General Update 16th May, 2005

I have been rather busy lately and have been away from Munich quite frequently, but finally I am back here with some time to write. So, here is what I have been up to since mid February.

I moved into my new flat in early February. It gets very good sunlight and has a nice serene view from the balcony, which I hope to use more now that we are moving into summer. With the world cup starting in less than a month, I am looking forward to having a few visitors staying over here!

I've already written about the ridiculous amount of snow and the Starkbierfest in previous posts, and they happened in the timeframe covered here so go and read those blog entries!

With so much snow, it would have been a shame not to go skiing. I have only managed to go twice this winter, nowhere particularly high, cold or exotic, but nonetheless quite fun since there was fresh snow cover. The first time was in February, when I went with a colleague (a snowboarder!) to Brauneck, a resort which is about an hour away from Munich. About a month later I went for another day trip to Spitzingsee, which is not too far from Brauneck. This time I managed to have a heavy fall and hurt my shoulder. It's nothing too severe but it did put an end to my skiing season.

Those Bavarians love their festivals. There was another one at the end of February called Fasching, known to most other Europeans as Carneval. The last few days of this festival are the ones with the most festivities, including parades, stalls, traditional dancing on stages, music, and people generally dressing up and acting stupid. I took a day off work to have a look at the festivities around Viktualienmarkt and Marienplatz. A few pictures will tell the story.


On the right hand side of the first photo is Tom, a guy that I met at UNSW on the solar car team. I ran into him in Melbourne just before I came to Germany, at a German school, and it turned out that he was coming to Munich too! It's good to see more Aussie faces here.

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