Heatwave!

It's taken nearly three years, but we finally have a summer to compare to Australia!

Check it out - nearly 6 days in a row with the temperature over 30C.

Since it was so hot, our plans to attend the horse races were scuppered and instead, Markus, Ritchie, and myself headed down to the Isar to go sit in the river to cool down.  

Perfect day - the view north towards the Reichenbachbruecke.

The guys pretend to be mermen.

Just like Australia, Princess Mallymoodle keeps the sun off with my trusty parasol. Pale Ritchie ended up having to use it to stop the soft European sun from burning his even softer European skin.

Unlike Australia, I would never have considered sitting or lying on a stony bank while the (quite strong) river current washed smaller pebbles get washed into my bikini bottoms to be a suitable way of cooling down, so it's good to know that I've managed to evolve and adapt to my environment. 

Movie review - Despicable Me 2

Whoops, this is a delayed review after the excitement of all the work, travel, and bike falling. A sequel to the 2010 movie (which I don't seem to have reviewed), Gru (voice of Steve Carell) has retired from being a super-villain and is happily living the suburban life. Raising Agnes, Edith, and Margo, whom he adopted in the first movie, Gru's many minions and Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) are no longer developing evil weapons and have been put to developing new fruit jams and general housekeeping duties. But a mysterious villain has stolen an entire secret laboratory and the Anti-Villain League (AVL) decides that Gru, paired with undercover agent Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig) would be able to use his knowledge of villainy to identify the perpetrator.

It feels a bit funny saying this about a movie that's only 98 minutes long, but this was a fast-moving, action-packed film! Thinking back, there was a lot that happened throughout the movie that kept me laughing through out - whether it be suburban family competitiveness, what is the most macho possible way to die, to jokes about Australia being so damn far away. There were some bits that were cloying to me, but then, I'm a cold-hearted person :P

Basically, if you liked the first movie, you'll love this one. Why? Well the creators have taken what worked in the first film and expanded them in this one without going overboard. Firstly, the animation has maintained the distinctly bright appearance with retro styling of objects and plenty of fluffy unicorns. The voice actors and new characters are great fun, in fact, reading stuff about the movie, I would never have guessed that Benjamin Bratt, voice of new character Eduardo, was brought in after the character had already been fully animated! Fans of the minions will be thrilled as they absolutely provided what was the most random and hilarious part of the movie...

Their cover of All-4-One's early 90s song 'I swear'. 

SPOILERS IN THE VIDEO

I think we nearly all died laughing when that came on and we were certainly talking about it for days afterwards.

Solidly enjoyable, Despicable Me 2 is fun for all.
8/10

Wine and Chocolate Night

Did I mention I've made friends with an Italian guy who owns his own wine shop and a German girl who owns her own chocolate shop? No? WELL I HAVE!!!! And these two wonderful people (Emi and Nina) regularly hold events in their shops where we can taste their wares. Sometimes, they even combine powers so that we taste chocolate that goes with wine! It was such a pity then that my face met the pavement the night before Nina was hosting a wine and chocolate night at her shop in Gruenwald.

Nina explains the intricacies of the chocolate she that had been paired to the wines while Emi (in full sommelier get up) watches on.

The fellow in the blue jacket is a friend of Emi's who has a winery in Italy, which was one of the wines available for tasting that night.

Nina's chocolate counter. OM NOM NOM

I could eat the chocolate if the pieces were small and not crunchy, but given that I'd been on a liquid diet for the day, drinking wine wasn't high on my list of acceptable activities. This didn't stop Emi from plying me with some very nice sparkling wine and me drinking a glass of it, but I could really feel the effect :/ So it ended up that I was basically putting pieces of the chocolate that Nina had put in bowls around the shop as 'snacks' between the 'taster' chocolate. I suppose there are worse ways I could have spent an evening when I wasn't allowed to eat or drink :D

Falling off the bike

Yesterday was our annual work Sommerfest. This basically means that instead of the way a usual day in the work in an academic research environment ends - with tears and alcohol - we get to end our day in a much better situation - with BBQ and alcohol! I had brought a bottle of Langmeil's Three Gardens with me (all the way from Adelaide!), as well as a bottle of Polish hazelnut vodka and the crocodile for relaxed drinking games with my colleagues. As the heatwave was continuing, it was far too nice a night to leave the campus when the last bus headed off at 8:53pm. Instead, at around 10-something, I was persuaded that I should not walk the 3km to the closest u-bahn, but that I should instead ride a campus spare bike to the station with everyone else.

Having ingested an entire 750ml of some of the Barossa's finest, a few shots of vodka, and never ridden at night in the dark before, you'd think this was a recipe for disaster. It was :D About 2.5km in, we turned a corner and I remembered thinking *I'm going to fall* and then I fell :D

Picking myself off the ground to the horrified reactions of my colleagues and some random guy cycling in the other direction, a check of my various hurties found that while I was bleeding from my knee, elbow and mouth, nothing seemed to be broken and I still possessed all my teeth. In fact, I was laughing at the entire thing and someone, I think Laura said, "Well she must be okay if she's laughing." Random guy gave me a tissue to stem the mouth bleeding, and despite my exhortations that I could cycle the rest of the way to the u-bahn, we decided to walk our way there.

At the u-bahn, my mouth had stopped bleeding and after being examined by my friends under the lights, it was agreed that nothing looked particularly wrong (i.e. broken), and other than the fact the dried mouth blood made me look like The Joker, with a shower and a night's rest I should be good as new. I agreed with this assessment as I tucked myself in for some well-earned slumber.

But now I'm awake at this ungodly hour because once the alcohol wore off, I am now beginning to feel all my sore muscles and bruises. It should be an interesting day at work today!

IT FINALLY WORKS!!!

Which is a bit of a relief

Third Annual Mega Epic Suit Up Birthday Party!

It was with great sadness that we heard that our usual haunt, Nerds Bar, was closing and that would be not be able to hold our annual suit-up birthday party there :( But a new venue was found! Lust und Liebe was our new location and after hastily making the arrangements, all our beautiful friends assembled in the heat for another year of well-dressed celebrations.

Lust und Liebe is a lot smaller than Nerds was so we got the venue to ourselves and the bar staff personalised the decorations for us!

Juliane was unable to be the third birthday person this year but Manuel stepped up. 

Because it was so hot (seriously, I think it was in the 20s despite being dark), we were allowed to enjoy our drinks on the pavement until the 11pm curfew.

Being relatively new in Munich, Pato Peach said she was thrilled to have an opportunity to wear heels again! I said this was exactly one of the reasons how this annual party started!

Die Arbeitsgang! Markus rocked up late and not in formal clothes. Tsk. 

Los españoles!

Swiss Chris was especially excited to attend once again :D

Despite the loss of our nerdy location, mein Bruder und ich haben noch tiefen Gedanken.

And finally, the best birthday party drinking game ever + the worst bottle of schnapps in the world. 

As I watched the sun rise at the end of the night, I was reflected that I hope this is a tradition that will continue, regardless of the location!

Starnberger See - Day 2

More photos from our Starnberger See retreat.

Our breakfast buffet featured honey straight from the hive?!

I settled for my usual breakfast of a bread roll and boiled egg. The egg warming cover says "A good coffee must be black like the night, hot like love, and as sweet as life. 

Our lunch buffet was also as impressive as the dinner and breakfast ones. They had bocconcini that was shaped like little hearts!

The hotel also had it's own private lake house

Where they had an assortment of things guests might need like sunscreen, mosquito-repellent, and sunnies! I was so tempted to take a pair as a memento. 

Starnberger See - Day 1

A couple of days after returning from Budapest, I was packing my bags again to head out to work retreat by the Starnberger See. I must say, despite its proximity to Munich, I had never come out here despite various plans to check it out due to it's reputed beauty and the town of Berg being the site where King Ludwig II was found dead. The reason that ultimately brought me out here was that our project was ending and due to various reasons, we had a lot of money left over in the budget that had been earmarked as *travel/conference expenses* and it was decided that we may as well go and present our annual project reports to a BMBF representative and other consortium members in a much more relaxing environment.

The morning sun on the lake.

Our hotel. According to the pictures inside, it used to be a girls' school!

The view from the terrace is much nicer than the one my school had!

The hotel basically had it's own private frontage onto the lake

And the town it was located in (Poecking) is right across the lake from where the King was found dead!

The first day of meetings was quite productive but the view of the lake from behind the projection screen was pretty distracting. Luckily we were given a *swimming break* in between the progress reports and future plans :P

In the evening, we settled down for a bbq dinner on the terrace.

Some of my colleagues waiting for the chef to tell us it was ready

Damn tree is blocking my view!

Our crazy menu. Michael and I were reading it and our jaws hit the ground when we saw the price (thankfully paid by the budget). The question was whether we could eat €70 worth of bbq. Our mutual assessment was that we would try!

Soothed by the sounds of lake water lapping at the banks and the many bottles of wine ingested by our group, we all concurred - all of our future meetings should be like this!

Budapest - Day 4

Continuing the theme of us sleeping in while on holiday, we slept in on our final day which kinda stopped our plans to head to a village associated with Empress Sissi. So instead we took a boat trip on the Danube because, hey, why not?!

All things must pass and it was with heavy hearts that we took a cab back to the airport. It was here that we met our final problem though - how to get rid of these bloody HUFs!!! In summary - Budapest: beautiful, great food, great weather, great music, cheap city. Go there.

Budapest - Day 3

Sleeping away half the day after our trip to Zamardi - Gott sei dank we had the presence of mind to put the 'Do Not Disturb' sign up - we headed out for a late lunch in the afternoon and head over to wander around the Buda side.

Why the face - we came all the way to Budapest to find Berlin...

And MELBOURNE?!?!

Taking the super-suess funicular up the hill!

Holiday mode - high

Wheeee!!!!!!!

Damn tourists ruining our view!

Sigh.

Seriously, Budapest, ganz schoen.

And atmospheric.

I love the hunting dogs drinking the fountain!

The view of the Parliament from the cafe at Fisherman's Bastion.

The choc-orange cake from the cafe at Fisherman's Bastion.

At this point, we took a break of wandering around to do some tasting of Hungarian wines for a few hours. The verdict? They're pretty tasty! And not that high in alcoholic content. Also, apparently bread is considered a delicious side snack for wine in Hungary *shrug*.

Night had fallen by the time we'd finished.

Cue pictures of Budapest lights!

Yep. 

Walking across the bridge, feeling a bit glamorous.

And the moon was a tasty orange segment balanced on the edge of Buda Castle. <3 p="">