Modern memoirs: A different kind of personal archive

By Kristin Fehlauer

Google’s been pressuring me lately to either delete emails and photos or upgrade to more storage. The upgrade costs money, and I’m stingy, so I’ve been trying to clear out my inbox, which began accumulating emails in 2009.

Naturally, I can’t simply delete emails willy-nilly, so I’m sifting through old correspondence. It’s like a digital excavation. Starting with the oldest emails brings me back to a time when I hadn’t been in Munich for too long and was still trying to find my footing. Back then, I became involved in a nascent English-language choir that quickly took over my life for a few years—not to mention my inbox…

There are other signals of the passage of time as we dig through the digital strata. Most striking are the emails I have setting up accounts so I can make purchases from companies that no longer exist, or for events that stand out against the canvas of the everyday: gifts for special birthdays, bridesmaid dresses for weddings. Names flit in and out of frequency as well; I’ve always been deep in the expat communities here, and by their nature these see a lot of turnover.

The change in my email traffic parallels another change that occurs over a long period of time: a shift in what I think of as “city focuses”. I used to work out on the eastern edge of Munich, requiring a trip to the end of my subway line plus a short bus ride. My apartment then (as now—have been in the same place for my entire Munich life) was already on the east side of the city, so every workday had an eastward focus.

Then my company moved us to a location on the northern rim of the city, right where the A9 meets the Mittlerer Ring. Now my daily commute was taking me westward, across the Isar River to the city center, and then up north. My route ran through the vibrant district of Schwabing, so any errands I did on the way home were often done there. Just as certain names and subject lines gradually faded from my inbox, I eventually forgot the order of stops on my subway line further east than my own.

A couple of job changes later, and now I work in a neighborhood bordered on the west by the Isar. It’s only about a 20-minute walk from my home. When I was going to krav maga regularly, I attended a studio 20 minutes from my house. Most of my life revolved around this triangle all in one neighborhood; in fact, there were weeks when I didn’t cross the river at all! Each rare trip to the city center or, heaven forbid, as far north as Schwabing would bring up years-old memories—much like my email excavations call to mind names and faces from the past.

I no longer go to krav maga, so my focus is shifting once again, although not in any firm direction. Lately I’ve been taking the subway to different destinations just a few stops away from mine and walking some or all of the way back home. It’s a lovely way to discover parts of the city I don’t have a reason to go to. And my photos of these “parts unknown” form yet another stratum of digital media I’ll look back on in years to come.