Lok Man in Germany

24 hour motor racing events are not at all well-known in Australia. There is the recently inaugurated Bathurst 24 hours event, but the Bathurst 1000 is much more famous and has a longer history. That starts at 10 a.m. and lasts for about a little over 6 hours, and by that time I would have usually left the TV set already. The Spa-Francorchamps race circuit is located about an hour away from the German town of Aachen, which is within walking distance of the Belgian and Dutch borders. I stayed with my colleague who conveniently owns a flat in Aachen. Driving to Spa was more or less a trip into a lush, dense forest - the race track itself is very scenic and a walk around the circuit feels like going for a hike. There are some impressive elevation changes, with the famous Eau Rouge corner rising 76 m from the lowest point of the track, over a track length of 300 m. The track then continues upwards for another 60 m to the highest point, the Les Combes corner. For me, it was very exciting to...

I promise to stop writing about touch rugby after this article, but since at the moment, work aside, it takes up a few days of my time a week, it deserves another mention. On July 21st and 22nd, in the suburbs of Paris not far from the Orly airport, directly next to a highway and under some grand power lines, an international touch footy tournament was held. Teams came from all over Europe, including some from across the channel, to compete. In some ways, this tournament is a space filler in the odd years of the bi-annual European Championships. As part of this tournament, there is also the all-important Greenstone Hook cup, which the Germans and the French compete for. The weekend started badly. Storms in Europe on Friday night meant that I arrived in Paris at 2:30 a.m.. Luckily, I met another team member on the flight, and instead of staying near the football field, he was staying with a friend in the city. That was convenient, because a taxi to my hotel that evening would have cost ...

At last, a post that is not about traveling. Well, mostly not. Earlier in the year I discovered that a bunch of English speaking people play touch footy (or touch rugby to people outside of Australia and New Zealand) in the English Gardens. On a make shift pitch in the middle of a very large patch of grass (where others play soccer or ultimate frisbee), were a bunch of people throwing around a rugby ball. Fantastic. As I have found out, it is very much a developing sports in Germany. There are about 30 players in the group in Munich, and slightly less in the cities of Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne, which also have clubs. Every month during the summer they meet for tournaments - the first this year was in Cologne in June, more on that later - culminating in the German championships, which conveniently finishes in September just before the Oktoberfest. Most people are expats from the UK, or Aussies, or New Zealanders, or from other rugby playing nations. There are several German players ...

Another long weekend, another trip. A quick glance during the week revealed that there were cheap flights to Amsterdam, so after gathering a couple of friends, off we went. Tom, Renat and Vadik were in Amsterdam from Thursday 7th June to 10th June. As we discovered after we booked our flight, finding accomodation is extremely difficult. It seems that when someone wants to book a room on a Saturday in Amsterdam, the Sunday evening must also be paid for as well. We were prepared to overnight in the airport on Saturday night, but there is a twist. As we arrived in our hostel, we were informed that it was overbooked. We then trekked from the friendly and cultured neighbourhood of that hostel (near the concert hall and the Rijkmuseum) to the red light district, where we were told that an apartment awaits. During the day, the red light district is quite normal. We met the owner of the shop downstairs, got our keys, booked the room for Saturday night as well, and we were ready to see Amsterda...

A friend from German course, Sithira, moved to Dresden to work at the beginning of the year. It was a good chance on this long weekend to drive up there and visit him, see the beautiful city of Dresden, and not have to pay for accomodation. Actually Sithira had just moved to a nice, centrally located apartment in Neustadt, which made our stay a very convenient one. Very prominent in Dresden is the river Elbe, which divides the Neustadt and the Altstadt (new and old town). We spent a bit of time walking over to the Altstadt, checking out sights such as the recently rebuilt Frauenkirche (Lady's Church), which was destroyed during the war. The travel guides list the Frauenkirche, the Opera theatre and the Zwinger (a large palace / courtyard, now art galery) as the must see sights. They are all fantastic places to walk around and look at. While I took a tour of the opera theatre, I couldn't follow the German commentary. We travelled by car to Dresden on Thursday 17th May, which was...

The trip to London between 15th and 19th March was born out of the need to get rid of 3 days of holiday before the end of March. I had several Australian friends who live in London, so why not. I stayed with Hong and Marlene, in their basement apartment in the suburb of Wimbledon. Funnily enough the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club is not actually located there, but the next suburb down. The museum said that they moved down there many years ago. Having never used or seen the tube / train system in London before, the train trip to Wimbledon was interesting, if rather long. I changed at Tottenham Hale, Vauxhall and then arrived at Wimbledon. As long as the trip was, I was just enjoying reading English ads, and eavesdropping on other English speakers. It seems to me that Wimbledon, near the station, is a middle class suburb, with its fair share of shops, pubs (where we watched some six-nations rugby), Starbucks and pastie shops. A stroll up the hill towards the tennis club gave a more local app...

The main ski season in Europe is more or less over now. (I say "main" because there are glaciers where one can ski the whole year). It has not actually been a particularly good season, in fact, the weather has been so warm that it raised people's attention about global warming again. So warm in fact, that there was virtually no ski season in Germany at all, other than on the Zugspitze, which is the highest peak of Germany. The ski world cup took place at Garmisch Partenkirchen, just south of Munich and at the base of the Zugspitze. The view was disheartening - the man-made track was the only patch of white in sight. It was still interesting to get to see a major slalom event, although I actually wanted to watch the more impressive and fast Downhill and Super-G races, which were on the previous day. The lack of snow in Germany (there was not even a white Christmas! How tragic for the Germans) meant that one must search for other skiing locations further afield. I ended up ...

On Carnival weekend (17th and 18th Feb), Renat, Satoko and I made our way to the Italian city of Verona. On Friday afternoon we packed our bags, loaded the trunk with beer (that was an order from our Italian friends!) and set off on our journey. After 5 hours of driving through southern Bavaria, Austria, the Alps, and South Tirol, and getting lost several times, we arrived safely. One can see one reason why the Germans have to pay high taxes. The German Autobahns are free, Austrian ones require some time pass, and the Italians charge for each km travelled. We stayed with our friend Debora and her boyfriend Markus, who have recently purchased a new apartment. I had to share a bed with Renat (another guy) but I managed. The Verona visit was mainly a relaxing tour - we were guided through the old city centre, before we hit the local mall. The most famous thing in Verona is the 'Arena', which is a Colosseum like open-air amphitheatre, which is still in use today for concerts. I vow...

So, what is it? It's a drink that my colleague promised to make on new year's eve, the right way. So, this is how it goes: 1. Make some sort of mulled wine in a pot. Note that the ingredients are somewhat different to the stuff that you get at the Christmas markets here (Gluehwine) 2. Put a specially made rack on top of the pot and place a specially made sugar cone on the rack 3. Pour rum on the sugar cone 4. Light the rum 5. Continue to add rum so the flame doesn't go out, until the sugar cone has all melted and dripped into the mulled wine 6. Admire the aftermath 7. Consume Afterwards we went and lit some fireworks in the town centre to celebrate the new year (not that there was really any count down) before escaping the chaos and into bed.

Over Christmas we had only planned a trip to Rome, because my Aussie friend Tom found that there were cheap train tickets. Then somebody suggested, "Let's visit Pompeii as well!". I finally decided to check the map and realised that Pompeii is quite close to Naples and Salerno, which are where my friend Agostino worked and lived respectively. Never one to miss out on the possibility of seeing some extra cities, I put them onto my itinerary as well. So, on 23rd December, Tom, Wenjing, Han and I set off in our Trenitalia cabin towards Rome. First, the train trip. A 10 hour day train trip is, in practice, much more exhausting and uncomfortable than a 10 hour plane trip, which I was already quite used to. For a start, there are no in-flight videos (don't underestimate its importance!). The person sitting next to you can potentially change at every stop, strange Italian speaking people come into the cabin to tell you why you should shake their hand, toilets don't work ...