Winter is coming

Another three weeks has gone by since my last blog. The 2 months that I’ve been here so far have gone so fast but at the same time it feels like I’ve been here for a lot longer than that. It’s starting to get very cold, and every hill is covered in snow. Every now and again we go out on pushbikes to a caravan where we play cards with Vinzenz’s friends. In Germany, helmets are not mandatory for cyclists, which is the opposite of Australia. We went out twice in almost freezing weather (once raining) and didn’t bring gloves, which I will not be forgetting very soon.

a map accompanied by a legend describing the laws around bicycle helmets

 Last weekend we went to a local festival type thing in a big hall in Nuβdorf where I was able to wear the Lederhosen again and looked quite stunning. There was a big band with a composer up the back and in front of them groups of people came on from the side and did traditional Bavarian dances. We got there when the hall was already full so we had to pinch spare seats off other tables and put them at the end of our table. This meant that we were closer than anyone else to the dancers, and at times copped a spinning dress in the face. One of the last dances of the night was a very interesting one. They brought a log on stage and started doing flips and dances over it, then they started chopping at it with wood splitters to the music. Meanwhile hundreds of pieces of wood are flying up into the air and into our faces. After they were done chopping the wood they started drinking beer and Schnapps as part of the act.

I’m finding it very difficult to not eat too much chocolate, it tastes so good here, and it’s not that expensive either. At school I’m usually really tired except on Mondays when we start school at 9:25.

Last Wednesday our school had a day off because it was Buß- und Bettag, which is a religious holiday. We went to Munich and saw most of the things that I didn’t get to see last time. One of the things that we did was walked up to the top of St. Peter’s church and looking out at midday, when all the church bells were going off across the city. On the Rathaus there are 32 life sized figures (cheers Wikipedia) that do a sort of performance to the tune of the tower’s 43 bells. We were lucky enough to get the best view of it right in the front row of the lookout. The Christmas markets opened a few days after we went and we saw them setting up for it. We also went to the Schloß Nymphenburg (Nymphenburg palace), and it was absolutely amazing. Pictures can’t fully capture what it feels like to walk through that much history and royalty, every wall and ceiling has priceless oil paintings on it. Australia has no castles like this at all so it was incredible to see the product of that much money and time spent on just one group of people over the span of hundreds of years.

On Saturday we went to Vinzenz’s great uncle’s 90^th birthday party. It was pretty interesting hearing his life story, even though I couldn’t understand much. Luckily though the table explained what he said. Vinzenz’s whole family was there and we had typical Bavarian meals in a typical Bavarian restaurant.

Almost straight after we got back from the birthday we left again for the village of Birkenstein, where we parked the car and started walking up Schweinsberg. It was smack bang on 5 o’clock when we set out but we refrained from using torches for a little while because our eyes had already adjusted. About 2 thirds of the way up I noticed that the rain was falling slower than normal, funnily enough there was snow on the ground. As the snow got deeper and thicker we had to watch our footing more and more because there was an almost vertical drop to our left. When we eventually got to the hut near the top at about 6:30 we were greeted by the heat of the fireplace inside where my hair thawed. There were about 20 people staying there, and most of them were friends of my host father Bernhard. We stayed in the main room for hours and everyone seemed to be very interested in me and I was bouncing around between conversations. We had dinner of Wurst, Sauerkraut and soft drinks. There were two guitars and they got me to join in and play, and pretty much everyone started singing along in Bavarian.

 Later on in the night about six of us and a dog decided to climb to the summit, which was probably a good 100 metres up in altitude. It took about twenty minutes to get to the top, and it was extremely cold but fun. On the way back down they decided to start running, so naturally I did as well. I fell over and my pants didn’t dry out until 2 days later. The mountain is probably shorter than Mt. Buffalo but the snow there was so good, like if you stepped where there weren’t already footsteps your thigh would get icing-sugar like powder on it. We woke up on Sunday at about 8:30 and I was exhausted but ready to get a move on. When we got back home to Nuβdorf there was snow everywhere from the snowstorm the night before, which I think came as a surprise even to Vinzenz because it’s still only November. It’s not long until we leave now which is very sad.

descending the mountain 'Schweinsberg'

Servus, from Oliver