Another Tramp and Another Birthday

A week after Orianne's birthday-tramp and birthday-dinner, we were invited to another birthday party - this time by our friend Silke, this time in Nürnberg and this time with a 70s theme.
Since we had most of the day to get to Nürnberg, we decided to integrate another tramp into the trip. We drove to the Altmühl-Valley, where we did a nice tramp through the forest and then back along part of the Canal that joins the Main and Danube rivers. Unfortunately there was a bit of a drizzle, but that didn't spoil it for us.
Since we had missed out on carneval the weekend before, we decided to really get into the 70s theme and even changed our hair-styles. As you can see, we weren't the only ones with that idea - Philipp and Andreas seemed to have found a similar hair dresser to us in Nürnberg.
The party was a lot of fun. There was great food, great music (not just from the 70s) and we met a lot of great people.
After a good sleep on Philipp's couch and a nice breakfast back at Silke's place, we headed home. On our way, we stopped off in Regensburg ('Regen' means 'rain' in German, which was quite fitting). The city has a very nice old part with narrow alleys and nice houses. It is situated next to the Danube, which we walked along for a while.

Orianne's Birthday-Weekend in Strasbourg

Orianne, a french girl we met in New Zealand and who lives in Strasbourg, invited Jo, Steve, Lindsay and I to a birthday-tramp and a birthday-dinner. Jo and Steve had come from Scotland to stay with us for a week beforehand, so we all headed over to Strasbourg on Friday evening, straight after Lindsay and I had finished work. Orianne left us her flat, while she stayed at a friend's place.

On Saturday we started the day with a nice french breakfast with croissants, yummy french baguette, jams, nutella and green tea. A group of us, consisting of Orianne, Jo, Steve, their scottish friend Mhairi, Orianne's friends Alex and Coline, Lindsay and I drove to a place South of Strasbourg and went for a nice tramp up to a convent on a hill. On the way we had a couple of stops to do things like caber-tossing. Orianne had organised baguettes and savoury cakes for us all for lunch. We enjoyed the view up at the convent and headed back down to the car.
In the evening we went to a little restaurant in 'Petite France', the old part of the city, which we had all to ourselves. Orianne's boss was so generous to lend it to us for the night. Orianne had set a big table for the approx. 15 of us, on which we had Raclette - cheese we melted in little pans, with potatoes, ham, gherkins, etc. We ate, drank, danced and had a great time. The evening went on till about 4am, something that Lindsay and I are not used to anymore - we are getting old ;-)

The next morning we slept in, had brunch and then did a sightseeing tour through the beautiful sunny city. This tour took us also to the top of the cathedral, from which we had an awesome view of Strasbourg.
















Orianne, Jo and Steve during the tramp.













Jo, Orianne, Lindsay, Steve and Mhairi in 'our' restaurant.

Sightseeing-tour
through Strasbourg.

Trip to London

Because Lindsay had a two day training course in London, I took the opportunity to go with him and have a little holiday.

We left on two different flights on Wednesday night. Lindsay's was supposed to leave at 4pm and mine at 7pm. Because it had been snowing all day long, it came to quite a big delay. When I got to the airport at 6pm, Lindsay was still waiting for his flight to arrive. In the end he boarded at 7 and I boarded at 7:30. Then the waiting game continued in the plane - clearing the runway, waiting, de-icing planes, waiting again. Lindsay's flight ended up leaving at 10:30 and mine at 11. My flight was so late that we had to get a special permission to land at Heathrow airport. With the time-difference to England we ended up getting into our hotel bed at 2am German time. We were pretty exhausted.
That was the only downside though. The hotel we stayed in for the first two nights (payed for by work) was pretty flash - a shame we didn't actually manage to spend much time there. Lindsay spent two days learning how to give a presentation, whereas I learned about Monet, Picasso, Dali, etc (I went to the Tate Modern, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery).
At the weekend we stayed with our friend Dan, who we went to uni with in Christchurch. He lives with his cousin in a nice flat in Notting Hill. we also met up with quite a few other kiwis - or Brits we know from NZ - Cynthia, Matt and Jo (as well as Leah and Tim in a very short, flying visit).
On Friday night we went to a musical called 'Dancing in the Streets', which we didn't know much about (is a musical with songs from the Motown era - half of which were well before our time), but turned out to be pretty good and entertaining. On Saturday the group of us went to the markets, to the British Museum, for a curry in Brick Lane and to a British pub. It was a great day. And on Sunday we went to the National History Museum, which was really great, but the time we had there was far too short.
The time in London flew by and soon we were back in snowy Munich, getting back into the work that had built up in the time we were away.