So as I cycled home from work last night, I saw a wallet lying in the middle of the cycle path in the middle of the bridge I cross over the Isar every day. At first I cycled on past, thinking it must have already been emptied by now, but then I stopped and turned back to check.

In my head, I had a strong echo of the anguish and anger I had felt when my wallet was nicked off me in Paris before Christmas. If I could save someone else all that heartache, it was worth a five-minute detour to the nearby police station.

And in fact the wallet was full of cards, driving licence and cash! It must have been dropped just then. So I did the honourable thing and handed it in at the police station. The officer took all my details (hang on a minute, I thought, why does he need to know all about me?) and then asked for a phone number, in case the owner wanted to call to thank me.

At home half an hour later, I got a call from a mightily relieved woman. She insisted on giving me something to say thankyou, even though I said there was no need, and so half an hour later there she stood on my doorstep, a bottle of expensive red wine in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other! She didn't come in (understandably; I was a complete stranger after all) but we had a little chat and a laugh and then she went on her way.

When she had gone, I couldn't resist the temptation to open the choccie, even though it might take the edge off my appetite (I had just bought a huge pile of vegetables to do a Fiona-style stir-fry). It was DELICIOUS!!! Organic dark chocolate with a cassis filling. Yum! I must see if I can find a shop that stocks it.

So what had for the most part been a dark, dreary Monday, first day back at work and all that jazz, ended on an altogether more satisfying note: not only did I have the feel-good factor of tasty chocolate in my mouth, but also the feel-much-better factor of having done a good deed in my heart.

GOOD NEWS! Hester & Simon are the proud parents of Poppy Margaret!

So I notice that my last blog entry was written on the day of my nephew Ryan's birthday. That evening after work I headed over to Michaela's house to celebrate. There was going to be a bit of a party in a local Italian restaurant, but Ryan is poorly (there are lots of nasty viruses doing the rounds at the moment in Munich) so we just had a quiet one at home with his parents and Lisa.

On Wednesday I became the proud owner of a sofa!! It's a big cream leather thing that lends my livingroom some sorely-needed curves. I hired a van - what a palaver! which I'll come back to - and drove to Schwabing, to Harry's mate Günther's flat, where Ferdinand met me and gave me a hand with the three sofas I bought off him that evening (Michaela bought the other two). It was pissing with rain when I got there, and I felt ever so guilty because Ferdinand had to wait almost an hour for me in the cold and wet.

The reason for my naughty lateness was (and I promised I'd come back to it) the bloody van hire. I had rung Avis on Tuesday afternoon to ask about vans, and the bloke had said "no problem, just pop in tomorrow evening, we won't reserve anything, there are loads of vans". So in I popped on cue on Wednesday evening, only to be told by the (different) bloke behind the counter, "oh no, he can't have said that, we never have spare vans in February because that's when everyone is moving house". Argh!!!

So I was stood there, miles from home, my taxi already gone, and I had to try another hire shop! Avis couldn't even help wth Less than chuffed, I hailed another cab and headed to Europcar near my house. They had a van, but they needed my passport, which, in one of those moments of foresight that we ignore at our peril, I had considered bringing with me but then decided against it. So taxi number three took me home to fetch said document. I walked back (it would have taken longer to find another cab) and finally drove off in a Transit van 45 minutes later than planned. Damn and blast!!

The moral of this story? ALWAYS bring your passport to the car hire place. And the other moral? ALWAYS ring again before you pick up the vehicle. Two lessons that I really ought to have learned by now. But there you go.

At the weekend Ferdinand took me on an excursion to the outer reaches of Bavaria. It's handy knowing people with cars! Saturday morning was fresh and bright: a perfect day for an outing. We headed off against the traffic (everyone and their dog appeared to be Alpward bound, with big ski boxes tip to tip on the roofs of the cars in the jam going south), downhill towards the Pfalz (Palatinate) region of Bavaria.

Regensburg is the capital of the Pfalz. It's a delightful little mediaeval town with narrow little winding roads, a 12th-century stone bridge over the Danube that was the model for various beidges around Europe including the Charles Bridge in Prague, and a marvellous cathedral. We wandered around, stopping for a monster schnitzel for lunch, and had a look at Lederhosen in a big shop near the cathedral (I now think I might get mine taken in rather than investing in a new pair).

In the afternoon we headed southeast to Landshut, which is the capital of Lower Bavaria and is also a delightful town, this time in a more baroque pastel-shades way. We wandered around town, then stopped for a coffee in a pub that was so smoky I could barely see all the way to the bar!! It's going to be a struggle for Germany to follow the European trend of banning smoking in restaurants. But if the Italians can manage it, then so must they. Eventually...

We met up with Ferdinand's friend Ottmar and his wife Sonja for Greek food later on that evening in Landshut. The meal was not the greatest - but that probably has more to do with the fact that I was feeling out of sorts all day (a throbbing headache following one of those pre-migraine vision distortion things that I occasionally get, where suddenly multicoloured crocodile teeth appear just to the left of my focal spot and everything appears somehow unreal for half an hour; then stomach pains that gave way later to some hideously noxious farts - bet you wanted to know that).

Sunday was a much less exciting day, weatherwise and activity-wise. I did nothing for most of the day. A brisk walk around some of Ostpark in the afternoon, after the first rain had come and gone, cleared my head of the previous day's headache. In the evening I met up with Ferdinand, Thomas, Roman & Fritz for Thai food in the Au. It's always good to know new cheap food options nearby, but I was a little underwhelmed by this place.

It wasn't that the food was bad, but there really are much better Thai places in Munich. Perhaps I was put off my food by a lingering stomach ache from Saturday (there is a nasty gastric flu doing the rounds; it could be a touch of that), or perhaps it was the pouring rain that soaked me going in and again going home. Ah well, it's been a crappy sort of winter, so rain shouldn't come as much of a surprise.