Am I Doing it Wrong?

By Whitney Robosson

In Munich, everyone walks. There are people practically filling every square inch of the sidewalk, especially Saturdays, when everyone heads to Marienplatz to shop. There are so many people walking in Munich that even Tanner says getting around on foot is easier in New York City. Well, I’ve never been to NYC myself, but I don’t doubt her for a second. If your greatest fear is hundreds of people shoving their bodies against you over and over again, don’t plan to vacation in Munich.

The walking is not the part I dislike. I walk almost everywhere I go in Columbia because getting my car out of the garage, dealing with my manual transmission, and finding a parking spot 50 feet down the road is too much to handle on most days (oh and by the way – I drive a VW Jetta and there’s pretty much always something wrong with it, so someone needs to work on that. It does go really fast though…). I don’t even mind being poked and prodded and squished by the masses of Germans passing me. The part that drives me insane is that I always seem to be in the direct path of someone walking toward me. If I’m not the one that makes the decision to move, I’ll find myself involved in a full frontal collision with someone ranting in German giving me the death glare (and personally someone could be reading poetry in German and it would still sound beastly).

So I want to know what I’m doing wrong. Apparently the Germans have figured out, because they know to just keep walking. I’m always the one jumping out of the way and the other person is completely oblivious to the fact that we almost became …. I’m not walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk, I’m not walking too slow, and I’m certainly not aiming at my fellow walkers. Why do I keep getting run over? And I’d like the answer to another question: if German A is walking at 2 mph and German B is walking at 4 mph and the are walking toward each other, will they collide?