What if I didn’t go to Munich?

Okay, before I take you through this thought experiment here’s a few things that wouldn’t have changed:

I would still be:

• named Nikolaj (I guess),
• 28 years old (but now I’m the old guy among the Erasmus students haha),
• Danish,
• working in radio (for 3-4 years now),
• loving storytelling using sound,
• a big football and golf fan (most sports actually),
• a volunteer in Copenhagen Radio Cinema (radio nerds “association”),
• and I would’ve still loved to drink beer (but of course the Bayerische beers are way better than the Danish ones!).

What would have been different?

My German skills would still be locked away on a dusty shelve in the back of my brain – instead of now being able to have conversations in this beautiful language.

I would not have met so many inspiring people from across the globe as I have done already in just five weeks.

Then I wouldn’t have had the chance to live in a country where every supermarket and shop closes at 8 pm – and all Sunday (this has been a surprisingly big challenge for me haha).

I would have never seen people surf on a river inside a city.

I would never have appreciated nearly as much that Copenhagen is surrounded by so much water (I love to swim).

My skiing abilities might have never been updated since I last went on a ski trip in tenth grade. I haven’t yet gone skiing (for obvious reasons like the snow not having falling yet – but I am definitely going in the winter).

This blogpost would have never seen the light of day. And thereby I wouldn’t have the chance to reflect on my decision to go and live in Munich.

And last but most importantly: I would have lived the rest of my life in regret of not having taken the opportunity to go abroad.

Confused?

Of course, there might be a million more thought experiments to be done in this little “game”, but I just wanted to name a few examples.

This exercise is inspired by one of my favourite podcasts ‘Heavyweight’ by Jonathan Goldstein – a show that allows the main character in the stories to go back in time and visit one of the “what ifs” in their life. I highly recommend it – and in general podcasts about human fates and ways of life are my passion.

Last paragraph, I promise

I decided to move to Munich because I really wanted to learn the language even better. And I decided on the south of Germany for a variety of reasons: it’s further away from Denmark than Hamburg and Berlin, it’s close to the Alps, it has its own special southern culture – and the courses here suits me very well.

To be honest, Munich has lived of to all my expectations so far and I can’t wait to find out even more, speak better German, meet more nice people, and have even more enrichen experiences.

This was kind of a last call to go abroad for me before everything gets too serious with job, family and so forth. It’s my last semester of my master’s degree – and I’m here to make the most of it!