Swedish Meatballs

I went on yet another trip to Ikea yesterday and found the time to have the Swedish meatballs and a Lingon berry Dryck. It meant I didn't get the €1 hotdog at the end but as I ate my meatballs, I reflected that I hadn't had them in years and therefore worth the wait.


Also, because we were there after 6pm and Ikea in German closes at 8pm (seriously, wtf), they were half price. Even more awesome. 

Burgerfest in Regensburg!

For this past weekend, I decided to make good on my promise to Jul's parents that I would return to their village and drink beers in their backyard (some things are international!) and Regensburg were having their annual Burgerfest. Now, as much as I would like to say that a Burgerfest means a festival of hanbaobaos, it's actually a town festival. But you know, there was still a lot of street festival foods!


Unfortunately, I didn't take photos of my pfannekuchen or my apfelkuchen (mmm, deep fried apple *gargle*) but I did remember to take photos of what is apparently the best gelateria in Regensburg and had the crowd inside to prove it!
  

Diba Chocolat Cafebar. Apparently their best one is a quark-fig flavour.

I decided to go for one scoop of saffron and a scoop of rose. They were both delicately flavoured and utterly delightful!

We two go OM NOM NOM!!!

Oh look, they turned the square outside of the Dom into a Biergarten!

Sitting by the banks of the river...

where I got to enjoy a cup of watermeleon wine punch. Mmmm...

Jul's parents have a really lovely garden where they grow a lot of their own vegetables and herbs. For mine and Asia's visit, they decided to throw a grillparty (bbq) for which we were joined by Jul's sister, her husband and their son!

Cute backyard

Der Grillmeister arbeitet. 

Jonas continues Germany's fussball dominance over Australia

He then took a break to show me some wild strawberries in the garden!

Delicious little things

Sushi Sano

I have craved many things since I moved here. Close to the top of this list are Asian food and seafood. Combine these two and you have me crying over not being able to eat sushi (amongst other things). I accept that one of the problems is due to Munich being a landlocked city with a not particularly large Japanese population. Luckily, there is a wonderful invention called *The Internet* and I used it to look up Asian restaurants here. Based on a suggestion on myasianmunich.com (apparently looking this up makes me a stereotype), I decided to go to Sushi Sano.


I took a look at the menu and was pleasantly pleased at the different raw seafoods available.

Jakobsmuschel?! YES PLEASE!!! (Scallops for the non German-readers)  

But then I started to panic - I was a hungry girl and one piece at €1 each? I'm someone who can eat at least 250g of sashimi and was one half of a small Asian duo who ended up paying $50 at a$2.50/plate (hai Poo!). After calming myself down, I decided to set myself a budget - how much would I be willing to pay vs. what I wanted to eat. And so I decided to get the following...

2x Tobiko, 2x Tako, 2x Jakobsmuschel

2x flounder (I thought it was squid :(), 2x Tuna, 2x salmon!

After eating these 12 pieces, I wouldn't say I was as stuffed as I can get when I'm eating this much sashimi, but I was comfortably if not outrightly pleasantly full. While the fish may not have had the slight crunchiness of superfresh raw fish, it definitely did not have the slightly sour taste of the not so fresh. This is a good thing. 


So, out of the three places I've had sushi/sashimi in Muenchen, Sushi Sano is near the top and will definitely will get a revisit!

The MEGA EPIC BIRTHDAY PARTY

When I told people I was going to Paris for my birthday, I had a few people asking "But are you going to have a party in Munich?" The answer to that was "Naturlich!" and more than just having a party for myself, upon discovering that our birthdays were quite close together, Juliane, Hero Thomas, and I decided to combine our parties to have a MEGA EPIC BIRTHDAY PARTY.

Because we three are nerds (Dr. Dr. and soon to be Dr.), we held the party, with the help of Trung, in the aptly named Nerds Bar in Glockenbachviertel, contacted all the beautiful, sexy nerds we knew, and then made them be their very best by requesting that men wear a suit and women be attired in a cocktail dress. And they didn't let us down. Here's some snaps.

Jul gets ready for the night

Shoed and dressed up for the night!

The bar fittingly had nerd glasses scattered around as decor. Needless to say, people played with them and we requested that everyone take a photo celebrating our nerdiness.

Some people ended up doing it really well!

Others pretty much looked normal

The men really got into different nerd poses.

And some women misinterpreted *nerd* and ended up on the *sexy* side

The bar also had a dentist's chair, which was surprisingly comfortable!

Although the sight of a dentist's drill still elicits a bit of concern.

I had started organising a present for Juliane when suddenly I was told to stop because Susi was organising a present for the two of us. We were a bit concerned - what kind of present would be suitable for both of us? It couldn't be a trip somewhere and we wouldn't be able to share Colin Firth...

 

Susi looks on with glee as we open our presents.

What?! You mean she gets Colin and I don't?!?

Woohoo! Thanks for the concert tickets!

Yep, so after missing out on the epic concert series in Melb, we'll now be going to see George Michael at the Olympiahalle. HOORAY!!!! :D

Anyway, here are some photos of the A-grade, top notch people of Munich having a good time. 

Very interesting theory, Mr. Bond...

Thumbs up!

Nice couple.

Another nice couple.

And another nice couple!

Planting one on the birthday boy

The Spaniards being too cool for school

Making a cha siu/jamon sandwich

So yes, thanks all those sexy nerds for really getting into the spirit and giving us an AWESOME BIRTHDAY. Also, I totally recommend Nerds as a party bar. 

Hell yes they do!

Lost in Translation

So I was hanging out in MediaMarkt looking at various tech things that I was considering for myself when I ended up in the DVD section. DVD buying in this country (so far) has been somewhat precarious because while they'll play in my computer, the one DVD I've purchased so far (Amelie) did not have English subtitles. But it was only €5 so that's fine. 

Anyway, I was browsing what was there when I noticed a familiar-looking cover for a movie I had definitely seen and enjoyed. But I was highly confused about the title, which I decided to photograph for posterity.

How the hell does Made in Dagenham turn into We Want Sex?!?!

It amuses me because Made in Dagenham is a movie about women undergoing industrial action in 60s England in the fight for equal pay. Okay, there's a brief sex scene in a car but people looking for women in red dresses on the prowl will be sorely disappointed!

Just sharing the love.

Public Transport Hotties.

The men of Munich, I'll give them this - they can be pretty good looking. I think it's due to being at the border of Northern and Southern Europe, so they have the German Teutonic-ness with some North Italian contamination. This results in tall, dark haired guys - exactly my type. Okay, they're a bit personality deficient and they don't hold doors open for women (WTF! Women's Lib has gone too far!) but they're nice to look at. 

My place and work are not too far away from the BMW head offices so I and my friends get to see lots of nice looking men in suits. The other day I saw a hot Silver Fox while I was waiting for the bus. Alas, I did not take a photo and Pooey told me off, pointing out that there is an entire website devoted to hotties on the Tube. After spending Friday in a haze, we decided that I should also try to snap u-bahn hotties. 


And so, here is my attempt to start the craze

Clearly it's meant to be the guy in the suit.

Thoughts?

I think it's time I got a new bf...

...because I was looking at my most played tracks on iTunes and the top 10 are pretty much break-up songs. Of course, it probably doesn't help that I've pretty much been playing Adele's 21 on repeat since I got it.  For the curious, the songs (in order) are...

(yes, I apparently love Taylor Swift - at 11 was *You Belong With Me*)

Moar shopping!

After I went shopping on the weekend and trawling the Zara website so show people what I'd bought, me and some other girls from the lab decided we should ALL go shopping together! 

Naturally, I got another dress :D 

Although I now kinda wish I didn't buy the one I got on the weekend

I happened to be wearing these stilettos while trying on the dress and we were all pleasantly pleased with the contrast of the green vs. the pink. Or at least, the females were. There was a male in the change room and he kept saying *The shoes don't match! They don't match!* 

Das Wetter

So Fruehling has turned into Sommer and it has occurred to me that the weather here is pretty much like in Melbs.


Stay with me for a bit.


Okay, so it snows in Winter and it doesn't quite hit the heights of Melb temps but this past week I experienced nice bright sunny days to the extent that I wore my Melb sundresses. These days turned dry which then resulted in elevated pollen levels leading everyone to the sniffles. The dryness turned into humidity and then the dark clouds rolled in. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees and we got huge lightning storms and massive downpours. 


Sound familiar? :D 

Shopping!

So I've pretty much been clothes shopping-free in Munich thanks to their trading hour laws, which has been both a blessing and a curse. I'm not sure at what point I decided I was going to try and get more clothes but its been creeping up slowly, but after finding myself with a rare free Saturday afternoon, I decided it was time to hit Zara and look for some more summer clothes! Excuse the poor quality of the photos - the lighting in my new place isn't fantastic.

Piece 1 - Turquoise mini skirt! It has pockets woohoo! I may need to get a crisp white shirt to wear this, 50s style.

Piece 2 - Coral strapless dress. Possibly a bit young but so long as I'm not looking mutton dressed as lamb. 

Ferrero Garden

 

One of the best things about moving to Germany is all the different sweeties that are now available to me. For example, Haribo gummis are advertised as being a *World of Haribo* but in Australia is usually limited to things like bears and other basic things. When Boodle came and visited, she observed that, unlike in Australia, the range is huge in Europe to the extent that it actually lived up to the advertising!

Ferrero is one those companies whose range is drastically reduced in Australia but is huge in Germany. I became aware of this when visiting Anya and she forced me to take back a box of Ferrero Kusschen. These are her favourites which she found to be criminally unavailable in Aus. The box was duly devoured by the lab in less than a day. The other day, I was doing some shopping when I saw a Ferrero product I had never seen before – Ferrero Garden.

Is this a completely new product or something I just never noticed before? I don’t know. What I do know is that Ferrero Garden needs to be sold in Australia. The packaging makes it look like a pink version of Ferrero Rocher, 

 

and after unwrapping, it seemed this was the case. 

But biting into it...

 

oh! It’s filled with strawberry-flavoured creamy stuff! 

It’s utterly delicious!I gobbled the first one completely before I realised that I should have been recording this for blog posterity! If you see some, get them. They’re worth it.