WHAT IS BELLEVUE DI MONACO?

The first time I learn about it is way back in April, before I ever even set foot in Munich. I’m in the midst of spring break, the last time of year that any American college student thinks about work. A bit begrudgingly, I'm starting my pre-program research when a site in all capital letters jumps out at me: “BELLEVUE DI MONACO: Welcome in the Heart of Munich.” I click in.

“The Bellevue di Monaco is a residential and cultural centre for refugees and other Munich citizens in the heart of the city,” proclaims the website. “The Café «Bellevue di Monaco» is our gateway to the city…our menu reflects the vast number of countries and culinary influences that our guests and the café team contribute to the Munich gastro scene.”1 But curiously, according to Google Maps Bellevue is solely a “cultural center” and not a cafe at all, and I can find no pictures of a specific menu or food options.The idea that this place exists in real time, thousands of miles away, and that I might actually get to visit, is exciting. Maybe it's because of the fact that I’m not exactly sure what to make of this jumble of identities.

The first time I set out for Bellevue di Monaco, I’ve been in Munich for about 10 days and still don’t know what to expect. It is centrally located, only an 8-minute walk from the Marienplatz (city center) U-bahn station. Coming up on it, the building runs into me more than the other way around. I am crossing the street when BELLEVUE spelled out in giant, American diner style lights screams out at me from a blocky, teal building. I like it immediately. 

Entering, I’m taken aback by its urban-ish, Bohemian-ish charm. Large floor-to-ceiling windows light the place up with a bright, natural glow; funky geometric tables are pushed together in front of a padded sitting ledge along the windowed wall; a decorative box TV sits on a colorful side table, while the mouth-watering cake display a mere feet away beckons. So it is a cafe after all.2 

At the register, I spot a stack of “Bellevue Events” brochures quietly, comfortably, perched on the counter. The other cafe goers seem to pay it no attention, so naturally it is integrated with the pile of menus, orders being called, and drinks being poured. I am pulled by this Bellevue mystery, so I grab a copy. As I rifle through, my initial impression of Bellevue (It is a cafe after all) starts to fracture with growing interest, then shatter completely. It is not that Bellevue isn’t a cafe, it simply isn’t a cafe after all, in the way that that aside relegates it to mundanity and situates it pleasantly in the lap of expectation. Inside the brochure, I find German language classes, asylum and job application counseling, homework tutoring, soccer practices, sewing nights—all free and made possible by a network of volunteers. I can’t order my coffee quickly enough, because I have to ask the barista—How can I volunteer here? (And am I allowed to attend the language classes?)

That afternoon is possibly one of the most riveting afternoons of my entire time in Munich. It is spent sitting in Bellevue hunched over my laptop, nerding out over all of Bellevue’s services on a caffeine high that is making me process everything a bit too quickly and enthusiastically.3 My head is careening through the website with the aspirational excitement of a child on Christmas—there are so many things!! How does this place even exist? From what I can gather, Bellevue is a community center, refugee service organization, and cafe on the side, maybe to fund all the other parts. I send emails to a smattering of contacts listed on the volunteer page. There’s a women’s cafe on Tuesdays, a laptop refurbishing group, and even a weekly bike repair workshop.

The first time I go to a Bellevue event is at 9pm on a Wednesday night, two days after my first visit. Every Wednesday evening is Open House night, where, according to the webpage, “Everyone is welcome…we eat together, drink tea, play games and get to know each other.”4 I visit with a friend from the US, and we walk straight through the cafe, through a back door, and out into a backyard. It houses a graffitied basketball court and picnic tables bathed under fairy light glows. Steep, bleacher-like steps lead down to a basement level of the cafe. By the time we cross this small yard and arrive at the next Bellevue building, a party is in full swing. Music is blasting, swirling around the room in lilting, rhythmic chords. People are dancing and clapping and singing…it’s the first time I feel a lifeblood in Munich.

The next week, I get an email from the bike workshop coordinator, Jan. He calls it Radlkeller, a term which will take me multiple weeks, confused looks, and rounds of getting laughed at before I pronounce correctly.5 He says that Radlkeller is every Tuesday, but that the following Tuesday it’s cancelled. The group is going for a ride instead, and do I want to join?

Uh, is that even a question, Jan?

Except I show up the following Tuesday in my full bike gear at the time Radlkeller usually starts (7pm) and can’t find anyone. It's then that realize I never actually asked for a meeting time, just assumed it would start when the workshop started. Facepalm. Frustrated at my lack of foresight, I decide to scope the place out anyways and wander around the backyard, clacking and hobbling away in my bike shoes.6 In hindsight, maybe it was meant to happen like that, because this is how I meet Muhammad, my first Radlkeller customer. I find him around the bend, a young-looking, sweatshirted guy sitting on those big bleacher stairs with his bike.

“I’m here for the bike workshop?” Apparently he didn’t get the memo of Radlkeller closure.

The next week when I return, Muhammad is again sitting there patiently with his bike, because I was little help last week as a complete newbie and with no bike tools. This time, the workshop is abuzz with energy, volunteers dotted along the bleacher-stairs and squatting beside bikes. Customers lean over to watch the work unfold or lend a helping hand. I actually don’t have a clue how any of it works. To me, it looks a bit like chaos, but everyone else seems to know how to fold themselves into the current and surf along it. So, I make a beeline toward Muhammad.

What follows is about two hours of, “I think this goes here…” “Maybe we need this?” and “Oh my gosh, it fits!!” Tinkering is a graceful way to put it, because I have absolutely overestimated my bike mechanic skills, something which I didn’t know could happen if I had none to begin with. Muhammad is easy-going by nature and so, so patient with my cluelessness. We puzzle our way through the mystery of his broken wheel together, and he keeps saying “Thank you so much for your help!” when he has done just as much, if not more of the work than I. By the end of the night, miraculously we’ve actually fixed the problem.

I learn that Radlkeller, which translates literally to bike (”Radl”) and cellar (”Keller”), is indeed based in a cellar, a stubby, brick-lined basement people need to duck to get down into. The keller is the central nerve from which the rest of Radlkeller emanates, with all its resources coming from it and returning to it. And like the larger operation, it follows the same “organized chaos."7 Rows and rows of secondhand bike wheels and spare tubes occupy the inner alcove; the back wall has been converted into a tool shed; a creaky cabinet sells new wires and lights for the cheapest prices I’ve ever encountered, and the a giant, overflowing disposal bin is so giant and overflowing that it looks like just another big tub of used parts…I am astounded and mesmerized.

That first day, I have to ask about thirty questions, but there is not a single person who isn’t completely helpful and good-natured about it. I meet Jan, who apologizes for me missing the ride (100% not his fault), and gives me a Radlkeller apron. After dark, a crate of beer (also with non-alcoholic options) appears in the keller and perfect strangers ask, “Have you had one yet? Take one!” I decide that this is a group I’ll get along just fine with.

Countless Radlkeller volunteers and customers start to weave themselves into the Bellevue tapestry. I befriend an Italian barista with a PhD in molecular biology, who wants to do a triathlon but for the life of him won’t sign up for one. I pester him about this many times. Then there’s Markus, a German who taught himself English working in London and Abu Dhabi and (even in Munich) bikes on the streets like a madman. There are two lively Ukrainian teenagers, who can’t speak English but still try to introduce themselves, and a masters student from Paris who’s helping his kiwi friend convert a commercial bike to a road bike for a ride to Liechtenstein.

Every week, I learn a bit more about changing wires or fixing brake pads. I never fully feel like I know what I’m doing, and sometimes simply walk up to someone more experienced and ask, “Can I just watch you fix this bike?” The times I am of any use, it is very much a group effort, much like with Muhammad. Always, I am met with a smile and a helping hand, and the line between who is the helper and who is being helped dissipates. I love this collaborative aspect of Radlkeller more than anything else.

Soon, Bellevue afternoons and evenings ring with the undeniable peal of community. They consist of going to Critical Mass together with a beer in my water rack, or visiting my friend the Italian at his cafe and leaving with enough free bread to last me two weeks. At Bellevue’s summer party, I jam out to silent disco with a Turkish biologist with hair down to her waist. Later, I meet a volunteer from Iran, who when I tell him I about going to school in New York says that his dream is to own an apartment in Manhattan. The next week, I go trail biking for the first time with the Radkeller guys on Markus’ son’s mountain bike. (The “trail” is more of a winding, dirt pass intent on intersecting as many tree roots and mud puddles as possible, and I am so lousy at it I quit after about 35 minutes.) Afterwards, I swim in the Isar with the Turkish biologist with long hair, and her friend who is a ten year old trapped in the body of a man in his thirties, and I have more fun than I ever thought I could with someone I’ve known for just a couple hours.

To the question of what Bellevue di Monaco is: I can only describe it as a space which exists perpetually and effortlessly in a gray area between outsider and insider, visitor and resident, temporary and permanent. Just as the helper and the helped melt at Radlkeller, so too does the line between “native” and “newcomer”. People speak German, and people speak English, and Urdu and French and Turkish and Italian and Kurdish and Arabic…At some point, you simply step onto this merry-go-round, start spinning, and let it all blend into one beautiful, blurry, motion capture photo.

Prior to starting my time at MSCL, despite every public health and pre-medical class I’ve taken, in the back of my mind I still compartmentalized my research very naively and self-righteously into me, the workshop conductor, and refugees, the workshop participant, as if the two could be separated so cleanly. Who is teaching who, and who is learning from who? I am as much a newcomer as they are, if not more.

At Bellevue, sometimes I have no idea if the people I’ve interacted with are refugees, immigrants, or locals, and I’m starting to think these labels share more similarities than differences. Almost everyone I meet there has come from somewhere else. They’ve all been the new kid on the block, but they’ve all welcomed me like they’ve been there their entire lives, and like I have, too. I can’t help but wonder, when do you stop becoming the one and start becoming the other? But, maybe I’m asking all the wrong questions.

Endnotes:

1. Bellevue Di Monaco. (No Date). Welcome in the Heart of Munich. [online] Available at: https://bellevuedimonaco.de/english/. (Accessed August 27, 2024). 

2. A most important sidetone: Eat the food there. I waited until my last full day in Munich before I did, and then proceeded to grieve over the fact that I would not be able to enjoy the menu again with the devastation of a broken-hearted lover.

3. Coffee seems to be everyone’s first, second, and third drink of the day here. I have never been a regular coffee drinker, and never plan to be.

4. Bellevue Di Monaco. (No Date). Open House. [online] Available at: https://bellevuedimonaco.de/veranstaltung/open-house-4/2024-08-28/. (Accessed August 28, 2024).

5. Apparently Radskeller and Radkeller are both incorrect. Someone make it make sense.

6. I’ve decided to bite the bullet with embarrassment in this city, where crossing the street incorrectly will get you dirty looks.

7. Dubbed by my friend Markus