Oh my goodness me, it's been way too long since my last update! I've done lots and lots and lots - as usual - and will have to keep it brief.

So, Gareth was over for a long weekend from the UK. It was lovely to see him again, almost exactly a year on since we visited him in India. He came and had lunch with me at the Siemens canteen (where he himself used to have lunch when he was a trainee at Siemens some 14 years ago!) on Friday, and we had dinner at Michaela's house on the Friday night: Christian cooked a monster lasagne that was simply divine and we ate portion after portion even though we were totally full.

Saturday was spent in Munich, doing a spot of shopping, a spot of eating and a spot of sightseeing. That evening Christian, Gareth & I popped in on Bénédicte for apéritifs, and we were joined by Lorna & Tomasz (who had just got back from a weekend in the South Tyrol, bringing me a crazy strong piece of pecorino with truffles that we had with the champagne at Béné's). We then all headed to Neuhausen, to Lorna's favourite Turkish restaurant Pardi. Michaela joined us there too, and we had lots to eat & drink before heading home with the last U-Bahn.

On the Sunday Christian, Gareth & I took the BOB train to Schliersee (it's less than an hour from Munich) and we walked right round the lake, treating ourselves to coffee & cake at one end and a more substantial snack of beer, sausages & rice pudding at the other end, before taking the train back to Munich. It was a lovely spring day, but there were still patches of snow in shady bits of woodland and chunks of ice on the lake.

On the Monday evening Michaela & Gareth joined me & Christian for our usual Stammtisch drinks with our Monday friends at the Kloster. Red wine and fun were had by all.

Gareth had to fly home on Tuesday, but this was good in one way (and one way only; in every other way it was sad!) because it gave me a chance to do my laundry and clean my flat before the next set of visitors, Rasmus & Lene, arrived from Denmark on the Wednesday night! No sooner had they arrived than we walked across to the Nockherberg for a spot of Bavarian dinner.

On Thursday Rasmus & Lene had a day round Munich town centre while I worked my last day of work before Easter - did I mention I'm cycling to work now? Thankfully there's a shower there so I can recover from the über sweat attack that cycling up the steep hill at Thalkirchen causes me to suffer, and not stink like a pig in the office. In the evening, the three of us walked across to Christian's flat where he had prepared another Bavarian dinner for us: Leberkäs and potato salad - yum!

On Friday the four of us drove out to Chiemsee for the day. It was a scorcher! The drive out through country roads was lovely, although much much longer than going on the motorway (which we did on the way home). Once at the lake, we parked up and took the ferry across to the Herreninsel, where we did a tour of King Ludwig's (unfinished) castle with its opulent state & private rooms, before pigging out on yet more Bavarian food and then taking in the art museum in the old monastery. There was an exhibition of Julius Exter, a 19th century artist, which was really amazing. I couldn't believe I'd never heard of him before!

Back in Munich that evening we headed across to Schwabing for a meal in my favourite Ethiopian place, Blue Nile. It was delicious, as ever, with the lentils once again exciting me the most.

On Saturday I took Rasmus & Lene on the BOB train, this time to Tegernsee. We got out and found that the weather was even warmer than the day before. Perfect for a bit of a hike up one of the hills surrounding the lake, Neureuth. With a 500m difference in height from lake to summit, my Danish visitors informed me that we were going to be climbing up higher than two-and-a-half Denmarks! But compared to all the other Alps around us and stretching to the horizon, Neureuth was a mere pimple. And a hot one at that!

The blazing sun followed us up the hill and meant we had to sit indoors at the summit (bloody pale-skinned Danes!). But on the way back down we had to trudge through a massive snow field. I was TOTALLY wearing the wrong shoes for such an endeavour! Back down in the town, we sought out the Bräustüberl of the famous Tegernsee brewery, and had beer after refreshing beer watching the evening sun turn the lake and snow-capped mountains golden, then pink. Back in Munich the three of us popped across to one of the small locals-only Mediterranean bars round the corner from my house (complete with Turkish or possibly Greek old men playing cards inside), then called it a night.

Easter Sunday morning saw us having a relatively early breakfast at Christian's, joined by Michaela for a bit of a chinwag, before Rasmus & Lene had to start their long drive back to Aarhus. Christian & I made the most of the still fabulous weather by going on a long cycle ride.

First we headed across town and out to the Botanical Gardens behind the Nymphenburg Palace, then we went across and up to the Olympic Park (taking in Christian's old university halls of residence, which were themselves the Olympic Village for the 1972 Games and are being renovated right now), then back across to the east side of the river and through to our favourite hostelry, the Kloster, for an afternoon snack. We had dinner back at Christian's place, a satisfyingly huge pile of pasta with a delicious ragú of all the vegetables either of us had left over in the fridge. Yum!

On Easter Monday we drove out to the Allgäu to visit Christian's parents, and had a lovely lazy day in their garden, soaking up yet more sun and generally chilling out, which I have to admit I needed by then, after so much visitor activity.

Back at work, things were hectic of an evening, what with having to pop out to Béné's every few evenings to feed her cat while she was on holiday, as well as doing my own thang:

- we went to the theatre to see Shakespeare's Troilus & Cressida in a jazzed-up modern version, with a most entertaining shouty guy;

- Veronika came over to mine and I cooked her dinner before finally going through my India photos with her - we've been meaning to get together to do that for twelve months! - and having a good old natter;

- I went to the cinema with Christian to see an excellent Austrian film called "Der Knochenmann", a kind of twisted very black humorous take on the detective genre;

- I went for a Greek meal with Dieter from Stuttgart, who was in Munich to meet Harry after his three weeks in Vietnam;

- I cooked a monster fry-up at Christian's with the Cumberland sausages Gareth had kindly brought over from the UK;

- Christian & I went with Michaela & the boys to the Gasthaus zur Post near Michaela's house to sit in the beergarden there and soak up more rays.

Right, that'll do for this blog update, methinks. More soon - honest!