Readers, I have to tell you a little tale about Mama, the Vietnamese place that is just around the corner from my flat, between the gravestone seller and the dodgy Pils bar. It's always intrigued me that there should be a Vietnamese restaurant in what is a predominantly Turkish and working-class area of Munich, especially with the clientèle that I have often observed to be sitting in there: mostly older true-blue Bavarian types, supping on their beers, and looking most out of place in an "exotic" restaurant. But it had never quite intrigued me enough to make me go in. Not until Monday night, anyway.

So there I was, feeling a bit flu-ey and suddenly hungry, when I thought "let's see if something hot & spicy sorts out my sore throat". I walked in and was assaulted by a motley rush of impressions: amid Oriental hardwood furnishings and the all-pervasive scent of steaming rice, and to the strains of Mozart piano concertos, the Vietnamese couple who run the place was sitting at the only occupied table, their company being two of the aforementioned ultra-Bavarians. And they were having a debate - no, really! - about whether the glass was half-full or half-empty - no, REALLY!! I plucked up the courage to interrupt and ask whether I could take a seat somewhere, to which I received a curt "of course" before the debate went on.

So I sat at a corner table and pulled a magazine out of my bag, wondering how long it would be before I might get some service. But I needn't have worried because, a few good-humouredly contentious statements later, the wife came to my table and asked me what I wanted. She then proceeded to quiz me on my travel experience and marital status, or, more precisely, whether I had been to Vietnam and was married to a Vietnamese girl yet, and if not why not?

She took my order and popped briefly into the kitchen before rejoining the debate at the other table. When a little while later she came back to my table with an enticingly steaming plate of rice, vegetables and various mushrooms, she picked up her previous theme, telling me all about a Vietnamese woman she knows who was married to an American who had brought her to live in Germany but then they moved back to Vietnam and now she was unhappy not only because her third child with him was disabled but because of her husband's infidelity - an infidelity forced on him by business practices in Vietnam, no less - and the worry that, should he leave her, she would be stranded with three half-caste children and no-one to support her.

My rapt attention to this monologue was in danger of causing my dinner to go cold, but thankfully one of the Bavarians interrupted her with a "for goodness' sake, let the man eat!" and she finally put down my cutlery that she had been twiddling all the while and went back once more to the debating circle. When I asked for chili sauce, her husband piped up with a suggestion that I try the "special sauce" that he had brought from Vietnam. This sauce I wasn't allowed to dose myself; instead his wife brought the vat in from the kitchen and dribbled a few drops of the crimson concoction over my vegetables.

At the husband's urging I tried a mouthful and was instantly transported to Chili World, that happy happy place where your body is on fire even though enough sweat is pouring from your skin to put out the eternal flames of hell, and you are flying high as a kite, perceiving your environment from new and unexpected angles, and yet you can taste every single ingredient of the delicately balanced meal before you both jointly and severally, the tastes reaching from slightly in front of your lips to somewhere near your toes.

I managed to look outwardly calm (if damp) whilst inwardly exalting in this gem of a restaurant THAT I LIVE NEXT DOOR TO and already looking forward to my next meal there. But perhaps my composure was not all that complete; as I was paying and leaving, the wife said, "Until next time then". She knew that I was hooked.

Just for a change, I've been generally stuffing my face with obscene amounts of delicious food in a variety of splendid eateries these last few days. Highlights include: Japanese at Tenno, a new place just around the corner from the office; fish bolognese at Seven Fish, a well-known place also just up the road from the office; Vietnamese at Mama, a tiny place just around the corner from my flat (on which more later); Bavarian at Kloster Andechs, a monastery & brewery on a hill overlooking the Ammersee lake west of Munich; Greek at Lucullus, an old fave just down the hill from my flat; Thai at Kaimug, a super-speedy place in town; funky modern at Zar, a trendy place up the road from Christian's flat; and a variety of fab yummies at the Viktualienmarkt, Munich's central market. Life is hard!

The non-food - or perhaps more accurately the not-only-food - highlight of recent days was the visit to Munich by Pascale & Pepe, who were accompanied by Pepe's mum Mari Trini and his brother Edu who flew in from Madrid to Strasbourg on Friday afternoon. P&P picked them up and they came straight to me, arriving in the midst of a rainstorm. The rain lasted on into the early hours of Sunday morning, which made our day of sightseeing in town on Saturday slightly soggy - but no less picturesque for all that.

And the Sunday outing to Andechs and then Starnberger lake for coffee more than made up for the previous day's precipitation. The summer suddenly returned, and the sun burned down from the heavens as we scaled the heights from which the Andechs monastery looks out over the plains to the west of Munich. And by Jove do they have knuckles of pork there!!

The Schweinehaxn were man-sized and roasted to perfection, and the crackling was simply out of this world! A sudden feeding frenzy overcame me; perhaps it was the sun and the beer; and I wolfed down the meat - and above all the fat - with rare gusto, savouring the explosive disintegration of the salty crunchy pig skin in my mouth. As did Christian & my Spanish guests, it's only fair to say.

I could barely walk after such a huge meal, but we forced ourselves to waddle round a bit of the Starnberger See, so that we had an excuse to eat ice creams at a lakeside café that afternoon. And then we headed back into Munich, to Christian's flat, for yet more stupendous food: Christian had cooked a memorable gulasch the day before, which increased in excellence through the reheating and was accompanied by bread dumplings that were keenly spiced and light & fluffy as steamed kittens!

The last week also saw CSD in Munich, which is what they call Gay Pride here, after Christopher Street in New York's West Village, which saw the birth of the gay liberation movement in 1969. And with CSD comes a special privilege for Munich's gay and lesbian partygoers (as well as a good number of straight couples too) in the form of a party staged in the halls and courtyards of the Munich Town Hall on Saturday night.

The weather might well have been shite, but the party rocked! I headed in with Christian, Oliver, Oliver's friend Ingo, Trixi & Babsi and was most amused by the combination of New Gothic architecture and various modern music directions (each floor of the building had a different DJ, and the main meeting halls were playing host to large dancefloors). We had a whale of a time until four in the morning when, mindful of our day-trip plans for the following day, Christian & I made an exit.

And now it's proper hot and sunny outside again! It's getting me into the holiday mood. And it's only five days to go before I take my first long-haul flight since living in Australia. Woohoo!!