Munich: Sahara was there – Munich
shine of
Philip Krone
In most cases, writing on someone else’s surface is a tricky thing, if not even a forbidden one. From there graffiti groups can sing gangsta rap songs in their natural habitat of underpasses and tunnels. In Munich there are only a few areas approved for smearing or spraying decoration: a few bar toilets or the Brudermühl Bridge.
However, these are far from sufficient in view of the enormous need for communication that exists in the city. This is always easy to observe on the few winter days when the means of transport lying around are snowed in and present themselves as writing surfaces. And now another creative booster has been blown onto the Isar in the form of the finest sand, so that for days the entire city has looked like a blank slate on which people are wildly scribbling with the index finger pen.
There is an off-road vehicle in the Glockenbachviertel. That’s nothing unusual. However, this sports utility vehicle now has the lettering on the black bonnet: “DESERT ADVENTURE”. Why a letter is missing remains a mystery. Many car windows and bonnets are also freshly decorated with little hearts – and since the sand will still be around for a while, the exciting question is: what messages will the people of Munich send each other about parked cars?
Declarations of love written in sand may not be as enduring as those immortalized on bridge locks – and combinations like “P&S” don’t fit every machine either, but rather on large-engine ones. But doesn’t every form of romance have its appeal? And classics like “Sahara was here” always work, of course, on any car. In any case, one thing is becoming clearer and clearer in all the dirt from day to day the longer cars stand around without a clean wiped windscreen: how many cars in Munich are only very rarely moved.