Munich is a city being pulled in different directions: towards the new while hanging on to the old, reaffirming its own culture while embracing the outside world.
Like a few cities in its genus it is not clear who is winning this tug of war, and whether it is resigned to the associated turbulence or would rather an outright victory for one faction or the other.
This is most evident in its buildings.
Fast food chains and fashionable opticians perch in grand stone buildings with crowns carved on the door.
The polished glass windows of Starbucks share a street corner with a beaten-up bookshop that wouldn't look out of place on Diagon Alley.
The strict style guide of the old town relaxes into a more generous box-of-chocolates approach as you venture further afield. But even here, there are lion's heads on the lampposts and weather-wearied gargoyles leering at passersby from a church 'only' a hundred and twenty years old.
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I cannot begin to fathom how a city heals from being the headquarters of the Nazi Party, and sitting just 20km from Dachau concentration camp. Yes, there's a museum and a memorial burning an eternal flame. Some buildings were pulled down, war criminals were tried.
And yet.
The city's stumbling stones (such as those I've recently seen in Amsterdam) were removed for 'public safety' in 2004. 70,000 more of them continue to pose a horrific danger to clumsy feet and fast-forgetting minds in over a hundred cities around Europe and beyond.
The Germans have a saying: Über etwas Gras wachsen lassen. Literally, to grow grass over something, to leave it in the past.
And quite literally, grass has been left to grow over Munich's Königsplatz, where Nazis burned banned books in 1933. In protest, an artist has repeatedly burned the grass and held readings of banned literature in the same spot on the event's anniversary.
It's complicated, of course it is.
But I cannot help a feeling of unease, of disquiet, a flashing engine light on the dashboard.
That feeling has compelled me to look at my own country's past with fresh eyes.
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