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

The fun of driving....fast...and featuring Paul´s poems

G´day,

I´m back from my trip to a foreign country where I spent my weekend. And my dear Australian friends, it´s possible to go there by car. When it comes to that...you can go there really fast...

A special welcome to Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan (who I´e met by now and so he get´s an extra special welcome and a "Thanks for a great weekend").

First of all, thanks to Facebook, I know now that many of my relatives are quite creative, artwise, and I have asked Paul, the son of Bill, if it would be o.k. for me to put a link on my blog to the poems he has published via facebook and it is. When Paul pubished his first two poemson FB I saw the link on my Home page and my first thought was...ah, well another amateur poet...and I ignored it for quite a time. And then curiousity got the better of me and half expecting a good laugh I clicked on the link . I don´t want to influence your point of view too much so I just say I liked them as he wrote words that somehow spoke to me and I just link there

http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php#/notes.php?id=667437469

One of the better sides of Germany is the fact that there is no speedlimit on the Autobahn. In fact there is a speedlimit on most of the Autobahns either by streetsigns or the actual amount of traffic or unfortunate geografical features especially in the curve- and hill-department. But the Autobahn I took was of the cooler persuation...A31 from Ochtrup to Meppen...best Autobahn in Germany. The A31 is a fairly new Autobahn with top notch surface, flat landscape, very straight and the most awesome aspect, nearly no traffic. So I thought, well it´s a sunny summer day, let´s put some great music on and let´s have a drive like all my Australian male friends (and some female...) would go for...
So, forget 100 k/h...by the way, "Thanks mum for letting me borrow your car...I´ll clean it tomorrow..."

Ok...now....mmm let´s see...music....Kyuss...nice...which album? Ahh..."...and the Circus leaves the town"...great...sunnies? Check...ok...
That´s more like it...driving is fun...
Cruising speed...every once in a while you overtake another car...very relaxing...but let´s drive fast...
Well, that nice...you have to fokus on driving now, so it looses it´s cruisy aspect but it just fun...extremly low flying...
The combination of music and fast driving is just awesome...at least for a short time, as it´s really not relaxing but still...let´s have one more crack at it...
Driving in Germany IS fun, mates!!!

Well, more on the trip at my next entry, have fun, take care and cya...

The benefit of having a great lawyer and fun at the dentist...

G´day,

And a very special welcome to my disciples, Hi Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Today is the first time that I re-post a picture which I´ve already used in an earlier blog entry. But he has deserved it:
Dirk, ex-colleague, friend, brother and lawyer

Just one week after I involved Dirk in my stagnant application for the dole the welfare office finally coughed up what they owed me. So let me tell you the result of my first hand experience with the highly praised (at least by German politicians and the conservative media) German social security system.

From the day I applied for ALG 2 until last week it took them eight weeks and the only things I got were ridiculous demands to hand in forms and they made me do all kinds of absurd stuff and whatever I did, nothing happened. And I also did call them every second day to speed things up and offer that they could tell me on the phone what they need so I could provide it to speed things up but to no avail. And mark you, I have studied law, so I could at least understand the forms I had to fill out but I still had to ask for help with some of the forms as they were so complicated. A "normal" person or someone who is not really fluent in German would be lost without a map...

I mean you only apply for the dole, if you don´t have any money, right? And in that case you need some money fast, as there are daily needs for instance food and accomodation and these things usually cost money. Well, I´m quite lucky as there are people who give me free accomodation and there are people who invite me for dinner and best of all there are people who lend me money and I´m extremly grateful for all this. But I was thinking what would have happened if I hadn´t been that lucky? Firstly, I would have been kicked out of the health insurance and out of my flat as most landlords don´t like it if the rent is missing for more than a month.

So let´s see, let´s assume you´d be able to organise food for two month to survive, you´d be alive but homeless and without health cover (and mark you, once you are out of the health insurance system it´s fucking hard to get in again!). So once you are homeless, you don´t have an address and without an address you have vanished from the face of the earth at least in Germany, no address = no bank account, no chance to get a job and so on. And how should you apply for a job if you don´t even have a place to sleep and need to hunt for food?

I really think that there is at least a decent percentage of the bums you see in the street who have been made bums by the sluggishness of the German social security system! It´s easy to slip through the social network but once you are on the street it´s fucking hard to get back into "normal" life...

And what really makes me angry is the fact that the media and the politicians claim on a daily base the superiority of the German social security system compared to other countries. Bullshit I say!

I can only speculate how long they would have kept going like that if I hadn´t had Dirk. Once the welfare office learned that there was a lawyer involved everything went really fast. The best thig is that they have even backdated the notification for the approval of the dole to the 26. of June. And that really made Dirk and me laugh as the 26. of June was the day that I still had to get the form saying that I was not elegible for ALG 1. The welfare officer who called Dirk yesterday even tried to tell him that the letter has been posted on the 26. of June. It arrived yesterday so apparently the German post need a full week to deliver a letter within Münster, yeah, right.

Anyway I´m sorted out now but I´m still pissed off as apparently you need a lawyer if you want to get anything done around here. Dirk, who does quite a lot of these cases told me that it´s a comman practise by the welfare office to wait and wait and wait and wait and do nothing apart from ridiculous demands. And in 90% of all cases the cough up immediatly once they get contacted by a lawyer. I´m most angry at the stupidity of that practise as they fucking gain nothing out of it. If the system would be that they have to pay the dole from the day they decide the application I could understand that they have to pay less the longer they delay the decision but they have to pay from the day you filed the application! So they gain nothing as they have to backpay you anyway!

So if you have trouble with the authorities or legal trouble of any kind and you need a decent lawyer, I can only highly recommend my ex-colleague, brother, friend and lawer, Dirk Lenzing. This is the URL for his office http://www.ius-flash.de

Good news for nearly all of my teeth, you might be stained due to smoking, black tea and red wine and in some cases bits are missing from that damn bike accident but you will be cleaned, fixed and are allowed to stay in my mouth. Bad news for two teeth, you´ll have to leave, the late effect of the bike accident eight years ago. Well it´s amazing that this two teeth have survived that long as they were literally broken length- and crosswise on 03. Aug 2001. It even amazed my dentist as usually broken teeth die quite quickly but well, now it´s time to say good-bye to these brave veterans. Another four weeks of asylum in my cake hole and then that was it...
Fun at the dentist...ah by the way, important note to myself: Next time the dentist asks me "With or without anaesthesia?" go for "With anaesthesia please". I was really manly yesterday but boy, it was not pleasant, no.

Ok this one is for my sister as I guess if you want to wait for our parents to take photos of their new kitchen and send them to you, it´ll be simmilar to the time it takes for the welfare office to decide so I just took some oics and post them here...
New kitchen 1...tried and tested yesterday evening...dinner was two hours delayed as my parents had to study the manual first...
Please note the kitchen lamp is white again not the creamy-yellowish colour you came to know...I spraypainted it...
Well, that´s all for today. I have to get Brötchen now for breakfast and then it´s off to Holland to visit Josara´s parents. Have a great time, take care and cya...

Summer, my recognition as an artist (finally!) and the downside of fame and some cat pictures

G´day,

And Hi! to my followers, Emm, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. It´s summer and for the first time in three years I have this summer feeling if you know what I mean and I´m pretty sure that you do. Summers in Australia are great and hotter and all in all more enjoyable as in Melbourne you have always a nice fresh sea breeze. Summer here is humid and sticky. But all those smells triggered the summer feeling I can remember from my childhood days. I´ve been to the lake yesterday where I used to spend my summers when I was young and it was quite nice. The downside was the timing as yesterday was the last day of school so it was kinda crowded with school kids but with an iPod it was bearable. Well it´s still hot today, 36 degrees and sticky...man I wish for thunderstorms but the biggest difference to Australian summers is that not all the vegetation here is yellow-brownish. It´s green and full of flowers and smells nice...

Ah, btw big news: fame and fortune await...eventually my artistic talent is recognised and I can add "cover artist" to my CV. My cousin Bill asked me if he can use "Pustetechnik" as cover for his first CD and yes, of course he can. And with the success as an artist I immediatly experienced the dark side of fame...as with the success came the envier. So now I´m a part of the long line of artists who have false friends and/or family leeching off ther fame as someone already tried to infringe my copyright...

So let me tell you this, Julia: low, very low...I have expected more style from you as you have always been the more mature of us both but claiming my painting as your´s on the internet...tsk tsk tsk...I can even prove my creatorship as it´s written on the original...so try to publish your own childhood paintings on the internet instead of claiming mine.
This is the conception Bill sent me. I quite like it and I am ready and willing to promote Bill´s album on my blog...

Now for something completly different. I can imagine that it´s quite difficult a funeral director to decide how to decorate his shop window. It simply doesn´t do to display a dead body so you usually see one or two tasteful urns on display or flowers in a sombre arangement. Then I saw this quite forward approach in Münster:
Translation: "Death is the only certainty we get at birth. Lifetime is a gift." Please note that it is no quote by some famous person, so I reckon it´s their marketing slogan...

And now the promsed cat pics. And I know 90% of my readers are only into this blog because they want either cute cat pics or cute Frauke pics. Btw, happy birthday Frauke all the best for year #2! Please ask your parents to translate this bit, I wouldn´t be too surprised if you can already read, intelligent girl you are but I refuse to believe that you already understand foreign...
This is Lilly, the cat of my friend Josie. Lilly reminds me a little of Spunkie but she´s not that neurotic or shy but Lilly isn´t the sharpest spoon in the drawer...
She loves to play with a piece of string but sat like this for five minutes looking a little retarded...
But who cares how retarded a cat can look if she has also looks like this one...perfect handsome cat...

Well that´s all for today, tomorrow I have to go to the dentist...argh and then I´ll have an appointment with my placement officer. Well unfortunately the German High Court ruled that it´s not allowed to insult people on the net and I guess insults towards my placement officer would not be covered by freedom of speech or journalistic freedom so I will refrain from using words like "dickless" or "asshole" and I wouldn´t dream of using phrases like "damn fucking idiot who couldn´t even find his own arse with a map".

Well, as I respect the personality rights of other people even if I don´t like them, I don´t insult them over the internet...

Ok, so much for now, take care, have fun and cya...