But there was more to April than Rainnie & Kat's visit (although that was fantastic enough as it was!)...

The last week of April (the week after Easter) consisted mainly of seeing friends I hadn't seen for a long while. During the week I had a drink with Frank, I had lunch with Felix, and I had a couple of drinks with Fritz.

Then at the weekend I had dinner with a whole bunch of guys: out of the madness that was the Starkbierfest, a new Stammtisch has been born! In the end there were 18 of us dining together in the Ennstaler Stubn, an Austrian restaurant in Munich's Slaughterhouse district.

The weekend continued in an alcoholic vein, with lunch at Viktualienmarkt with Bénédicte followed by an afternoon of beer and giggles at the Chinese Tower beergarden in the English Garden, with Michaela (briefly), Tim, Tim's mum & her partner, the boys, and Veronika plus a friend of hers. It was a CLASSIC beergarden afternoon & evening: you can't remember anything much of what was said, but you know it was all a total laugh at the time!

Sunday was once again not that liver-friendly: I met up with friends at the Maibaumfest (maypole party) in the Glockenbach. The weather was threatening to be shite, but it stayed dry long enough for me to have a few beers with Felix, Peter, Bernd, Ralph, and Wolfgang from Salzburg. When it started tipping down, me & Felix went to the cinema (where I ran into Alasdair and then Petar - coincidences!) to watch a film about a gay Turkish policeman in Berlin who falls in love with his girlfriend's cousin. The acting was pretty dire, but the story was cute (as were the guys).

The rain had thankfully stopped by the time we came out from the film, so we headed back to the Fest and caught up with Ralph & Wolfgang, who had been joined by Otto, Klaus, Mikey and Declan. After another couple of beers, we ended up heading for Schnitzels at the Krablergarten, where we dined with Jame & Ralph.

I thought my liver could really do with a rest at this point, so I decided to cycle home. But then a glance at my mobile phone changed my plans: Bénédicte had invited me to dinner at hers with Marie-Laure to pre-celebrate her birthday. I couldn't resist! (Sorry, liver.)

And so it was May. The first highlight of the month was Bénédicte's birthday party weekend, festivities for which started on the Friday night at the Frühlingsfest (Spring Festival; a mini-Oktoberfest if you will). Lots of Bénédicte's friends had flown in for the occasion: Kim, Linda, Nathalie, Marcel and Véronique from Amsterdam, plus Aleks from Berlin. We were joined at the Fest by Marie-Laure, Franck, Corinne, Eric, and a few other EPO people. Oompah music, grilled chicken, litres of beer, dancing on tables. The works.

On Saturday I played tour guide for Béné's visitors. I took them on a zig-zaggy walk through the centre of town, ending up at Spöckmayr for lunch - at 4pm! I thought we might have a choice of dining options by that time, but the whole city was heaving with people. It was a gorgeous, sunny, warm day - but I haven't seen the streets thronged like that since I don't know when!

Our late lunch was followed by coffee at Vits - where else? - and a nice walk along the Isar to the Auer Dult market on my side of the river, where I introduced everyone to elderflower champagne - mmmmh! From there we headed back to Bénédicte's place and partied the night away. There are lots of incriminating photos which I SHAN'T be posting...

The weekend was rounded off by an all-afternoon choir rehearsal just for the men's voices. It was a crime to be sat indoors singing when it was so gorgeous outside! But we knocked off reasonably early and Bernd, Martin & I cycled along to the Thurn & Taxisgarten beergarden near Nymphenburg castle for a cheeky one before the sun went down. From there I cycled all the way round to Bénédicte's for a fabulous leftovers-from-the-party dinner with Corinne, Marie-Laure, Kim & Linda. I was actually struggling to drink alcohol. It was time for the weekend to end!

So let's talk about April:

Yay!!!! Rainnie and Kat came to visit!!!!

At long, long last, Rainnie is in Europe and has finally been able to come and visit me! And the cherry on the cake was that Kat came along too for a long weekend. We hadn’t been together the three of us since the Philippines back in ’07, when I was there diving with Christian. Of course we made sure to get together all four of us too. Such fun!

The weather was absolutely spectacular for the whole time Rainnie was over, with gorgeous sunny days in glorious succession – and rising temperatures to boot. We managed to do SO MANY cool things too, thanks to it being Easter and me consequently having lots of time off work.

The girls flew into Memmingen (sorry, ahem, Munich West) on Friday afternoon and I met them at Hauptbahnhof after work. After a coffee disaster in the station followed by a coffee delight at Vits, we walked up past the Deutsches Museum and along to the Nockherberg, where we proceeded to drink the first of many, MANY beers. And ate the first pile of many, MANY cheeses.

Saturday was a day for walking around Munich, first to look for shoes for Rainnie, then for coffee at Café Glockenspiel, a cheeky beer in the beergarden in the inner courtyard of the Hofbräuhaus (which I’d never sat in, bizarrely enough), more heavenly coffee at Vits with Christian, and a quick wander through the new Globetrotter outdoor clothes shop (replete with low-temperature area, low-air-pressure area, and a whole lake to see if your kayak floats).

From there we walked through the Viktualienmarkt and past Gärtnerplatz, admiring all the little shops, to catch a tram up my hill for a long lazy afternoon & evening at the Nockherberg, this time in the garden (at least to start with). We were joined there by Michaela & the boys, and it ended up being a classic beergarden session, with lots of bollocks being talked and lots of fun being had by all!!

On Sunday, Christian came to pick me & the girls up and we all headed to Michaela’s for a champagne breakfast. Then at lunchtime I took Rainnie & Kat to Tegernsee, where we walked around town, ate ice cream, had a sit on a pebble beach at the lakeside, and then retired to the beergarden of the Tegernseer brewery. We were a bit beered out, to be honest, after the excesses of the night before, but it was lovely just to enjoy the hot hot sun and then head back to Munich for a calm evening at mine.

On Monday I had to be back at work (sniff!) but I met the girls for lunch at Kaimug on Sendlinger Straße and a coffee at the place that does Danesi coffee on Müllerstraße – yum! In the evening I took them to Blue Nile, my favourite Ethiopian restaurant in Schwabing. We stuffed our faces and then waddled back through Schwabing and into town before heading home.

Tuesday was the day Kat had to head home. Boo hoo! It had been such a lovely visit!! But at least I didn’t have to get too depressed, because Rainnie was staying for another whole week! I met Rainnie for lunch at L’Angolo – only we took our sandwiches down to the Isar to enjoy the summer-like sun. In the evening we had dinner at Michaela’s place.

On Wednesday evening I met up with Rainnie after work for coffees at two different places along Pestalozzistraße. Then I headed to my choir rehearsal – for the first time since I had been ill on the day of the concert – but because in fact my throat was sore again and my cold was back (albeit with reduced severity, thank heavens) Holger the choirmaster sent me home again. So I used the sudden spare couple of hours to at last change my tyres on my bike back to the summer ones. Something was telling me that I wouldn’t be needing those spiked winter treads for a while…

I took Rainnie to Vits for lunch on Thursday after we’d hired her a bike just near my office. Then I headed with her upstream along the Isar for a bit before heading – with a slightly heavy heart – back to work. That evening I took her to Prinz Myshkin. I thought it would be a real treat to take Rainnie to a fine vegetarian restaurant, but in fact the food was a little disappointing – and the wines hideously expensive. Not sure I’ll be back there again in a hurry, sad to say, however delicious the Malai Kofta cashew nut balls are. I drowned our prandial sorrows with a drink at Nil followed by a cheeky schnaps whilst waiting for the tram at Moro.

Good Friday was the start of four days of madness. Rainnie & I caught the train to Füssen, where we had a bite to eat before catching the bus to Neuschwanstein castle. Oh My God. The queues were like midsummer tourism madness! (In fact, we were later to discover that the crowds were indeed comparable to a busy summer’s day – with the added nightmare that there was only a skeleton off-season staff on hand to deal with everyone, poor things.)

Because we had a four-hour wait before we would be allowed into the castle, we decided to go up the next-door mountain in a cable car. I didn’t realise that Rainnie had a problem with heights, so it took me by surprise when she clung on to my arm for dear life on the way up – and the way down! But once we were at the top it was great. We watched intrepid hang-gliders jumping into thin air from a special ramp off the side of the slope before heading back down.

From the base of the cable car we walked all the way to Neuschwanstein the back way, which was a real delight because there were no madding crowds, just pleasant meadows and rushing mountain streams (the Pöttschlucht gully was particularly fabulous). The tour of the castle itself was a bit shite, to be honest, but given the staffing situation I suppose I have to let the woman off. She sounded extremely cheesed off with life – but then again so would I after a manic day like that, I guess. We just had time for a pizza in Füssen before our train back to Munich.

On Saturday we caught the train first to Prien am Chiemsee (where we DIDN’T see the lake, sadly, for lack of time) for a desperately awful Alfredo coffee, then to Salzburg. Our walk from the station into town took us through a delightful park that I don’t remember ever seeing – unless it was there that we played an open-air concert when I was on tour with the Harrow School for Young Musicians’ Symphonic Winds wind band and Philharmonic orchestra…

In town we singularly failed to find anywhere with a decent selection of vegetarian food, so we ended up in Afro Café where at least they had some crazy bulgar wheat dish that was okay. After walking through the Getreidegasse and past the major sights, we headed back to the station and back to Munich. That evening we met up with Christian and his friend Bernd at Mama, where I had the owner Anna’s stupendous Vietnamese beef salad for the first time in ages and was very very happy. We headed to Christian’s for a few glasses of wine after that.

Well, in fact for too much wine: our heads suffered in a BIG way the next day. So much so, in fact, that we really didn’t manage to do anything constructive until that evening, when we headed over to Bénédicte’s for dinner – and, inevitably, more wine. Only we managed to be a little more restrained, which was a good thing!
Easter Monday was my last chance to do a day-trip with Rainnie, so we headed to Tutzing on the S-Bahn and visited Lake Starnberg. At the beergarden there on the shore, there was a proper oompah band playing proper Bavarian music – a first for Rainnie. And they really weren’t bad! We headed round to Starnberg itself and walked along to the Strandhouse for a few aperol spritzes in the hot very-summer-like sun, then headed home, and back out to Bar Teatro for tapas (but sadly Ivana wasn’t working that night).

And that was that. Ten fabulous days of sharing with my best friend in Australia a little of what makes me so happy to live in Munich, which is another way of saying what makes it bearable not to be living nearer her in Melbourne. See you again soon, gorgeous girl!