Happy Monday to all my Aussies.
Here in Munich, it's still Sunday morning... although it turns out daylight savings starts today, so when I woke up at 8.57am - a small triumph in itself - it was actually 9.57am... but it's all good. Our plans today are to head to the city centre and take advantage of the museums that offer €1 entry on a Sunday. But first to what's been going on:
Working bee #2 or Just Enrichment
We're still living it up in a fairly sedate fashion here in Munich. When I say living it up, I mean less hitting the town every night and more being spoiled rotten by our gracious hosts, Klaus and Cornelia.
Each morning I have woken up to a breakfast of freshly cut fruit, yoghurt and muesli and coffee... And when I say woken up, I mean whenever my dreams decide to release me from unconscious bliss. Some days it's 9am, some days it's a little later.* But before you make a miniature likening of me to stick pins into, let me tell you about some more working bees....
As I mentioned in my last post, I am keen for some opportunities to volunteer. It turns out that staying with Klaus & Cornelia is a virtual guarantee of chances to help out. As I mentioned in my last post, we pitched in on a working bee at the Waldorf school that Klaus has been volunteering with. But reading back over the last post, I think I dramatically understated his involvement - Klaus has basically been coordinating the building/ fit out of the school for at least the last 2 years and doing a stack of the work himself. He likes to help out. So much so, that we had our next opportunity inn the following days!!
Their next door neighbour's garden was looking a bit drab and another friend wanted to plant a cherry tree in the back garden, so Klaus organised a trailer; one and a half tonnes (yup, tonnes) of high grade composted soil and we were off. I case you're wondering what one and a half tonnes of soil looks like here is a pic with about a tonne left...
Phil and I (ok mostly Phil) stood in the trailer and shovelled out about one and a quarter tonnes, one bucket load at a time and Klaus and Cornelia spread it out over the ground to create a rich topsoil for new grass seeds to thrive in. For our efforts, we were rewarded with an awesome Bavarian lunch of wiessewurst (a particularly yummy white German sausage), giant bretzels and home made potato salad. Phil is keeping on with the veggie-ism, even in the face of the best sausages on the planet, so we had quite a hilarious job of surreptitiously swapping sausages to my plate and my potato salad to his without the lovely neighbour who cooked it for us noticing**. That my friends, was just enrichment. I worked pretty hard shovelling dirt and was rewarded with sausages from heaven.
A visually appealing rendition of weissewurst (although missing the potato salad). German food is delicious, but not super photogenic!
The following day was cherry tree planting day. I was excused, but Phil and Klaus headed off early to dig a hole & pop in a tree. It turned out to be a much bigger job than originally thought because the ground into which the hole was dug was all nice soft earth for the first 10cm and then a hellscape of earth so heavily compacted that it resembled concrete. Phil and Klaus spent about 4 or 5 hours wrangling with this tree, after which they stayed on for spaghetti lunch, which seemed (a) pretty fair; and (b) the standard reward for gardening work done for a friend or neighbour in Munich.
The Unjust Enrichment
However, it got better. The tree planting was carried out for their friends, Bruno and Gaby, who own the coolest bar in Munich - the Rattlesnake saloon***. It serves awesome german beer, giant ribs, steak and burgers (with a veggie burrito available for those in the know) and also has live music - mostly in the rock, blues, rockabilly genres.
Phil's stepbrother Niko has worked at the Rattlesnake for years and we have been there before - I even blogged about it on our last trip to Munich - http://warung-ocha.blogspot.de/2012_01_01_archive.html. It is just cool as hell - decorated with rattlesnake skins and US licence plates and the walls are lined with a miniature railway track for a toy-sized train that actually runs from the bar to the stage, so you can send a shot of tequila to the band and make a song request at the same time!!!
As a thanks for the gardening work, Bruno invited the whole family to come to the Rattlesnake for dinner - and drinks - on him. Given that I have been looking forward to a night at the Rattlesnake for oh, say about the last 3 years, I was pretty excited. It only took us a day to get ourselves into action and we spent Thursday night at the Rattlesnake, eating a plate of ribs that looked something like this.
The ribs to end all ribs
To go with the ribs to end all ribs, we were drinking the Rattlesnake's own Pale Ale called "Fucking Rock & Roll Pale Ale" - how rock is that? We had an amazing Blues Band - the Buddy Whittington Band - playing a mix of their own music and some covers - Johnny Cash fans would've loved it. PLUS their bass guitarist is basically German Bill Murray!!
Do you not see the Bill Murray resemblance?? And also the reason for the Monday meme above??? Technically speaking, the bassist is not German - but calling him the American Bill Murray doesn't really work.
Having done none of the work myself, I felt a teeny bit guilty for accepting such an awesome reward for no work, but hey, these are the things that happen during travels, so I'll make the most of it...
What's next??
Next up - as I mentioned above, we're heading into Munich today to check out a couple of museums.
Our awesome friend Joelle is coming to join us sometime in the next week and we're mere days from my lovely's Phil's 37th birthday... Still need to put some thought into marking the bday... will let you know what we come up with.
There are some day trips we can do from Munich, including Nuremberg and Augsberg, so we'll keep you posted.
----------------
* okay, so it's never actually been 9am... not even today when it should have been 9am, but wasn't... sob...
** I'm not sure some of that the older generation of Germans think vegetarianism applies to sausages...
***Having not actually been to other bars in Munich, it's a big call, but I totally stand by it.
No comments:
Post a Comment