Off to the Wies'n!

Ok so now I have made my first trip to Oktoberfest - I think I'll be back. Here are some of the reasons why:1: Huge beers

2: Drinking said beers with friends

3: Drinking beer and singing and dancing whilst standing on the chairs all night.

4: With about a million other people!

5: Getting little gingerbread hearts 'cos it's your birthday too ;)

Stockholm - not that bad at all!

Hey guys!
Finally Broadband in the house!!! And finally I can give my side of the story over here instead of the whining from one famous Brazilian filmmaker... ;-)

Enjoying sunny autumn weather by the water.

Then we took a picture of Ri's favorite building - the Swedish royal castel! ;-)

This is the view from our balcony. We live in an old are called Johanneshov, just outside the south area of Stockholm (less than 10 min by subway into central Sthlm). Anyway, just wanted to illustrate the sixties 'compact living concept' or whatever you might call these square buildings.

To the right we have a view of the concert/sports arena Globen - an icon of Sthlm.

And in the night they highlight it in different colors depending on what hockey game is playing, or whatever the event is... guess what was on this night? Ladies night! hahaha.
I wonder what Gwen Stefani gets next week when she plays there?

Then we have our small living room, but with a big sofa bed especially for you guys ;-)

The sixties kitchen is my favorite, it's some how just cosy with an old style kitchen...

Ok that's it for now, I'll be back with pics from our housewarming party and the visit to Skansen where they have only Swedish animals (wolf, bear, reindeer and so on)...

Hej då!

Autumn in Muenchen

Hey everyone,

Well now I've had a chance to get into the city in the last few weekends, I've been relaxing in the gigantic English garden in the centre of the city. It's quite huge, with a regular drum circle sending beats out across the park, and the occasional jazz band starting up. But mostly it's just nice to sit in the sun and watch people go by - mostly playing football or frisbee, but lot like me just lying in the grass watching the world go by.
Here my two flatmates Diana and Jonny are kind enough to illustrate the concept...


And now some random photos from around Muenchen, including Stacchus, the Main LMU building, random train bridges and other buildings ;) Enjoy!


And this week marks the beginning of Oktoberfest (noone knows why it isn't called Septemberfest but anyway) and I shall have the arduous duty of attending with my lab one of the massive tents at the Wies'n on my birthday on wednesday. Sucks to be me, really.
Miss you all though, and keep the posting up, I shall try my hardest :) Though it may take me some time to recover from the minimum 1L size beers on offer.
Love from Muenchen,
Kiri

House warming party in Stockholm

Tomorrow, we're thinking in having a small HWP in our place. Off course it is BYO, because I cannot afford even my beer (and I cannot leave at 3PM, before the beer shop closes)... But if you wanna get heroine, there are a 24h shop just across the road.

Raul und Kiri in München

(taken in a cocktail bar with the camera pointing at the mirrored ceiling... in case you want to know. ;))

Bolder Boulder

I was hoping our first blog entry would be accompanied by a breath taking photo of lycra-clad Boulder extreme cyclists with waxed legs, but we have yet to buy a camera. So the photo of the "triatha-dicks" as Alex affectionately refers to them will have to wait until the next posting.

It's been a week now, and I'm still refusing to change the clock on my computer to US time. It's still 4:24pm on Saturday as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, I'm reluctant to let go of Canberra and everyone there, but it has been a pretty smooth transition so far. Alex and I have reconnected with some old friends from when we lived in Boulder before. So hopefully we'll soon be out painting the town red along side them.

Richardson, you ought to come visit-the beer is CHEAP here!

Miss you all!

Capital Punishment III - or why Sweden never gets the nobel prize...

Well, I know I complained a lot about Canberra, and with all the respect, that place is a craphole. But, the John Curtin and the ANU were a fantastic environment. I had total freedom to run my work over there and be a productive scientist. But here, in Sweden...:

* Scientists are very, very underpaid;
* Post-doc is just a fancy name for an extended PhD, they don't even pay you a salary, they pay you a scholarship!!!
* I felt a general lack of motivation;
* One always has to leak the asses of the 'superiors';
* Too little resources;
* Grants seem to hard to get;
* A lot, I mean: A LOT of stupid bureaucracy;

The first sentence a secretary here told me (with an awful swedish accent):

'that's a strange name you have...'

I know that since I was 3...

AND After seeing Raul's pics of beer in Munich...

What can I say...:

1. I cannot afford to go out here... so no beer drinking in pubs;
2. I cannot buy beer here... because when I get home the System Bolaget (the 1984-tyoe of citizen control tool used to disallow beer drinking and increase the rate of suicide... I believe that improves the accounts of the superannuation system...) is closed;

But...

After some days of anger... I thought a bit and yesterday I was seeing this whole stockholm story as a burden and today I am seeing it as a challenge.

Raul's life in Munich

Beer!

Meat!

More beer!

This is the life! Ahhhhhhhhh!!! ;-)

More Munich

Kiri with an amazingly large apple struedel and a very nice weiss bier (@ Augustiner Brau)

Ian (NZ) and Diana (Germany - housemate)

An overview of the massive Augustiner beer hall




Some tosser with leatherhosen and a tuba playing the American anthem (yuck!)

B&W Sunset over the train lines near the Munich central station (Hauptbahnoff)

Farewell to Kaori!

Kaori is probably boarding the plan in Sydney now.... heading off after tearful farewell drinks organized by JB (his speech seamed scarily sincere - I think he will miss Kaori a lot).

Ps. no need to try to download the photo... it got blurry! Darn....

Monique and Noah

Monique with family is back(!) in Canberra - someone doing the opposite at least (although Mo said she wouldn't mind living in LA again, to be close to grandparents).

So, here he is: Noah, 6 months - probably the cutes little baby boy in Canberra, or Australia even.

We had a nice lunch at the Streets Cafe, even though it was sad to realize that since I'm leaving soon I wont be seeing Mo for a while, probably.

Raul does Muenchen

Sorry for the delay, but truly today was the only day I had to take pictures. Regrettably because I as alone during the day there's only pictures of the city and not me. Bonn was really pretty, especially along the Rhine river, but I forgot my camera in Munich.

The something-something-sen building next to the town hall

The town hall (in disguise because of the absurd amount of American tourists)

The two towers - Orthanc and Bara Dur. They say Sauron and Sauman converse often from one tower to another. I must have missed it.



The interior of the Church of Lots of Beer drinking.



The "Devil's footprint" inside the Church of Lots of Beer drinking. It is said that the devil got so pissed in munich that he left his footprint when he got in to the church by mistake and made a hole in the floor.

I have arrived suckers!!! ;-)

Just to let everybody know that I arrived alive (barely) and well (depends on ones olfactory sense) in Munich. It's 10 past 9 in the morning and we are off for doner kebab and sauerkraut for breakfast! Yummy!!

;)