Precious Stuff

No chance of a lie-in as the horses needed to be brought in from a field outside the property. So being up and about early also did the morning dog walk before the sun got too high - Flash suffers in the heat.

Sort out most of the boxes of remains from yesterday's picnic, the most sensitive things I had simply "thrown" into the fridge last night.

Then a drive up to Munich, changing cars at Buchloe railway station - I had woken Angie up last night with all my toing and froing and she missed her 5:35 am train and drove to Buchloe where there are twice as many connections. I need her car to drive in central Munich. Her diesel (2005) has a particle filter, mine doesn't (2002) and is banned within the inner ring road. There is a government subsidy to retrofit the filter but it requires one to replace the entire exhaust system, which costs a fortune and only makes sense when it can no longer be welded.

The Augustiner Keller Biergarten is directly next to Angie's office and her office windows open on to it. Although a newly built office, they deliberately didn't include air conditioning as they reckoned the high incidents of illness in the old offices, which had air con, was to blame. So now first thing in the morning, she throws open the windows to be greeted by high-pressure cleaning of the wonderfully smelling cold fat from the cooking equipment!

The beer garden is Munich's third largest with 5000 outdoor seats. The Chinese Tower in the English Garden has 7000 and the Hirschgarten near the Nymphenburg Palace has 8000. Augustiner Beer is the only private brewery left in Munich and the only one to sell it's beer from oak casks, even at its tent at the Oktoberfest. Here in this beer garden, they only sell their premium lager beer "Edelstoff", this year costing 7.40€/litre. By comparison water costs 6.60€/litre and Coke ....... wait for it .......11.00€/litre. Now you know why this beer garden, like most, has a very large children's playground and why families are very welcome.
And like all proper beer gardens, one is quite welcome to bring one's own food .... at least in the self-service area which is by far the largest part.

Unlike the last time I met up with Nigel in the garden, two years ago, I didn't bring any food - I suspected everyone was fed up with my picnic efforts yesterday and especially my special vegan beer radish. (Yes, I was wearing the picnic table cloth but there was no picnic table. And yes, also Lederhosen, of which there is, fortunately, no photographic evidence).

Angie joined us but sadly we had much too little time as Jemma and Scott had to depart to the airport, the rest staying until Thursday. Yesterday in the bus, it was not possible to carry on any meaningful discussion and anyway I had to concentrate hard with such a precious load. I would have so liked to have learnt more about them all, as yesterday was the first time I had met Cal, Rowan, Ell and Scott. Added to all this we had to get home to do the dogs and horses and Angie into bed for her 5:30 train tomorrow.

Still, as always, was great to meet up but sadly the last time this trip. I know Nigel will be doing everything in his power to be back soon and Rowan is talking about being back for the 2018 Oktoberfest.

PS if you clicked on the link to the Augustiner Bier Keller (in English) there is a video giving an impression of what it's like. At the bottom right-hand corner, overlapping the video screen is a red banner "Video of Flash Mob" . in this you will see amongst others a Scottish bagpipes band.