Enjoyed a fine night out after work in Munich on Monday. After going out for some typical Bavarian food in the City Centre (I had some mushroom soup with a dumpling in it), we headed over to Hofbräuhaus, a famous drinking establishment and bit of a tourist trap.
It was a fun place for an hour or two, with a band in lederhosen playing drinking songs and some large glasses of fine German lager. Not sure I’d like to go every week, but definitely glad I went.
I’m in Munich this week for work - which will really help the blog! In fact it’s my first ever trip to Germany too.
I’m a day behind in writing these words, and have had a great time here so far. Munich is a beautiful city, and we’ve enjoyed some fine hospitality. I’ll save some of the details for later posts, but on our first night here, following a pretty rapid taxi ride down the Autobahn (and past the Allianz Arena) we went out for a few (large) beers and I had some interesting dumplings.
Pre-Xmas family gathering on Saturday, so I thought I’d cook something. My mom has got a really old Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook, and flicking through that I found a recipe for Treacle Tart.
It was really easy to make, and I added in a few secret ingredients which didn’t seem to make much difference. It started to overflow a bit in the oven which made it look a bit poor, but it tasted pretty good all things considered.
Another day shopping and eating our way around London, and the best of a selection of new things was going to Wahaca for lunch, the reasonably famous Mexican restaurant on Wardour Street.
Not sure how I’ve managed not to go here before when I used to work around the corner, but the food was very good. An interesting selection of slightly different Mexican dishes and a good set of veggie options too. Only slight disappointment was the Horchata, which it turns out is quite different to the Valencian variety I was used to and expected.
It was really nice spending some time enjoying London more as a tourist than in the usual commuter mode - it really is a fantastic place.
Hilary was down in London for some Xmas shopping before we went up to my parents on the weekend, so in the evening we went down to Stoke Newington with Mandy, Andy and Sarah for a drink and a bite to eat.
After we found out there was no food on in the Daniel Defoe pub where we had met up, we went further down Church Street to the Rose and Crown. I’m pretty certain I’ve not been there before, but even if I have I did do something new as well - we’d eaten earlier in the afternoon so I just had a pudding (apple crumble) which is something I’d never have done before!
The pub was quite nice and the food was OK too. The extra distance also meant we could justify getting the bus back rather than walking, which pleased me no end :-)
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It’s been a long year trying to come up with new things every day, and some days have been better than others. This wasn’t a great day.
I’d done a few frankly poor quality new things in the day, but by the time I was having some average M&S macaroni cheese for my dinner I was still somewhat lacking for inspiration.
However Ben was making himself some veggie sausages, and he was kind enough to give me half a one. At a stroke my meal was transformed into something quite nice, and the novel (to me) combination of sausage and pasta was really good. One to re-experiment with in the future.
Things will improve next week, and for everyone following in “real time” I’m a few posts behind so will have something better very soon.
First new pub in a while - it was Stephanie’s “21st” so a few of us went for a drink after work in The Windsor Castle pub behind Westminster Cathedral.
It’s a whole new world on the other side of Victoria Street from our office, quite residential and not too far from Channel 4’s offices. The pub used to be called The Cardinal as you can hopefully see from the outdated Google Street View below. It has a massive room in the back, and despite being busy was a nice place for a pint and a chat.
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After my previous porridge adventures, I thought that would be a good thing for my dinner seeing as my stomach was still a little upset. I’ve never made my own porridge before - and still haven’t as I got some instant porridge with golden syrup from M&S.
Other than the off-putting pot noodle-style adding of hot water, it was actually quite nice although a little dull. I had some more today (the day after) as I’d bought a pack of three and am starting to bore of it a little already, despite it being ideal for these cold winter mornings. I need some tasty additions for my final pot I think.
Still doing indoor new things as still under the very poor Northern weather, but was slightly cheered up when I discovered the brilliant website http://planefinder.net/ which I hadn’t heard of before.
Basically it has real-time tracking of airline flights, which means in a planespotter sort of way you can figure out exactly what plane is flying overhead.
For example, as I write this a day later I can hear a plane flying over the flat in Tottenham, which I now know is an Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Heathrow. Fascinating!
If you find any of that remotely interesting, you’ll definitely love this website. If not, it’s still worth a quick look I promise.
Still wasn’t well enough to venture out of the house yesterday, but I thought I’d prepare for my upcoming work trip to Germany by doing an online beginners course in German.
I did a year’s German at school many, many years ago, but really have forgotten all but the very basics, so it was interesting to do a refresher course for the first time. I’m not sure it will help massively when I go to Germany for the first time in a week or so, but hopefully I can do at least the basics of please, thank you, beer, etc.
