Munich

When I deboarded the plane on Sunday, I didn’t really have any idea what Munich would be like. However, since I had been in Düsseldorf two years ago, I did know that Munich would also be an ultra-modern city, with beautiful buildings and broad avenues. Yet, there are similarities to Abidjan, the city where I was born and grew up. Like Abidjan in the south of Côte d’Ivoire, Munich it situated in the south of Germany.

Far more importantly, like in Abidjan, the people in Munich are just as cordial. Always approachable and very friendly, even for the most minor queries, they greet strangers with a broad smile and uncommon helpfulness. Some people of Munich do not even hesitate to interrupt whatever they are doing to explain how to get to wherever address you are searching for or even to take you there. The old cliché that says Germans are aloof, somewhat reserved and very mistrusting vanishes into thin air. In Munich, it’s exactly the opposite...

Like Abidjan, which is the home of all the economic sectors of Côte d'Ivoire, Munich is also a significant economic centre of Germany with its large international companies such as BMW. The new research centre of the automotive manufacturer is located here, with its logo portraying a white propeller before a blue sky, from which new vehicles are delivered in, as you can imagine, revolutionary design. We are here in the by far most prosperous region of the whole country.

This is where a comparison of the two metropolises ends, clearly. For, while Abidjan is almost collapsing under the weight of health hazards due to waste, which abounds everywhere and the disposal of which is left more to chance than being a regular daily procedure, Munich is a clean city, very clean. The population has an exceptional grasp of cleanliness. All rubbish is carefully sorted by its composition (paper, glass, plastic and so forth) and thrown into large dustbins.

Yet, Munich is especially charming for its grand architecture that recalls Gothic epochs. One of these highlights is, of course, the Marienplatz. The square leads to a shopping promenade where countless department stores line the streets.

Munich is also the toy museum, taking up four storeys in the Old Town Hall to display lovely collections of dolls, miniature trains and teddy bears, the Viktualienmarkt or the magnificent church by the Asam Brothers (Asamkirche). The list of sights worth seeing is so long I cannot begin to enumerate them all.