German Summer and relics from the past....

G´day,

And a special welcome to my congregation, Hi Emm, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Today I´ll show you a video of this year´s summer...typical German summer by the way...


Over the last days I have been on our attic and after I found lots of funny stuff from the past in the basement I found lots of even funnier stuff on the attic...
What I really like about being in Germany is that even though the attic is full of spiderwebs (and I mean really covered in them) you don´t have to worry about the spiders here. Love it. I guess in Australia I wouldn´t have entered the attic just like that...
This is my granddad´s old typewriter from 1926...with care, soapy water and lot´s of WD40 I cleaned it and all parts are working again...it´s now available on eBay so if anyone is interested just contact me (international shipping costs: approx. Aus$ 150)

Well, apart from the tywriter I found boxes with old schoolstuff of mine, boxes of letters from my sister (he he he...) and some traces from the time I used the attic to dry certain plants I grew in my parents garden when I was younger.

When I had a look at my old school folders containing old school tests from high school I had a good laugh. Like all kids I voiced my general opinions on life, the universe and everything with big black markers on the folder. My favorite quote from that time: "I don´t know you bt I hate you never the less"....haha I was a little sunshine when I was young...

Ok, that´s all for today, have a great one, take care and cya later

Munich weekend with the whole family incl. recipe for the best dessert

G´day,

And first of all I have to apologise that I have been a little slack blogging over the last week. Well, I have been busy. A special "Hi" to my followers, Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan.

Ok, this blog entry will be more on the picture side again and first what you all have waited for:
A new Frauke pic...well, she not that cute anymore now that she is over a year but still the cutest kid I know....

Last weekend was my father´s birthday, so my parents went to Munich and my mum and me thought it would be a nice birthday surprise for my dad, if the whole family would be together for that day so I flew in on Friday morning.
Flying from Münster to Munich is nearly ridiculous as it´s just a 55min flight and once you have reached 10km altitude the already start to decent again but it doesn´t do to complain. So I arrived at 9 in the morning in Munich and my mum texted me where to go and I just showed up at the cafe where my parents had breakfast. Well, my dad would probably a great poker player as he didn´t look surprised at all but he asured us that he didn´t have any idea that I would come over...
Munich, Marienplatz
Town hall...My parents and me went around the inner city for most of the morning and I have to admit that Munich is quite beautiful (if you manage to ignore all the Bayern Munich soccer club scarfs, flags and other stuff you can buy at any corner)
Well, every 10 meters there is such a little shop for all those misguided people who support Bayern Munich...I wished I had my St. Pauli shirt on but I hadn´t...
More Munich...
and more Munich...and around lunchtime we did what all Bavarians do, sitting inside the Beer garden (which deserves the capital "B" as you drink large Beers)...
Decent sized Beer glass (1 liter)...good beer, too
Munich at 1pm...everyone is drinking...quite like Melbourne at 1 pm on a Friday afternoon...
Well later that day we went and picked up my sister (the one grinning lke she just had a huge smoko of weed...) and went...
into the next Beer garden...
Beer gardens are an awesome invention and in that form they only exist in Bavaria. And -grudgingly- I have to admit that Bavaria isn´t that bad. My friend Otto will be pleased to read that (as he´s fro Munich) BUT that is still no excuse to be a Bayern Munich fan, mate...Back to the topic of Beer gardens, it´s a kind of reverse BYO as we know it from Australian restaurants, instead of bringing your drinks you can bring your food here. All over Munich you have these beautiful gardens where tables and banks are provided under some nice old trees and as mentioned, you can bring anything you like to have apart from the drinks. You are still supposed to buy them there, so every night half of Munich´s population migrates into the Beer gardens loaded with tons and tons of food and then everybody eats and has a few beers. And as the beers are served in 1 liter glasses, a few beers can have quite an effect...lol

By the way, beers, while I was in Australia, they came uo here with a new warning label for beer:
Devote yor attention to te little warning label right next to the "BIO" sign, I guess it means that drinking prevents you from getting pregnant. Well, it worked for me so far, I often had drunk sex and never got pregnant...
The whole posse drinking...
...and eating...and then it started to rain and it didn´t stop the whole weekend but we didn´t mind. Munich is one of the few citys in the world which are still beautiful even though it rains, the next day was my fathers actual birthday and my sister and me decided to do the dinner as a birthday present but first of all we had to go shopping and sight seeing...
My dad, my sister and me waiting for the subway...my sister is still grinning like someone who smoked something illegal...
Funny thing, every subway station in Munich has a Defibrillator, so if you are too bored waiting you can electro-shock anoying people...what a nice idea...so once in the city we went from shop to shop and even though I´m usually not the person who likes to go shopping, I enjoyed Munich as the shops are so posh that I was amazed that they let someone like me in there...
Caviar for Eur 199,00/30g...nice, eh?
Munich in wet...
more wet Munich. Te rest of my family showed me an amazing shop where I could have spend really huge amounts of money if I had any. The basic idea of this store is to provide stuff from the past like bycicles like from 1920 or clothes the style they had in the 20ies, they even had Levis 501s which were manufactured like 1947. I could have spend the whole day in there. Here is a link to their website (english version).
After we had done the necessary shopping we went to visit the Hofbräuhaus (purely for blog purposes)that even Australians should know...Munichs most famous drinking place...
I guess if my friends from Melbourne would have been with me I would have lost them in here...
Part of the inside...only a little part as the whole thingy is huuuuge...
You can think of it what you want but the slogan on the wall is choice "Durst ist schlimmer als Heimweh" = "Thirst is worse than homesickness"...I love it...
This is the reason why I couldn´t spend more than 5 min in there...in the middle of the Hofbräuhaus there are Bavarian "musicians" who "play" Bavarian "music"...argh! Luckyly they were pausing when we were there and we were out of it before they started again...
Art...
Bavarian clothing...
More Bavarian clothing...
Of course we went into some other Bavarian drinking house for lunch...I´m still struggeling with the menu which was in Bavarian...my sister is still grinning-tss tss tss...
Well beer for lunch...
My sister, the medical doctor...next FB profile pic, eh?
Quite nice picture of my parents...
Well....
And for saturday night my sister and me cooked an awesome dinner, Julia cooked the dinner and I did the dessert...

And as I had the impression that the educational part of my blog suffred a little over the last weeks here is another recipe:

Recipe for the best dessert ever: Mousse au Chocolate
You need four eggs, 200ml cream, 200g dark chocolate, 150ml strong coffee, 50g sugar (don´t get confused as I took the pictures when I did it for five persons so I just took some more of everything...)
First melt the chocolate in a water bath (just take a bowl and put it in a pot with boiling water to prevent it from getting burned)
Separate the yolks from the egg white...
Beat the egg white and the cream...
Mix yolks with sugar and coffee and molten chocolate
then carefully lift the beaten egg white and the cream under it until you get one smooth mass...put in refigerator, wait for 5 hours and yumm...

Ok, that´s all for today and I´ll do the next entry a little sooner than last time. Have a great one, take care, have fun and cya...

A weekend in Holland...

G´day,

And a special welcome to my congregation, Hi Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Today´s blog entry will be a bit more on the photo side as I took some pictures last weekend when I visited Josara´s parents in Sleen.
Sleen is in Holland´s country side and it´s a really picturesque village...
Sleen village entrance...
inside Sleen...typical Dutch street pavement...they have too many bricks and don´t know what to do with them, so the Dutch cover their streets with bricks...
Nice house...
more nices houses...very Dutch...I really like the thatched roofs...
more beautiful Sleen...
Yeah, Sleen really is picturesque...
even the church...
...and the graveyard...
more old farmhouses...
Josara´s parents house...
...has a beautiful garden...
...and an old stable...
...with goats...
...and a tractor from the 50ies which is the pride of Josara´s dad (more on that later)...
The garden really is beautiful...
From left to right, Jan, Jan and Thea...

After dinner Jan decided that he could trust me enough to let me take the tractor for a ride around the village...and the first thing I learned was that a tractor has more pedals than I was used to. But once you know which pedal to push it was quite easy to get the tractor to move forward...
...forward is easy but finding the break proved to be a little more of a challenge...
...still looking for it...but luckyly nothing was in the way...it would have been a nice start for the relationship to the parents of my girlfriend to drive her Dad´s tractor into their living room...
but in the end I got the hang of breaking and we took a nice ride around Sleen. Riding a tractor is definetly fun but a little on the loud and bumpy side. For some reason the Monster Magnet song "Ridin´the tractor on a dope farm..." came into my head but as Holland can be considered the dope farm of Europe that was explainable.

Afterwards we spend a great evening, even though Josara´s parents comitted a war crime in the war of sexes which is banned by international treaty, they showed me the children pictures of Josara without her being there to censor the worst bits...highly entertaining...we had a fun night...

The next morning Jan and me went to see the Hunebeds in the area. Those are ancient burrial sides made of stone. Very archeological area to grow up in, now I know why Josara became an archeologist.
At that size of rocks even I can tell "Jup, that´s probably an artefact..."
That´s a stylish graveside...
Well, when I´m dead I want something like that...
...and of course no visit to the Dutch countryside would be complete without a windmill...
It was a really great weekend and I´m already looking forward to come back again...

As I said, this entry will be a little on the picture side, so I´l leave it at this and wish you a good one, have fun, take care and cya