Germany and I have a love/hate relationship and I think I do speak for the both of us. I lived in Kiel for a while in the beginning of the 21:th century and I would argue that Kiel is impossible to like even if you try really, really hard. This simply due to that there is nothing to like here, ugly buildings, boring bars and restaurants, depressing weather for a good chunk of the year. On top of that the city has some fairly narrow minded and a lot of the time unfriendly habitants. In summary, I have little love for Kiel. However, I do feel a need to point out that there are positive sides as well, Hamburg and Lübeck, two beautiful and in many ways excellent cities, are within only one hours distance.

So where is the love? Well, first of all, in Sweden (and in many parts of the world I suppose) there is a generally somewhat negative view towards Germany and Germans. I have felt un urgue to defend my home country of 2.5 years. And fact is, among the narrow minded Kiel citizens, I managed to meet some really nice people. I played for a soccer team here, Suchdorf SV, my teammates here were great and winning “Kreiss liga Kiel” may very well have been the best thing that happened to me during my time in Germany. I also traveled through Germany a bit and places like Berlin, Bavaria, black forest and even areas around Frankfurt are fantastic in many ways.

Exactly what Germany hates and loves about me I am not sure of, it is just a feeling I have.

So when my good friend also Daniel and I landed in Munich late Friday night two days before the marathon it was with the same feelings I always have when entering Germany, mixed. Friend number two and his wife were not due to get in until late in the afternoon the day after. Saturday was spent walking around a bit in the city, picking up our starting numbers at the Olympic stadium. We concluded that looking at photos from this day afterwards, the highlight of the day would probably appear to be the pasta lunch and beer in the sun at the Marathon expo. The nice looking and inviting “beer and food in the sun” photo would however lie somewhat as I would not describe the pasta as great by any means, the non-alcoholic beer we drank certainly wasn’t. And yes it was sunny but fairly cold and not really pleasant at all to sit outside.

The morning of October 10:th was cold but with a sunny and clear sky. Standing at the start line a few minutes too nine for yet another marathon I was freezing and not enjoying the moment at all. Normally it is not until around kilometer 30 or so I really start to question my bizarre hobby of running obscurely long distances, this time I hadn’t even started the race. Luckily for me, as the track after only a few kilometers entered the Englischer Garten my mood was already getting much better. Both I as well as the air had warmed up a bit and it was now nothing short of an absolute stunning autumn day. The air was crisp and crystal clear in a way that only perfect autumn days can offer. The Englischer Garten is a huge nice park in the center of Munich and we must have run here for a good 10 km or so. Running was fantastic and I felt truly happy, needless to say this was by far the most enjoyable part of the race. The rest of the race was not bad though, the track was fairly flat and the weather stayed sunny and clear. After some 30 km or so the track entered the old town which also meant it entered the most crowed part of the race. I felt fairly ok at this stage and I increased the speed for a few kilometers and I managed to keep an ok velocity all the way into the Munich Olympic stadium which meant a new record time for me.

It was a happy crowd that entered a restaurant for some food and drinks later that day. All of us had done very good times. Anders had the by far best time beating his own personal record with almost 20 minutes and finishing at 3:09. But his wife was probably the biggest winner of the day, running her first marathon with a finish time of 3:45!