The Bavarian Forest

Last Saturday we drove two hours to near the Czech border to go to the Bavarian Forest.  We took a cable car to near the top of  the highest mountain, Grosser Arber.  We then walked down along one of the trails through forest.  

Afterwards we went for a walk around the nearby alpine lake, Arbersee.  It was another pretty walk to do and finished with the usual lunch of sausages and beer overlooking the lake.  

In the afternoon we went to Baumwipfelpfad,  a tree top walk, which has only opened recently and is said to be the longest in the world.  It is probably the longest due to the long spiral upwards (44m high) near the end.  It was a beautiful structure and the view from the top was amazing.

More photos

Rainy Sunday Afternoon

Last Sunday we had rain yet again.  Ingrid had another set of reports to do but thankfully had most done on Saturday and finished the last few in the morning.  Sophie had organised ten of us to go for a big Dim Sum lunch, thankfully we hadn't had breakfast!  It was great to have such an array of food and different to the usual sausages.  Debra had chicken feet but we decided not to try that!

We had decided to leave museums, galleries etc.. for rainy days.  The nice thing is that quite a lot of the big galleries here only charge 1 Euro on Sundays and to our surprise they are not crowded!! 

Glyptothek

We went to the Glyptothek first.  This is one of Munich's oldest museums full of art and sculpture from ancient Greece and Rome.  The building was also amazing and had been reconstructed after the war.

After this we went to the Neue Pinakothek.  It was great to be able to get so close to such famous artists' works that back home we would have to queue and pay a lot for.  There were lots of German paintings as well as Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Manet,  and sculptures by Rodin.

Overheard as we were leaving: "There were so Manet, it made such an impression I could hardly see them for Matisse* in my eyes. For 1 Euro, it was well worth the Monet. We will definitely Gaugin as we have nothing Toulouse."

                                                                            *thanks to Steve A.

Jazz and Joe Green

I had a very busy weekend of lots of report writing.  Thankfully we got to break this up with some great activities.  

Friday evening we went to Dachau Aldstadt.  Sometime ago we were told about a special night in Dachau - it was a "Chess Night".  Needless to say we weren't as enthused as the guy telling us about it until he produced a leaflet that said "Jazz Night".  It was a fantastic night with 8 different bands on stages set up around the old town - in alleys and piazzas with beer gardens (and sausage stalls) set up at each.  Unusually there was a cocktail stall which our friend Penny was very happy to find.  The "Amper Stompers" were a particularly entertaining collection of ageing gentlemen belting out trad jazz. At one point, the pianist wittily combined a well known Beethoven stanza with a piece of Richard Claydermen in a frenetic honky tonk piece. We continued the night sitting and listening to an amazing gypsy swing quartet lead by the guitarist, Joscho Stephan, who we will try and see again sometime whilst here.

Saturday morning we were invited to Sophie and Craig's place for pancakes.  Mmmm ..... banana pancakes.  After this I went back to reports :(  and Malcolm took Sophie for another check up for her knee at a very thorough German hospital!

Schloss Schleissheim

Back in August when we visited the Schloss Schleissheim we were keen to go to a concert in the beautiful hall inside.  Tickets selling out and prices stopped us doing this last year.  But this year....

In thanks for Malcolm's patient transfers, Sophie bought us tickets to see the Verdi concert for the Saturday night.  Except for the ordinary wine we were not disappointed.  

Being as cultural as we are, we then went to the Beer Garden in the Schloss gardens for beer and sausages!

More photos.

Goodbye,Yellow ....

The rapeseed flower spectacular now being over, I thought that I would post a couple of photos: one with the Haimhausen church steeple in the background, taken on the way back from Ingrid's school one morning and the other taken a few kilometres to the east of here, as we flew in to Munich Airport coming back from Croatia.

Summer is here......finally

Beautiful sunny weekend and we got to enjoy lunch on the balcony.