sick at home
I'm sick at home. :(
I sprialled rapidly from fine and perky at work at 9, to blank nauseous staring at a computer screen by 2pm. I left at 3, had a full blown sore throat by 4pm, napped for a few hours, and now face the choice of going to my much anticipated Paolo Nutini concert and making things worse for tomorrow, or forfeiting the tickets and making a new enemy out of the friend-of-a-friend the other ticket was promised to.
what to do?
munich
I went to Munich over easter and had a ball :) There was a lot of drinking over the weekend, mostly in beer gardens in the sun. The weather was lovely, around 15-20 degrees and sunny with blue skies for most of the time we were there. Munich is renowned for all the german stereotypes -
traditional costumes,
sauerkraut,
bratwurst,
giant pretzels*,
steins of beer.... we were only too happy to partake of all of this.
We did a really cool cycling tour of the city, which was especially fun after we stopped at a beer garden for an hour and sampled the local brew. It was led by an english guy who was taking his first ever tour, and somehow we had managed to lose Zarina on the way to our first stop so he freaked out about someone having stolen one of the bikes on his first day, hehe. Poor guy. It all turned out fine in the end :)
The viktualien markets are fantastic and well worth a visit, and German bread simply rocks my world. I was in grainy bread heaven!
We visited
Neuschwanstein Castle in the alps, a giant fairytale castle that provided the inspiration for
Disneyland's castle and was a vaguely running joke from my years of old (i.e. high school) when we all wanted to own castles in Europe.
The highlight was the beer gardens, including the largest beer garden in europe at a place called "Laim". Hahahaha! I think my favourites were the ones in the English gardens, particularly the one by the lake on the northern side... I think it was called Seehaus. (Our afternoon of dozing in the English gardens was also great, while germans energetically played frisbee or badminton or practiced tightrope walking around us). I didn't end up drinking my own stein while I was there, although I did drink from quite a few other people's. And I downed a few half litre mugs of beer and shandy, which wasn't a bad effort!
On saturday night we went to a clubbing district on the west side of town called KultFabrik. Imagine an old warehouse area where all the factories have been turned into clubs -- if you get bored of one, you just walk into another 10 seconds away! What a brilliant idea! We had a GREAT night out, and german guys seemed to be much less sleazy than their corresponding English lads. The music was recognisable pop or mainstream dance, which was my kind of party :)
We also paid a visit to Dachau. Any words I use to describe the experience seem trite, so I won't really try... you should visit if you can, and prepare yourself.
Overall I'd have to say Munich has been one of the best trips I've been on so far. I'd booked it on a whim and had no idea what to expect, maybe that's the secret :) The weather was good, it was easy to get around, there's lots to do (I'd still like to visit the Deutches Museum which is basically a giant nerdy science museum). I'm also very keen to travel the rest of Germany when I get a chance!
Big thanks to Cal, Phil and Zarina for making it fun!
* n.b. not actually in germany. also, not edible, so consume at your own risk.
viral networking
I've joined
Facebook. Go find me there if you know who I am. :)
prize winning photographer!
this is it, folks: the prize winning "funniest photo" from the
Shoot Portobello Lite competition! We ran out last Sunday, found a sign and bought it on a whim, beacuse we didn't have any props. Now we're prize winning photographers. :D
Guess what our prize is?
FREE COMPUTER COURSES! hee hee! it's so ironic it hurts.
