My grandmother's garden

My grandmother's husband is a passionate gardener, always plugging away in the backyard, growing fruit and vegies, and beautiful flowers. We arrived shortly before cold weather set in, so we caught the last blooms of autumns before they withered and faded away.

What happens when you bring Munich to Brisbane

It seem the Oktoberfest has become an exportable commodity - every venue around town has some kind of Oktoberfest-themed thing going on. However, the ultimate Oktoberfest experience in Brisbane is the aptly named Brisbane Oktoberfest, held at the RNA Showgrounds for two weekends every year. This isn't just a cash grab by an existing venue wanting to cash in on this great folk fest, this is organised by a bunch of Munich expats who wish to bring the fun and Gemütlichkeit of the original Oktoberfest to Munich. A massive tent is erected at the Showgrounds, with small rides for the kids outside, and they fly in an original Oktoberfest band to play in the tent.
I didn't bring the SRL to keep it from getting drenched in beer, so I just used have a short video of the festivities inside:

How does this compare to the actual Oktoberfest you ask? Well, let me oblige. This is a short video from our trip to Germany last year, complete with beer song!


Sadly, the weather has been terrible in Brisbane these last few days; it rained all day Friday and Saturday, so the showgrounds were a muddy mess. I was fairly careful with where I walked, but still, my shoes looked like this the next day:

KKxx

Allianz Arena

Unfortunately I was unable to attend a football game whilst in Munich but at least I got to got on a tour of the Allianz Arena, Bayern Munich's home stadium. Sadly, it was a grey, cold, windy day, but still fascinating. The amazing exterior almost matched the sky perfectly:

This is what the coach and players see during the press conference - usually with loads of journos..

The Bayern Munich change room:

Every player has a photo of himself above their locker. Like in a child care centre... This is the locker of Bastian Schweinsteiger:

  

The players come out of this change room...

..and down these steps to get out onto the pitch.

 Another shot of the air-filled exterior bubbles.

KKxx

Transition Day - 30th April

We had a lovely Bavarian breakfast with my mum's sister and husband, and my other Oma.
Not much of note, just doing the washing and so on.
For dinner I went to my friend (from high school) Sabine's house and she cooked 2 whole chickens for dinner! Yumskos!

Late night, and had to get up early the next day to drive to our friend Andi's wedding.
(slowly getting back up to date, had a great day of catching up today, let's see how this weekend goes. Exactly one week behind...)

Arrival in Munich - SUPRISE!!

My Oma (German for nan) had no idea that my uncle or I would be accompanying my parents for this trip, so they were extremely happy to see us.

Surreptitious paparazzi shot through their hedge, so that they couldn't see me.

Oma's husband Hans is very big on gardening, and being Spring, there were a lot of pretty flowers to photograph. I also made use of the only (!!!!) day of nice, sunny, warm weather we've had so far. So, please enjoy the exploits of Hans' green thumb in their backyard:

This is like the Bavarian version of a shed. This is where Hans stores most of his gardening tools, as well as general handyman stuff, and of course, his equipment tumbling, cutting and polishing semi-precious stones – his other hobby is silversmithing and he often cuts his own stones to set.

And from the other side. He can fit A LOT of stuff in here!

A pitch fork (for non-lynching purposes, gardening only), with the shed on the right and one of the greenhouses on the right. Hans grows a lot of food himself, such as tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, capsicum, so the greenhouses are in use a lot of the time – otherwise it's too cold for these vegies.

Flowering mini apple tree

Beautiful tulips:

Rhododendron

Wooden bird house, most likely built by Hans

Luscious red tulips and some pretty blue flowers

Beautiful blue Enzian

To round out the primary colours, bright yellow

The name of these escapes us all at the moment

Also no idea, but so perty...

Hans' old bike to get around locally. I love the shadow from the foliage on the rough wall.

Phew, another day done. Hope you enjoyed the botanical marvels.
Also, although I probably should have mentioned this earlier, if you click on the photos a larger version appears.

KKxx