Dear MAJOBA Customers, from June 26 to August 04, we’re taking a little break. Our webshop will stay open, but shipping of our magnetic bookmarks will be delayed. You’re welcome to place orders to your heart’s content, but your packages won’t be shipped until August 05.
Warm regards, Your MAJOBA Team
January 2025
Sometimes everything runs smoothly in life – and sometimes it doesn't. Just like in football, where there are days when nothing comes together. A footballer once remarked that when luck just won't materialise, bad luck often comes along with it. A life lesson that I learnt a few years ago at the ‘TrendSet’ trade fair in Munich in January helps me in such hapless phases.
It all started with the decision to take a plane for fear of ice and snow. It was here that things started to ‘not quite run smoothly’: I paid more for my excess baggage at the airport than for the flight ticket itself. When I arrived at the trade fair, the next shock was inevitable: my magnetic bookmarks and lamps, which I had sent in advance, had not arrived. So, I set up my stand with just a few samples and even these were barely illuminated.
It got even worse: on the morning of 6 January, I waited for an eternity in the freezing cold at the bus stop in the direction of the exhibition centre. It was a public holiday in Bavaria – and I had forgotten. No wonder I felt ill the next day and my voice failed me. Oh, everything was just going wrong for me, while the exhibitors around me were happy with themselves and the world. I said to myself: Now stay calm and keep your nerve. Because the run of bad luck continued. After a broken suitcase roll, wrong underground journeys and a lost notebook, the chaos culminated in my cousin Günter, who wanted to take me to the airport the day after the trade fair ended, getting stuck in his snowed-in holiday home in Austria. "You don't have to leave yet, the flight doesn't leave until 3pm!" my aunt, who I was staying with, wondered as I set off for the S-Bahn at 10am on the day of my journey. "Better safe than sorry," I answered her calmly, because I had learnt by now that if things don't go smoothly, they just simply don't work. And indeed, what had to happen did happen: the S-Bahn carriage I was sitting in was suddenly uncoupled. While the front carriages rolled towards the airport, I ended up somewhere else entirely and took ages to find the right route to my destination. I arrived at the airport just in time.
Munich was not an easy place for me. Years later, I travelled there to paint a few city motifs. I chose the Frauenkirche, Marienplatz and the Old Town Hall. The first day was wonderful – the sun was shining, and I happily painted the famous towers of the Frauenkirche. But the next morning a completely different picture awaited me: thick fog lay heavy over the city. But instead of being frustrated, I decided to accept the situation as it was. Without further ado, I drove to the Allianz Arena, bought a day ticket and made myself comfortable in one of the upper tiers of the football stadium. I painted the pitch, the stands and the open roof – no, not with a view of the mousy grey and foggy sky, but of an imaginary blue sky. I felt as happy as Karl Valentin, who once said: "I'm happy when it rains. Because if I'm not happy, it rains too." A true Munich native who knew how to take life with humour!