I clearly needed sleep

This weekend has been one of those glorious long May weekends due to Catholic holidays, and people planned a number of events that I'd agreed to attend. Now, I'm not sure exactly what I've been doing for the last few weeks, but I've clearly been very tired because I seem to be waking up 10-15 minutes before I was supposed to meet friends at said events.

Cases in point - a brunch had been organised at the moderate time of 11am. I woke at 10:50 and furiously had to fire off a message saying that I would be late. I had also agreed to go clubbing (heh), with the planned meeting time of 10pm. Due to feeling tired during the day, I chose to take a nap at 6:30pm. OVER THREE HOURS LATER, I woke up and had to fire off another text saying that I was (clearly) going to be very late. Thank god it was a long weekend and for my very understanding friends!

Party time!

A couple of months ago, I was basically railroaded by my work colleagues into having a dinner party whereby I cooked them a bunch of frozen dumplings. The night was a great success and I introduced some Germans into the awesomeness that are jiaozi, siu mai, har gao, and (substandard because they were frozen) xiaolongbao. I also made egg drop soup. Following this night, one of the people present actually asked for a bamboo steamer as their birthday present with the aim of not needing an invitation to my place to make them. Apparently it was also a success but their partner complained that it wasn't as good as when I made them...so they decided to have a dumpling party at their place but...oh, would it be okay if I actually did the cooking? Heheheh. 

But because I was doing the cooking, other people were supplying the alcohol and dessert.  

Achtung! Batz - a dessert made from yoghurt or quark with fruit. Not the most wunderschoen of desserts but ganz lecker!

Then this shark game was brought out and the night reached a whole 'nother level. 

And so one Munich mule, two Tsingtao beers, one Hugo, and a glass of port later, I can declare this party a raging success. Good thing it was a public holiday the next day! 

AWESOMENESS!!!

I went to Butlers to buy myself a new bbq grill bucket (Grilleimer) when I saw this EPIC DISPLAY:

HEILIGE SCHEISSE, I'm totally going to put a unicorn on my wall! Or a woolly mammoth!

And I've got the perfect place to hang it -  my giant map of the world fell off my wall while I was in Vienna and tore so it's a bit difficult to hang it back up. Fabi offered to put a nail into the wall once I decide which animal needs to be mounted there!

Vienna - Day 2

We had a late start to our second day in Vienna. The best way to recover from the previous day's club adventures (poo to indoor smoking!), was to go to the local cat cafe, Cafe Neko.

Oh hurro!

Oh hurro to you too!

What's in the box?!

Run by and Austro-Japanese couple, the cuisine has a distinct japanese feel, as seen in the onigiri that I ordered.

As the other girls were newcomers to Vienna, they opted to go to Schoenbrunn palace. I instead decided to go to the Belvedere to gaze upon Klimt's The Kiss.

On my way there, I also saw quite a few examples of street art.

The approach to the Upper Belvedere

Sweet.

The view from the Sala Terrena towards the Lower Belvedere

One of the four Atlas pillars used to support the Sala Terrena

Maria Theresa being Empress-like

Sweet quadratura ceiling. At this point, I was told that photography is not allowed. Therefore there are no photos of the building or the impressive art collection, but take my work for it, I was looking at things for a few hours. Also, Franz Barwig the Elder, sculptor. I'd never heard of him before but there was a small exhibition of his works and they were amazing!

Despite the photoban, I had to take this picture. I had no idea Benedict Cumberbatch was Kaiser Franz Joseph I!!!

And the lovely parterre towards the Lower Belvedere with view of the Vienna.

I decided to forgo the cafe at the Belvedere and to instead head to yet another famous Vienna Coffee House - Cafe Prueckel!

Unfortunately the art nouveau room was closed but the main room maintains it's 1950 decor so here's some photos of it's super-hipster interior.

I scored myself a little booth and killed a few hours eating food, cake, doing my Duolingo exercises, and watching Offspring.

My (late) lunch of homemade gnocchi with brown butter and speck.

I was tempted to get strawberries and ice cream (it's Erdbeerezeit!), but instead got this meringe and cherry cake. Yum. 

And then it was home time. Funny story - the attendant making the announcement at the airport said it wrong in both German and English, resulting in her exploding into a fit of giggles and a colleague having to complete it for her. Also, the head stewardess on our flight spoke like you'd imagine a bad 70s pornstar would sound like. Austrian Airlines for the win!

Vienna - Day 1

Another weekend, another weekend trip! This weekend I returned to Vienna with some of the GARDP girls. 

Here we are, looking super glam even though we'd barely had any sleep due to the early flight.

Like many old European cities, Vienna is pretty small and easily walkable despite being a former imperial capital. From our hotel, we along the Stadtpark,

to the Karlskirche

and around the Wiener Staatsoper to get to our target,

Cafe Sacher at the Hotel Sacher!

We settled in for morning tea,

and ordered a tasting plate of different sweets that the hotel offered. From bottom to top, they were pancakes with plums, the Sachertorte, ice cream with strawberries, and some truffles. I'm going to put it out there...SACHERTORTE WAS NOT THE BEST SWEETIE ON THIS SELECTION! (The ice cream was, by unanimous decision)

Having rejuvenated ourselves, our stroll around the city continued and we headed to the Stephansdom.

There was a service on so tourists were not allowed into the church proper. 

But we were allowed to look into some of the different chapels.

And as usual climbed the church to get the view over the city. 

Since it was still quite early, our stroll continued to one of the many houses that Mozart lived in in Vienna.

Also, check out this plaque listing some winners of the Mozart medal. It's a who's who.

Cute little courtyard

The Sala Terrena, oldest existing concert hall in Vienna, where Mozart himself performed, and where concerts are still conducted.

Moving along, we headed towards the Hofburg Palace

The entrance from Michaelerplatz

where we saw this Roman archaeological site

Past the riding school stables

Oh hey there, horsie!

and through to Heldenplatz where we collapsed in fatigue

Seriously, we were just lying on the grass, soaking up the sunshine. A weird guy came up and asked if he could take a photo of us lying there. It was weird.

We eventually decided that to cancel out our fatigue, we needed to head to another cafe to get some more sweeties into us.

Cafe Central was our destination

Yarrrrrrm.

YAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRMMMMMM. 

Each of us had a personal favourite. Mine was the cream and rhubarb (top right). As we were about to leave, we realised that despite the earlier warm blue skies, it was actually raining like hell outside. We ended up camping in Cafe Central (and using the free wifi) for about 3 hours. It was awesome.

But we eventually had to leave Cafe Central. We had however settled for an evening plan - since it was the Champions League final and a pair of Spanish teams were playing, we decided to try and find a tapas bar to eat and watch it all. After getting changed and walking to the bar we'd chosen...it turned out it was completely booked out for a private party! No matter, we backtracked a bit and headed to Das Heinz where we were surrounded by cuteness.

Cute decor

Cute drink (needed more alcohol though)

Cute meal

Cute chicks

Cute backroom set up to watch the match!

And here we saw Madrid heartbreakingly defeat Madrid before heading out to go clubbing. A word of caution - Vienna still allows indoor smoking. It's disgusting.

Cologne - Eating things

But now to the really important things about our visit to Cologne - what we ate! And after the purging I'd had during the week, I was really looking forwards to eating the local cuisine and drinking the local beer.

Fabi gave me a list of different breweries to check out. Top of the list was Frueh. He warned that that is quite touristy due to its position opposite the Cathedral but still pretty good. I suppose the way the Hofbraeuhaus is super-touristy but still pretty good.

Unlike in Bayern, beer in Cologne is served in teeny 200ml glasses. Once you've spent a few years drinking beer by the 500ml or litre, it get's pretty easy to slam down one of these little guys.

Halve Hahn. The local cheese tastes a bit like gouda and eaten with rye bread. Okay but nothing special in my opinion 

BUT THIS. THIS WAS SPECIAL!!! Himmel un Aeaed (heaven and earth) in Cologne dialect. Fried blood sausage with mashed potatoes and applesauce. I could have eaten this all on my own instead of sharing it with my travelling companions.

Jaeger schnitzel. Not a local speciality but it's been a while since I had one of these. 

After wandering around the city, Lynn looked up what the best restaurant in Cologne was on tripadvisor, and we unbelievably got Mr Cake Cupcake. It wasn't so far from where we were so we decided to check it out.

And it was pretty good! The owner/baker of the store asked how we came due to tripadvisor and when we confirmed this, he said that he'd had a huge rush of tourists coming in that afternoon. He wasn't complaining but he was run off his feet. 

Our selection - lemon cheesecak and carrot/orange royale.

This was my personal favourite though - the chocolate, served warm with a strawberry to dip into the gooey centre. 

But Mr. Cake wasn't just great at making cupcakes, he was so friendly and chatty that we actually asked him if he could recommend a place for dinner. He suggested Limani, saying that it had mediterranean-style cuisine with lots of seafood, but also a terrace on the river that would be nice given that it was such a warm day. He also called the restaurant to make us a booking and to make sure we got a terrace table! 

Dinner was accompanied by a local Riesling to go with our seafoody-meal

Entree - grilled octopus. Mmmmm, tentacular

Okay, not seafood, but these calves livers were pretty good!

Also not seafood but the highlight entree - stewed rabbit in red wine sauce. 

Our main - grilled tuna steak with spinach and potatoes. 

Dayum. It's been so long since I had a tuna steak and this was so good. I don't remember exactly what was in the marinade but I remember thinking I was going to try and replicate it at home. 

Chocolate mousse dessert. Recommended by Mr. Cake as the best chocolate mousse in the world. Tough call and we didn't agree that it was THE best, but it was pretty good. Also, Mr. Cake showed how good he was at recommendations because he suggested 3-5 entrees and one dessert to share + main and that that would be enough. He was right!

The next day, we headed out to another of Fabi's brewery recommendations, Pfaeffgen.

Where I once again had the Himmel um Aeaed! The beer here was a bit more bitter than Frueh. Actually, all the local beer in Cologne is more bitter than the sweet Bavarian beer.

Cake time! After lunch we walked back to the Dom and had afternoon tea in Cafe Reichard. My erdbeerbaisertorte. Strawberries and meringue. Ooooh yeah. I could have had 2 slices of this!

Lynn had the Schwartzwalderkirschtorte (black forest cake). I'm going to say it was good but not as good!

And then we rolled ourselves back to the airport to return to Munich. Bye Cologne, it was great getting to eat your local foods!