Champions League :/

Well, the joyous celebrations from last year will not be repeated.

I actually had German class on Tuesday and I didn't make it to a biergarten to watch the match until 30 minutes into the match...and when I got there I think my first words were, "Well, this match is over." I hung around because you never know when they might score five goals, but alas, it was not meant to be.

So in conclusion, I would like to say, "Atleti for the win!"

A jump into the grey...

Many, many months after wanting to do it at Balaton and many, many months after receiving a voucher to do this for my birthday, I finally went bungee jumping! It was an absolutely filthy and cold day which basically stopped me from doing more than one jump (I really didn't want to stand in the drizzle or force my audience to hang around longer than necessary), but it didn't dampen my enthusiasm one iota!

Check out the massive smile on my face! It was noted that while I was bouncing around in excitement, many others were standing around in terror.

My tiny harness. A minimum allowed weight was specified which I just scraped into. This scraping meant that I had to wear the smallest harness they had :D

Still smiling on my way up! Funny moment - the wind blew during the ascent and I was shifting a bit so one of the two guys in the cherry picker had to hold onto my harness so that I didn't prematurely fall out.

50m in the sky...HERE WE GO!!!!

YEAH!!!!

You'll note I was cheering as I bounced back up - that was actually the best part because of the weightless feeling. It was also noted that my cheers sounded as though I was having fun instead of crapping myself like others. 

I was later told that the operators said to each other, "Okay, we should probably let her down now," as though they let me bounce around longer than usual since I was enjoying myself so much. HAHAHAHAH

Hehehehe.

And at the end, I was handed a certificate and a card stating 50% for the next two times I jump...AND THE FOURTH JUMP IS FREE!!! WHO'S IN WITH ME?!?!

Tummy ache :/

This post-Easter week has been quite busy and I haven't been able to do my usual 'Cook at home/ eat leftover at work' schtick, and so I've had to eat at our notoriously bad mensa for the past few days. Maybe that's why I ended up with a tummy ache today. I decided to go home early rather than risk having to eat mensa food again for the third day running and risk dying.

And that's how I ended up at home making some childhood comfort food - macaroni in chicken broth with carrots and spring onions.

Exactly not what my granny would have made for me - she would have made me congee. 

Oh, hurro!

This Easter is being filled with a variety of brunches which has required me to bake assorted cakes which I then transport around the city to be eaten. Yesterday I was doing exactly this when I felt someone nudging me on the u-bahn. I looked down and what did I behold? A fluffy critter trying to unobtrusively snuffle my cake bag! His (her?) owner noticed and apologised and Snuffles (as I shall now call him) went away.

Except not really because we ended up standing next to each other on the escalator out of the u-bahn! I took the opportunity at the traffic lights to take some photos of Snuffles.

Pointy ears! Fluffy butt!

Snuffles knows how to safely cross the road!

Dinner with the girls

To get the Easter long weekend kicking, I had Turkish dinner with some of my gals.

I was apparently too hungry to photograph my food?

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GUESS WHO'S GOING TO SCREEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMM IN JUNE?!?!?!

On another note, I saw this posted on the way to the gym and seriously considered buying a ticket hehehe. 

"...allll my liiiiiife (babeh, babeh)..."

Wein-plus convention 2014

A couple of weeks ago, we had another wine night at Emi's place and being the last of the hardcore drinkers, he gave us a bunch of entry discount vouchers to a wine expo that was being held. Entry was supposed to be €20 but with his vouchers, that was being slashed down to €5. HOLY MOLY!!! I mean, I was thinking I needed a weekend without booze but with that kind of value...

And that decision was totally worth it. Rooms and rooms full of stalls and stalls of people with different wines. Upon entering, we were allowed to hire a wine glass and then wander from stall to stall and ask for samples. 

Here we are (me, Annina, Stephanie, and Kate) pictured in a room completely devoted to champagne. 

For €20, I would have been pretty happy. For €5, I was ecstatic! Although most stalls had bottles of water and pieces of bread to stop everyone from getting tanked, that didn't stop us from getting tanked. There was also food to go along with the wine and I ended up purchasing a plate of cheese, a dried sausage, and some pesto to go along with the bottle of tuscan red wine. If this convention comes back in a year (or two), count me in again!

Happy birthday because sharks and PFUDOR!

A few weeks ago, Dr. (formerly Herr) Piller sent this video to a few of us at work:

thereby blessing us with an earworm for the ages. 

Dr. Piller is also a great fan of incredibly bad movies. The best example I can give of this is the fact that he watched Sharknado in a cinema. Admittedly, he won the tickets and therefore didn't pay anything to watch it, but he did say that the guy hosting the competition booth gave him a weird look when he chose to enter. 

This meant that there was only one thing we could include when he celebrated his birthday this weekend: 

MAKE AN EPIC PHOTOSHOP PICTURE OF HIM CELEBRATING WHILE RIDING A PFUDOR AS A SHARK ATTACKS!!!

We weren't the only ones though - he received many shark themed-presents this year.

Goldene Gans, Schloss Blutenburg

Laura mentioned one day that she had found an amazing restaurant out in Pasing. I'll admit, I was pretty surprised. I mean, when I mentioned that I was going to a restaurant out in Pasing, even my local German colleagues were surprised and couldn't think of any places. As it was, the restaurant turned out to be the Goldene Gans (golden goose), which is attached located at Schloss Blutenburg. (A reply when I said the restaurant was at the Schloss was, "That's aaaaages away!") Despite the surprising location, it was, as reported, pretty good!

I think what appealed to Laura when she made this call was that, despite the location, the food was not traditional Bavarian stodge but more of a combined modern European cuisine. I certainly detected aspects of French cooking and molecular gastronomy in our meal. 

For example, we received this amuse-bouche of soup, with nice frothy touches.

It was difficult to select a main. I eventually settled on scallops because I saw a woman eating this dish and it looked damn good. And because it's Spring, the scallops were paired with white asparagus and wilted baby spinach leaves. Yarmy.

Swisschris chose the duck. I kinda wished I had ordered that as well. Laura had lamb cutlets - also on my selection list. 

For desserts, Laura had the mango parfait while I went German stodge and got apfelstrudel. Hehehe.

Credit where it's due, it was a pretty good restaurant and I think I'd like to come back in high summer as they have a terrace facing the castle's ornamental lake. In fact, Swisschris liked it so much that he said he could imagine bringing his parents here when they later in the year. And as a side note, the literal (modern) translation of Blutenburg is...BLOOD CASTLE!!!! MUHAHAHA!!

End of Starkbierzeit.

Gott sei Dank! We decided to forgo the Loewenbraukeller this year and just spent a lot of time at Paulaner Nockherberg. Somehow, Ruben and Nestor  managed to get a couple of tables on EVERY SATURDAY of the festivities, which was great,but to claim the table, they needed to be there before 2pm, which was what was partly killing us. Anyway, here are a few photos from various sessions.

First Nockherberg weekend with Santi. I think I was literally the only girl on a table full of (mostly) Spanish guys. Lots of salsa dancing. 

After the shit days at work, I drowned my sorrows (during the week!) because the Gene Center (who I don't work with at all) had a reservation. Here are the guys from the Gene Center with the unicorn they got for Laura.

More friends during the week!

La week-end finale con la bella Eleonora!

y tambien Shadya. 

Funny story, I had a bunch of other friends at a table next to Ruben's booking, but being newbies, they went too hard too fast and needed to leave quite early. Who would happen to take that newly freed-up table but Shadya and other South Americans friends?!

Anyway, I'm really glad that Starkbierfest only goes for the duration of Lent because if it were any longer, I think the population of Munich and various visitors would kill themselves with revelry. We went hard and I'm glad the Fastenzeit is soon over :D

I wish I had this when I was younger

I was strolling around my neighbourhood when I saw this beast of a machine!

Also take note of the Hello Kitty flag!

But what I especially like is that it's locked to the bar with a matching pink bike lock. I showed this to Eleonora and she said she'd also seen the littler girl tearing around the area on this bike with a doll in the back seat!

Swag!

In happier work news, I attended a scientific trade fair this week. I love trade fairs. I love goodies and freebies as companies try to woo us into buying their things. This is also helped along by my general shamelessness in asking for more and more freebies. After a slow start to the day - Markus and I actually had been tasked with talking to different companies about the possibility of purchasing a new piece of equipment - here's most of what I collected! 

Booyeh.

Not pictured are the edible freebies such as the bag of popcorn and fairy floss that I had, and the FREE BEER from the bar in the Sarstedt stall. But there was something there that I really regret not getting which wasn't the best pipette in the world from Thermo. A person at Eppendorf was wearing a lab coat that said ' Your expert in cell culture' or something like that. Markus, who had been fairly low key about the swag-grabbing and a bit taken aback at my general excitement at being the trade fair at this point actually said to me that if I could score the coat, he would wear it in the lab everyday. Alas, it was not to be and the Eppendorf people were a bit shocked when I asked for it. Ah well. 

 Here's a few other photos from our day out!

With the Thermo chameleon...

and the Metabion cow. Metabion were giving out stressballs shaped like cows but I really wanted the cows that came dressed in tracht. Alas, they were only free if you bought over €100 worth of primers. Dang. 

My boss has no words...

So after a bit of consultation with my boss (by email) and the dangling of publication carrots regarding yesterday's email, she and I came to a compromise in which I would breed the animals, with the concession that the colleague would have to aid me in the work but not need to do any of the handling.

When informed of this decision by email, this colleague refused to provide this aid. His reply also excluded our boss. Her response was that she was gobsmacked and will talk to him in person on Monday.

I'm looking forward to this!

I have no words...

I don't like to bitch about work here, but I can't hold back about this.

At the start of this year, I had to take over a colleague's mouse colony because he claimed that doing animal handling was giving him 'psychological problems', and that if I didn't want any of them myself, he would cull the colony. Today he sent me a two line email requesting that I produce 20 of these mice at P14 for his experiments. I should also mention that he sits perhaps a metre or less away from me.

THA !"$% DO YOU GET AWAY WRITING AN EMAIL LIKE THIS TO ME?!?!