Thursday 22nd April

Munich down, Strasbourg to see Matt, Lorcan, Katherine, Laura and Sam and then Barcelona with Sam still to come!!! Happy days. However, I think none of these might happen as I am struggling to stand up straight after landing on my hand after a bicycle kick at football yesterday. I think I might need to ask everyone's concussion expert Matthew Chapman about this.

Anyways, Monday was a good day. After 5 and a half hours of lectures, including the last one where there was a very active discussion about German fraudsters hiding their moneys in Swiss bank accounts, we spent the evening in a new pub called S'guggloch, where drinks are about a third of the price they were in Strasbourg (I guess this isn't hard), before some pretty intense table football battles going again, with me and Toto going 5-0 down to the girls before coming back to win 6-5 and therefore avoiding a semester of bragging.



Tuesday was a particularly interesting day, as I had a lecture about Nazi War Criminals in which I was the only foreign student, and see that taught from a German point of view could be interesting. Also, I'm slightly amused by just how much the lecturer looks like Santa. I always used to wonder what Santa did for the other 364 days of the year, now I know that he's a professor of History at the University of Konstanz with a specialism in Germany's National Socialist past, who'd have thought it?? In the evening I had my first meeting with the LEI (Local Erasmus Initiative), which is a committee in which I am one of 2 Erasmus students helping, to organise events for foreign students this semester, including a trip to Heidleberg, and the rather interesting choice of speed-dating, which could be interesting, but is more like to be an epic fail....mal sehen! After the meeting I dashed to Enrique's to meet some of his Chilean and Italian friends who are also absolute lads, and I watched Inter vs Barcelona there. Very surprised by the result, but maybe the volcano ash played it's part is destroying Barcelona after their 400km coach journey.

Yesterday was also good. My weekend, which begins at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday. Hang on, I'll just say that one more time for anyone reading this who isn't an Erasmus student...my weekend...which begins at 10 o'clock....on a Wednesday...has been good so far. After Andreas' ridiculously early class, I went back to bed until 3 o'clock, got up, went to play football. That must have been the first time in months that I played alright, gots me some goals, and the Wayne Rooney boots seem to be working so far. Quote of the week is gonna go down anonymously incase the person that said it reads this, "I read an article that girls from Belarus are nice, because you can buy them cheap on the Internet". Hahahaha. Anyways, after the football, I dashed into town with Toto to watch Bayern vs Lyon, in an absolutely packed pub, which erupted, badly when Ribéry was sent off, and very positively when Arjen Robben's shot deflected off Thomas Muller's head and went in. After that it was up to the uni for the Psycho party - organised by the psychological department, not an event for nutters. No rest for the wicked!! :-) :-) :-)

München Banter

Why is being an Erasmus student this good? Cos when you get a phone call at 4.15 on a Friday saying "Do you wana go to Munich to see Bayern, we're leaving in 2 hours?", you don't have to worry about work or anything, you just say yes!! Despite indecisiveness being one of Scott's most noticeable characteristics and despite him having 45 minutes to pack before leaving, his new policy of saying "Sure, why the hell not?" to any question asked meant he had no choice but to come. Me, Erik and Scott got a lift with Erik's housemate to Munich, and arrived there much quicker than we would have by train, although that may have had something to do with the fact that his top speed may have broken the land speed record - only joking, it was only 200km an hour at most...

We got to a hostel, checked in, and as the room stunk of everything bad in the world, went out towards Munich's Ostbahnhof area, which had been recommended to us for Nightlife. There, I talked to a couple of Swiss and pretended I could understand them, before we met a guy a dressed up as a chicken, who was celebrating his stag-do. All I can say however, is that the clubs were so empty, that if I was him, I would have been very disappointed with my stag-do. Erik was on top form on Friday night, showing the bouncers who wouldn't let us into the club (despite not having a reason to) exactly what he thought of them, by mooning at them, before later being led away by security. We went back in though....





After getting back at 4 in the morning, we got up the next day at 10.30, cos we had to check out of the hostel at 11, as we thought we'd be staying with Erik's mate on Saturday night. We dumped our stuff in the central station and walked around Munich, taking photos of the city centre, where Erik bought a pretty cool had. Me and Scott then headed to an Irish pub to watch the Manchester derby, and considering he is normally so placid and calm, the sight of Paul Scholes last minute winner almost made him so insane. Straight after the game, we headed to the Allianz arena, to watch Bayern against Hannover, the main reason why we had come to Munich. We were originally gonna go and see Freiburg, but between Bayern and Freiburg, there is absolutely no comparison.

Bayern were 3-0 up at half-time and 7-0 was the full-time score, the club's biggest win in 20 years...AND WE WERE THERE! Arjen Robben was actually on fire with a hatrick, whilst Ivica Olic played well, and the Bayern keeper literally had nothing to do. The Bishop's Stortford Swifts team I used to play for with it's terrible 3 man defence would have offered better opposition than Hannover did on Saturday. The atmosphere in the Allianz arena was absolutely amazing, with 69,000 fans in there, a very excitable stadium announcer, and 2 old men that kept shouting about the game so much, that spit missiles went flying around at others in the rows near them. I was also happy to find that the match programme, which was a special edition to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bayern, was only 3 euros.



After the game, we went for some pizza in an Italian restaurant, where we engaged in a fierce debate about whether the moody bitch behind the counter was hot or not, I still don't agree with Erik's opinion. Scott finally found out what he had spent his money on, having spent a large part of Saturday trying to calculate when he had split his third fifty, much to my amusement. We headed back to the hostel, and were absolutely nackered, so much so that after playing cards, I fell asleep slumped against the wall fully dressed for the night.

On Sunday, we saw a big palace in Munich, the name of which escapes me, before heading to the Hofbrauhaus for bier und wurst, which was incredibly tasty. I also am now the owner of a big Hofbrauhaus beer glass, which is an excellent souvenir for the trip. I think it's also funny to mention a conversation heard by the 3 of us from a group of rich American daddy's girls in Burger King, with the following quotes being overheard:
- "What is a volcano anyway? Is it just a mountain with a hole? What is the red stuff that comes out of it anyway?"
- "We were trying to decide if we had sex or not, so he wrote down a list of the pros and cons, but get this right, even though there were more cons than pros, he still wanted to have sex with me!"
Right so, I think Erik was a bit embarassed of his Landsleute at this point.





Travel there and back, 20 Euro
Ticket to the game, 45 Euro,
Accommodation, 40 Euro,
Spends, Unknown amount of Euros,
Seeing Erik moon a bouncer, successfully liberating a glass from the Hofbrauhaus and watching Bayern's biggest win in 20 years - PRICELESS!!!