More Kiwi Visitors

Over the last two weekends we had some more kiwi visitors again.

The first visitor was Dan, a friend from Canterbury Uni, who is currently living and working in London. He stayed with his German friend Richard and we had a big reunion with him and Michael, who lives here in Munich and was also part of our Computer Science 3rd year project team.

We took Dan out for dinner on the Friday night and introduced him to some German beer and food. On the Saturday we went to Königsee, a lake in the German alpes. We watched some skeletton and luge drivers racing down the 1km course at more than 100km/h. Afterwards we walked to the top of the Grünstein mountain (more a hill really), from where we had great views. We rounded up the day with a dinner in Salzburg (Austria) and got lost on our way back, when we were trying to avoid the motorway (which you get charged for).

Our second and third visitors were Eyk and her boyfriend Tim, who stayed with us from Friday night till Monday morning. They have come over from New Zealand to visit relatives in Holland, then us and then settle in England for a while. We also introduced them to some German beer and food, by going out for dinner and having a typical Bavarian white sausage breakfast in the morning. We did a sightseeing tour of Munich and watched the rugby in an Australian pub on Saturday. On Sunday we took the train to Herrsching, which is South of Munich, right by the lake Ammersee. From there we walked up to a monastry, which has an integrated Brewery and beer garden/hall. We managed to sit outside (with our jackets) and enjoy the amazingly warm and sunny November afternoon.

Summer in Munich (or "Deutschland ein Sommermärchen")

View over the mountains near Lenggries, where Lindsay went climbing for a day with Norbert.



Lindsay and I on our way to the top of the Herzogstand, in the German Alps.


Kerstin with her new Road Bike in front of one of Bavaria's many beer gardens.

Paris trip

A month or so ago, we were getting really sick of work, so we decided to break it up a little and head to Paris!

Kerstin alluded to it a little in her previous post, but here are some piccies (in no particular order) as requested by Phillip ;-)

Only in France: A large lighthouse several hundred kilometres from the sea.












Here is a view from the funny lighthouse in the previous picture.












One of the many wanna-be groups of artists in the Louvre












Cause we couldn't afford a helicoper, here is an arial picture of a model of the Notre dame












Kerstin's favorite church - the Sacre Coeur.













A very small portion of the bones in the Catacombs - worth a look












Little Holland













Don't throw any stones! Not because its a large glass house, but because the dozens of guys wandering around with large rifles might take offence...










The 4 Champagnes we tried while in Epernay - Ranking roughly from right to left in order of taste - and left to right in order of price...











A graveyard in Verdun - one of the largest battlefields in the 1st world war.

Winter is suddenly here

This morning when we looked out of the window, everything was covered in a thin white layer of snow/frost. And feeling the cold wind on our short bike ride to work, we realised - winter is suddenly here. Considering it has still been nice and warm for most of the October, that was quite a surprise to us. Realising how time has flown by, also made us realise how long it has been since our last blog entry.

The summer here is Munich was great. With the exception of pretty much the entire August (which only rained), we had really awesome weather. We had lots of guests, who allowed us to explore Munich from a tourist's perspective. We also did a couple of trips into the alps and we bought new road bikes, which we explored the surrounding area with.

Work got very busy after a colleague of ours was made redundant and we were left with his share of the work load. We hesitated to take leave because we knew everything would be more stressful when we get back. Things haven't really changed in the meantime apart from us taking it more lightly and realising that we can only do so much work...

Two weeks ago I (Kerstin) was sent to milan for training. It was a great break from supporting angry customers and I managed to do a bit of sightseeing in the evenings (also with the help of our friend Mike Moyle who's living in Milan for a week).

Immediately after getting back from Milan, Lindsay and I went on a holiday to Paris, the Champagne-Region and Verdun. We did lots of sightseeing in Paris and way too much walking again as usual, but we had a great time. We went to the Louvre, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame and onto the Eiffel Tower together and split up so that I could go to the Musee d'Orsay and the Centre de Pompidou, while Lindsay went to the Catacombs etc.

In the Champagne Region we took a tour of the Mercier Champagne House in Epernay, one of the largest champagne houses - which has 25km of underground cellars! We tasted four different types of Champagne. And in Verdun we looked at the monuments and huge cemetries reminding us of the long battle during the First World War.

Photos of our trips will be published shortly.

Now we are getting prepared for a long winter, which will probably be a lot colder than in Wiesbaden last year, considering we are at 500m above sealevel.