Challenge Accepted.

It’d be easy I’d get off the plane, someone would promptly offer me a job at the airport and I’d have found two months accommodation by lunchtime.

I had decided to spend the summer abroad. Garrison Keillor said “there comes a time in everyman’s life when he feels he’s done all there is to do and seen all there is to see. That time comes around the age of 18” and that’s how I felt about Ennis. No disrespect to the place it’s grand enough town in which to grow up but damn, if it doesn’t get boring in the summer. So this year I was skipping the constant nagging from my mother about how I should be looking for a job and the endless list of sheds to paint, grass to cut  and weeds to pull from my dad and make a break for it. So I begged the folks for a plane ticket promising it could be my Christmas and Birthday present for the next two years (I needn’t have bothered they didn’t seem to glum at idea of me being out of sight for two months) So within days of putting the pencil down on my last exam I was heading for Cork Airport and on to Munich City.

Now it didn’t all quite go to plan. I landed in Munich late Saturday evening and got my train to the hostel which I had booked for three nights (after that I was all on my own). I dropped my bag and nipped out for a beer and the Ireland match. I’d get cracking on the job hunt tomorrow, definitely. Although, tomorrow would be Sunday and most places would be closed anyway. Monday no doubt. So I went back to the hostel watched ‘X-Men’ in German and hit the hay.

Woke up the next morning hit my head on the ceiling which was conveniently located an inch and a half from the top bunk that I was sleeping in. I through on a shirt and my nicest pair of jeans, grabbed my wad of CVs and hit the streets of Munich. Now what I didn’t realise about Munich is that they don’t really ‘do’ CVs  so every time you apply for a job you have to fill out a lengthy application form in which your asked to put down all the info that you have printed out on the neat stack of papers beside you. And I thought Germans were supposed to efficient. But none the less people were genuinely friendly and seemed like they might actually consider hiring you at some point. Let’s keep in mind that I reached working age around the same second the recession struck so not  being met with a patronising smile when you ask politely if the manager is hiring was an alien concept to me.

That’s when it started going wrong. I had one night left in the hostel so went to see about further accommodation, but as it happened Munich was fully booked for the next week. I must have spent more in stale smelling Turkish internet cafes than I had on food the past three days. Now seems like a good time to mention that if you are in Munich and are interested the best kebab in existence nip down to Ali Baba’s kebabarie  on Shiller Strasse by the train-station. But back to the point. There was nothing doing so I crashed in the waiting room of the Munich Hauptbahnhof. It was time to give up. My phone was dead and if any of the potential in employers where calling eager to snap up this 18 year old with a whole weeks work experience in Oxfam bookshop and a mediocre grasp on the language they’d be out of luck. So I was at a loss I could ring mammy and daddy and tell them I needed a plane ticket home to a warm bed and a cup of cocoa but I would never live that down. Besides I had told all my friends I would be gone all summer I couldn’t just waltz back into the local and act like nothing had happened. I had only been gone for a long weekend and they’d be expecting tales of my expedition. It couldn’t end here…..