Oktoberfest-Visitors

For some reason around this time of year, we become a hotel for many friends wanting to visit us. Coincedentally Oktoberfest (the world's biggest folks (read beer) festival) is celebrated at this time, so we always have something to show them.
First our friends Johanna and Eckhard came. Eckhard and I spent almost an entire day in one of the Oktoberfest beer tents getting drunk on 1 litre glasses (Maß') of beer, while Johanna, Yana and Kerstin headed down South to a couple of lakes (Ammersee and Starnberger See) and enjoyed the sunshine. The rest of the time we spent in Munich going for a walk in the English Gardens, visiting a beer garden and meeting up with friends of Johanna and Eckhard's, who had also come down for the Oktoberfest. In the beer garden Yana drank her first "Maß"of beer ;-)

The same day that Johanna and Eckhard left, our dutch friend Matthijn arrived. High on the list of priorities was taking Matthijn into the Alps because although he is european, his only climbing has been done in New Zealand. We innocently picked out a nice looking mountain on Google Earth in the Berchtesgadener area, and then discovered that it is the second highest mountain in Germany. We decided we'd see how it went and off we drove. We started climbing at about 10am from Au (~650m) and got to the hut just in time for lunch (~2000m - hmmm warm food and good beer half way up a mountain), before continuing toward the top. We got to about ~2400m and decided the weather was only going to get worse (was already lost in cloud and a howling gale) and so we ran back down. We then spent the rest of his visit hobbling around on aching legs.