Corona blues – music is the best consolation – district of Munich
It is a small miracle that Anneliese Figue is still alive. On March 9, 2020, she collapsed while on vacation on Lake Garda and was taken to a Munich hospital with the diagnosis of Corona, where she fought death for eleven weeks, one month of which was in a coma. The 79-year-old has now recovered physically from the exertions, apart from the not yet fully restored lung activity. But Seele suffers because her longtime friend died a year ago.
“Lately I’ve been feeling sad and wistful,” says the native of Poznan, who has lived in Dürrnhaar since 1989 and will spend Christmas alone in her second home in Munich. “I’m really scared about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” she admits. And that, although they think it’s wonderful when the little lights burn and Christmas carols are sung together. It is a great shame for her that she can no longer go to a church where she can find consolation. But she absolutely wants to let herself get down. “I’m not burying myself,” she says. And she already knows which mood enhancers she WILL prescribe for herself for the steady time: Classical music and excursions into nature.
Anneliese Figue, who studied piano and singing at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, then was an extra, small actor, actress and prompter in the Munich Residenztheater and the National Theater for more than 40 years, her soul is comforted by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Bruckner and Grieg himself to the piano. And if that doesn’t help anymore, she gets on tram line 25 and goes for a little shopping spree to Grünwald, or with the S-Bahn to Tutzing to enjoy nature and get other thoughts again. “There are bus drivers who volunteer for duty on Christmas Eve to avoid the trappings,” says the 79-year-old with a smile on her face.
On Wednesday she took the night train to Poland to take a one-week cure in Bad Flintsberg, “because of the joints,” as she says. A constant travel companion is her flute, which she has played more than ever since her discharge from hospital in summer 2020 to strengthen her damaged lungs. That she didn’t have to die at the time is a gift enough for Anneliese Figue, and she also gives something away herself. The two “boys” who take piano lessons with her will soon get them for free.
The steady time is a bland time this year. With this series, at least the SZ tries to bring a little light into Advent every day.