Posted on

Renting until you are broken – the new city life?

Renting until you are broken – the new city life?

Can someone explain to me why rents are increasing as if there’s no tomorrow?

I mean, honestly, I understand fully that a landlord is not giving away his house/ flat for free and wants to earn some money with it. Some money, enough money to be able to maintain everything plus money on top for their own, I got this. What I am not getting anymore is why people who rent are seen as a luxury income. Hey, and I’m not writing about deluxe apartments or big mansions, I’m writing about normal flats, houses for families.

You can argue now that it is my very own fault if I decide to live in Munich and yes, you are partly right with it. Partly because I accept that everything is a bit more expensive here than in a small countryside city, but what I do not accept is that you pay a fortune for nothing.

I am checking offers since a couple of years now and the market is truly insane. People offer for instance a house which is in the state of the 1980’s, the bathroom is a disaster, kitchen not available (means you have to bring your own), carpets everywhere also from the 1980’s, the garden not maintained at all. The size is 110 square metres and they ask for either a monthly rent of 2300 Euro (without gas and water) or if you want to buy the price is 980.000 Euro.

If only I could tell you that this is a joke, but they are indeed serious.

What should a family earn in order to have a nice family home to stay in?

As a family we are willing to pay entry for the zoo, we love to go and eat outside, grab ice-cream on the way to the playground, buy local and support smaller shops in our area, we love the “hood” we are living in. But all of this would be impossible when we move to a bigger place because of these ridiculous prices.

Our current living situation is tiny, our place is small but we live where we want to live. Of course we wouldn’t mind to have more place and a garden, not at all, but not if we have to cut our visits to the museum, eating out or summer vacations.

Are cities only made for the rich?

Are only the top managers allowed to live here? Is it the newly rich clients you are looking for to spend their money here? A city will lose its spirit like this and a city will not have any more stories to tell.

Apart from ‘normal’ families, has anyone ever thought about the elder people? A 82-year old widow who would love to stay in the flat where her husband died but cannot afford it anymore. A 90-year old man who is half blind but knows all the ways he needs for his daily life by heart. A couple married for 60 years and rooted exactly where they live. There is a saying that you cannot plug a tree out of the soil and plant it somewhere else, the same counts for many of the elder. It breaks my heart if I see them shattered because they don’t know where their life will go on. I even forget about all the young ones (us included) because we could make it anywhere, still.

Munich has a history, like every other city, there are biographies of people who lived here and brought something with them. There are statues all over the city and every single one of them tells a story. We will not write further history like this. A city lives through the personalities and if these are all forced to move outside the city spirit will slowly disappear.

Every even little personality surely was not rich and famous by the time they left their footprint in the heart of this city. Some where, some were not, it has always been a good mixture and that is how it should be.

Greedy is the new normal especially when it comes to living spaces within a city. Who has the newest building, who has the best view, who is in the most expensive area,… Shouldn’t it be: who can help neighbours when needed, who can support the homeless, who smiles at strangers because life is a wonderful thing?

Instead of greed let happiness rule because it doubles if you share – at the end of the day that counts more than the number on your bank account, does it not?

Posted on

Where are we heading to?

This question popped up just this morning when I opened Instagram.

I must confess, I like Instagram and I often go in and check and find inspiration and ideas how to live more sustainable, I see great campaigns against many injustices on this planet, I follow people I adore like Deepak Chopra or Ram Dass and this is great.

But what I also see is that there are thousands of women who call themselves influencer, mom blogger, whatever name you want to give them, who expose their whole families, grandparents and neighbors of neighbors to the world wide web. They literally “sell” their life and feel like kind of a celebrity.

I mean, seriously, I show my home, my sacred place and start to tag everything from the lamp on the ceiling to the rug on the floor, I give away shopping codes and link web pages while hoping that people love me and follow my life and at the end of the day BUY.

This kind of commercializing products is not only weird, it’s also going into a direction where being unique seems to be outdated.

Every mom blogger account has the same brands (at least for what I can see in Germany), the wear the same jewelry, call themselves even designer because they put their name on products they designed? To be a designer for you normally need to attend classes in a design school, university, whatever, but hey, this is the easy way, right? They eat the same, the drink the same tea, they own the same coffee machines in their stylish mainly white colored new built homes and their kids have the same toys and clothes and prams. All for the price of inviting people into their life on a daily basis, day in and day out, from morning to bedtime routine, being healthy or not feeling fine.

I’m honest and especially the ones who build up their life like this will not agree on it, but filling the washing machine with the camera in my hand or making a time-lapse of how I clean the kitchen is NOT real life and is far away from what we should do with our time.

As wonderful as all these technologies are, as careful they need to be handled. What do we teach our children when we document every step we take, inside and outside? What do we teach them if mommy is putting on her make up each day in front of the phone while she’s talking to the phone instead of talking to her child?

Did you ever check your screen time per day? I know that it hits you once you start to focus on it, at least it hit me when I checked it, because this screen time means that you spent the time with a phone in your hand instead of being in the real NOW.

Eckhart Tolle wrote this wonderful book “the power of NOW” and I can recommend this to everyone – we are all right now here and we should spend our time wisely.

If it’s your job and your income to advertise and to sell, that’s great, but do it need the 24/7 exposure to the whole world? Isn’t it enough to create good selling content and pictures and tutorials?

I may never understand but wanted to share as I feel we are heading to a time where personal contact starts to be rare and real life exists only in form of a hashtag.

Go out, meet friends, take your children to the playground and just sit there, watching the leaves dancing in the wind with the sound of children laughing and playing, that’s real life, at least for me.

Take care

misssfaith <3

Posted on

When days go by so fast…

When days go by so fast…

Here we go again, the time of being apart has started and we have to jump back into our second routine.
It’s quite interesting to discover that we are leading kind of two lifes.
Whenever we are together we have our routine, the time which belongs to us although we have several things to do throughout our days. Whatever we do, we think about what’s best for both of us.
And then the time follows when we are apart and lead different life’s, I stay and my husband goes back into another country, onto another continent which is so far away from what I know.
I grew up safely in Europe and sometimes start to wonder how he can stand it all.
It’s always good to hear that he arrived safe but there are also always incidents which are beyond my imagination. Roads blocked completely by rebels or people who fight for 1000 of different reasons. I have the feeling as if he is only safe in his house and even this thought is quite childish. I close my eyes and am invisible? Surely not.
I try to live my normal routine and hate it more and more as I love the together time so much. I’m not made for being alone, I found my other half and we should be together. We both know that we are lucky as we found each other.
It’s ridiculous but I’m not doing many things I usually love to do when we are together like for instance writing on this blog, I hardly find the time to just sit down and read a magazine or watch stupid things on TV but do I want him to leave just to have time for it? Not at all – I could say easily I put all these things back as long as I have my husband around – he’s the most precious to spend my time with!
On the other hand we both know that our routine would change if we knew that we are permanently together, there will be another routine one day inshallah. For the time being we just try to soak in every second.
It’s been five weeks and now we are back alone – these weeks were wonderful but flew by like a lear jet – now it will be weeks of waiting which will crawl by like a snail.
Weeks with lots of what’s app and Skype, weeks where we are exhausted by these stupid web connections, weeks where we miss the touch of one another so much, weeks where we have to sleep in beds with an empty half but also weeks where we still know that our love is greater than the distance and which let us look forward to the day we drive back to the airports and close our arms tight around our second half.
Nobody said it will be easy but we are confident that it is exactly the right thing we are doing – love leads the way and opens new facets of life where we weren’t even aware of their existence.

Hey, and being back blogging feels good as well 🙂
Take Care!

20140124-000002.jpg

Posted on

Half way gone again

Half way gone again

Since we are married, which is two months now, we spent half of the time together.
Half, this word is present in my/our life.
My husband is my second half, and we are again half way gone until I can close my arms around him and feel complete.
It’s strange, one half on the African and one on the European continent. We never feel complete during the times we are apart. But we are feeling home where ever we are as long as we are together.
Each time it cuts like a knife when we have to say good bye, we know that a part of our life’s will be far away for several weeks. No opportunities to hold hands, to snuggle up when being tired. Endless nights spent alone and many things more. Even the grocery shopping makes much more fun when being together, it’s ridiculous but it’s true.
Inshallah, half way gone again, beginning of Dec we can enjoy the complete life once again.

20131103-231046.jpg