrian's zone we continued our way alongside the numerous shops, but the focus was on his silly trousers. I told them that I would enter in Urban Outiftters and Sport Scheck for a while and that they could continue if they wanted - it was a desperate try to have some time for myself - and it worked. They told me that they would continue to C&A and I could meet them there after a while. I was happy about my free time without anyone embarrassing me and strolled a bit through the shops without planning to buy something. But of course, after a while I had to get to C&A to find them again, so without any motivation I went there and found them - of course - in the trousers section for men. I could see that they had still not found one single pair of trousers, and I already sat down at a chair in order to wait until they would have finished. My Mum seemed to be a bit annoyed, too, to me, so I hoped that we would end that odyssee soon and have a coffee in a nice café somewhere outside. Fortunately I was right and she said that if he didn't find any trousers in the next 15 minutes we would stop looking for them and have a beer somewhere because she didn't want to search for it anymore. He was a bit annoyed (he was like a baby! ) but agreed and we left the store some minutes later (without trousers, of course).

Second Lunch

I was released that we didn't continue looking for any trousers and my mood started to improve a bit. We sat down in a café right next to the Stachus and had something to drink. I would have expected that my Mum's boyfriend would eat something because he hadn't eaten anything at the Viktualienmarkt but he just had a beer and started to be embarrassing again. He started to talk about people next to us in a much too loud way and they already started to look at us in an annoyed way. I wanted to disappear immediately, but as it wasn't possible I just looked into the other direction and fixed a point at the other side of the large square. When my body couldn't disappear at least my mind would. The atmosphere was full of tension, because my Mum didn't like her boyfriend's behaviour neither, but she didn't want to discuss on her birthday, so she pretended to be happy - but I could see in her face that she wasn't happy at all and would have liked to go straight away in that moment. We stayed some more time, but finally my Mum checked her watch and said that we could reach the next train at 4pm if we hurried up a bit. The platform was away about 15 minutes by foot, so it was really possible to take it. But - of course - somebody destroyed that plan. It was (surprise, surprise) not my Mum and not me, it was her boyfriend. We had already almost reached the entrance to the train station when we passed by a bakery and he suddenly decided that he was hungry and wanted to buy something to eat for the journey. We were both incredbily annoyed but he had already entered the shop without waiting for our answer.

Of course, it took a lot of time because we were in Munich and he wasn't the only one in the bakery and furthermore it took him almost ten minutes to find money in his purse. After 10 minutes we could continue our way to the platform, but as he was a bit handicapped and couldn't run we missed the train. My Mum and I were both annoyed and angry but we couldn't change anything, so we sat down at a bench and I looked up in my mobile phone when the next train would go to Ratisbon. Fortunately, we only had to wait half an hour - usually it's at least one hour. The incident had changed the atmosphere from "full of tension" to "tension overloaded" and I was already looking forward to the moment when the train would stop in Ratisbon and I could leave it, alone. After about two hours (I will not tell you all the details about the 1, 5h in the train again - just read the part about the way to Munich again) it was finally time to say goodbye and I was released immediately when I left the train and walked to the bus station. I would never ever complain about going to Munich only with my Mum after I knew that it could be even worse!

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