Lok Man in Germany

When my high school friend, Dzung Vo, said that he is coming to Munich with his new high spec camera, we decided that we would go to Koenigsee for the weekend. I learnt a few things from him about photography, and I took as many photos as my battery will allow. Which turned out to be about 210. I have posted a few photos here. You can find more on this Flickr set page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lokmanho/sets/72157594348965719/ On the Saturday we took the last electric boat cruise over the lake to St. Bartholomew, where there is a church, a hunting lodge of King Ludwig I, and an ice formation called the ice chapel (which I tried to reach but had to turn back due to shortage of light). When we arrived, we found out that the last boat trip back left almost immediately! Fortunately, we met another group on our boat that had a special booking to leave at 8:30 p.m. after dinner, and we had dinner and travelled back with them. They were quite an international group, and I wondered what kin...

A recent SAE brake conference in the USA has provided me with another opportunity to take a short holiday and visit some friends. This week long trip started with a visit to a resort / conference centre near Dallas, called the Gaylord Texan resort. It's a huge complex with an artificial river flowing through it and some other landscaped features, all under a giant glass house. I got through my presentation, listened to some others, and after 3 days I was off to New York. Coincidentally, that was the day when Yankees pitcher Cory Lidel flew into a Manhattan building. It worried me a little, but in the end it was the normal delays and bad weather that led to a late arrival. My high school friend, Ben Yung, allowed me to stay at his midtown apartment. From there I made a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, took a tour of the New York Public Library (apparently the filmed part of the Thomas Crown Affair there since they didn't use museums), and got a bit closer to the statue of libe...

It seems like a distant memory now, but a month ago this was the only thing on the social calender. "Where can we go tonight?" "Let's go to Oktoberfest!" "Again? OK ..., but no drinking this time." I got up early enough to see the end of the opening parade, where horse drawn carts take beer barrels and some people (how do I get on those carts?) into the Oktoberfest grounds. The grounds and the subway station are officially called Theresienwiese, but it is affectionately known as Wies'n. When people first mentioned beer tents I thought of marquees that hold some hundreds of people. Actually, these so-called tents surpassed all parts of my imagination. There are 14 of these temporary beer halls structures that fit several thousand people each, with a live band plays in each of them. When they play one of the traditional German festival songs like Viva Colonia, something from the world cup, or Robbie William's Let Me Entertain You, most of them ge...

The weekend after the Formula 1 race at the Hockenheimring, another motorsport event was held there which interested me. This was the inaugural Formula Student event in Germany, equivalent to the Formula SAE competition in Australia. Basically, students design and race small cars in a once a year event. My old team from UNSW was invited here, so I had to go and cheer them on! Note, that is NOT how Germans usually spell Sydney. The quality of the competition was fantastic, there were so many technical innovations considering that this is the first German competition. Beautifully made carbon fibre monocoques, a CVT, carbon fibre steering wheels with digital readouts, well styled bodywork, and what appears to be lots of sponsorship money. The winning team from Austria, TU Graz, had a redbull logo on the front of their car - just like the Formula 1 team! The UNSW team did an excellent job, and made it to the design final, which consisted of the 6 most well designed cars. When the endurance...

Between 17th July and 27th July my family came to Europe to visit, and together we did some travelling in Munich, Berlin and Paris. One feature of this trip was the heat - the top temperatures were between 30 and 38 deg C every day, which is rather abnormal for this part of Europe. Luckily my parents have paid for some classy hotels which had good air-conditioning. Phew. The journey started in Munich, where we first visited Andechs, the monastry brewery that is near my residence. People go there and view the buildings, monastries, but most importantly, drink beer and eat lots of pork. They just introduced a new apple juice and wheat beer (Weissbier) combination, which sounds quite interesting. Later that night we went to the national theatre to watch an Opera. I bought some horrible seats in the back row on the top floor (I think the 7th) where the stage was barely visible. The Opera was Orlando, sung in Italian with German subtitles, so it was all lost on us. But for 10 Euros we got t...

The World Cup in Germany has come and gone but many of the memories remain - there are still German flags on some cars, souvenir shops trying to clear their world cup souvenir stock, and the poster of the world cup draw is still on the office wall. For me, the world cup meant lots of Aussie visitors since our team qualified for this world cup, and therefore a lot more excitement than usual. This also brought many friends from my high school (North Sydney Boys) over here, some that I have not spoken to for almost 9 years. It was fantastic to see them and hear their stories. Michael Wrathall stayed with me for a few days and it was great to have another Aussie to watch the matches with. The second highlight was rather unplanned. I managed to get a ticket for the Australia vs. Italy match in the second round! My friends Hong and Marlene had just arrived in Germany after Australia's qualification by beating Croatia, and they called me to say that there were tickets on sale in Stuttgart...

On 29th April I flew to Warsaw in Poland to start a trip through central Europe with Liang, my friend from high school and university. The 11 day trip would take us through Warsaw, Krakow, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg and then back "home" to Munich. The visit to Warsaw was a brief one. I arrived on Saturday afternoon and met Liang and his friends from Warsaw, Tomasz and Alicja. There I stayed overnight and walked past (and sometimes through) numerous churches, former noble residences, institutions and also parts of the old town. On the way we visited the Royal Palace, which was in the process of being refurbished but the new paint job was in a rather garish yellow colour. Our local tour guides kindly gave us a bit of history behind many of the buildings and the Polish religious traditions, and it became apparent that Pope John Paul was a very well loved and respected figure there. This theme would continue during our next few days in Poland. The next morning we all hopped into To...