Chinese New Year usually goes off like a cracker but the relatively recent ban on sales of fireworks to individuals has certainly lessened the nightly cacophony. I seem to remember the ban of firecrackers in Australia in the 70s at some point, which was no doubt a good thing for uncoordinated dads in backyards with a few beers on board. I remember my dad making some fumbling attempts to run away from whirling fence fire spitters and escaping with all his fingers from a few big bungas...those were the days!

Well, Taiwan eventually getting a few safety laws in is a bloody good thing all in all, especially in the presence of the insidious Coronavirus which has recently reared its ugly head in our near neighbour, China and seems to have ominous overtones of the other deadly virus that saw us quarantined for a week, SARS. The school has just announced an extended break for Chinese New Year till the following Thursday, February 6th, and while we're ecstatic to be getting a few extra days off work and extending our break, it is certainly a quite murky rationale for the extension. Many of our kids and their families, let alone staff. go to many different places in China to visit family for CNY, so I suppose they're being cautious until everyone returns safely.

Cass and I received nearly 100 poems each for grading just before the break, so a few extra days off teaching will be a life-line. Not only did the kids craft a persona or perspective poem, but they annotated it for techniques as well as the effects the techniques have on the poem/reader. So, quite a lot of material to wade through, and it's always difficult giving a grade to someone's creative work such as a poem. One of the series of warm-up exercises we gave was to re-format and re-configure the words to a published poem in a creative way: the photos above show my period 8 class being proud of their attempts and here in the video, all 26 of them!

We recently celebrated our anniversary downtown on a school night and fellt very decadent: how wicked to be up late in the big city and drinking (!) We Ubered down and back for convenience and because we're mature adults (also, !) and had a delightful meal at Saffron 46 overlooking the mighty Taipei 101. We watched the building slowly change moods as the fading day left its walls and the colours festooned down its sides from the New Year celebrations gradually came to life. It was a magical transformation and we'd been lucky to snare one of the tables adjacent to the mega floor to ceiling windows: you could almost reach out and touch the giant's shining candle! Cass got a dazzling new diamond bracelet recently for a couple of celebrations, so she was keen to give it a first "airing" as well. We shared a fancy dessert to cap off a wonderful Indian feast full of curries, breads, rice and papadums enhanced by some fine gin and wine.

Everything was shut down on Friday night as it was New Year's Eve, but Wal invited me around to his place for a few beers. We had more than a few and I ended up staying for a good stint. The boys are full of zest and being 3 and 4 years old respectively, they certainly have a lot of energy that needs an outlet! I'm always greatly entertained as well as being part of the entertainment I'm sure, and their bath-time routine is just hilarious!

Our friend from many years ago, Leon, is also in town at the moment having brought his son to have a look at the country he was born in. Riley has no memory of the place, of course, as he left as a tiny toddler, but what a cool present to give your son! We saw them both and had a bit of a chat on Friday at school, but we were inundated with before-said poems, so we couldn't devote much time. I've just tentatively arranged a get-together on Wednesday, so we'll have a bit more of a catch-up then...stay tuned!

On-island holidays give us a real chance to re-charge the batteries ready for another tilt at work. Not only that, but we can dive in to long neglected tasks that we tend to put off in the normal grind of daily life. We've been giving the house and files and cupboards and drawers a long overdue examination, and it's amazing some of the trash (a lot) and treasure (a little but gold!) we've discovered. Suffice to say the garbage trucks and recycling trucks will be getting a workout soon! It also gives us a chance to have some big sleep-ins, some long, lazy breakfasts and some languid days, unfettered by class timetables and Pavlovian responses to deadlines and schedules...bliss!

Photos; all previously mentioned except the Moop!

Our train pass garnered us some reserved seats on the ICE from Munich and jettisoned us in comfort and style all the way through to Frankfurt with a couple of train and platform changes before depositing us at a suitably grand and cavernous station that we negotiated with aplomb. Arriving street-side to have a quick look at the sat-nav we started trundling the route to our hotel a few blocks away through some tatty streets and ragged station locals!

Frankfurt and immediate surrounds proved to be a revelation and some of the day trips into the Rhine valley and other hinterlands piqued our interest and stunned our senses. The city itself is an international banking hub and the city's skyscrapers are a unique backdrop to the old town heart. Gleaming and architecturally diverse glass and steel juts skyward like an iron Japanese fan, backdropping the cobblestones and giant, red stones that make up the town squares, churches and city halls in the older heart of town. The Main River slices the city neatly in half dividing the old centre and financial machine from the museum quarter with the restaurants and beer halls at their back, before eventually junctioning with the mighty Rhine some 500 km away.

Despite the fact that this blog becomes a pseudo food blog at times, have you noticed I haven't breathed a word about food yet, despite being in the middle of Europe for the last two weeks? Things are about to change! We ate loads of traditional fare, so much so at the end that we needed to take a break and seek out some different cuisine. This wasn't a chore as Germany is a melting pot of nations and the melting pots of those nations were on open display and fine in quality. We sampled the famous dishes of all the regions we visited including frankfurters, potatoes, schnitzel, sauerkraut on multiple occasions but also had our fill of other heavy meats and sausages (well at least I did!). Cass got the green-sauced potatoes in Frankfurt (a local specialty) and even tried a delicious schnitzel at one stage as well. I tried every local beer I could lay my hands on and had a good time tasting various weisbbeers and pilseners, while Cass sampled a range of Rieslings.

We broke away from the traditional beer halle fare at intervals to punctuate our dining with visits to steak houses, Italian, Turkish, Iranian and French restaurants because, well....they were there! I don't think we got a dud meal at all, in fact, quiet ironically, Cassy voted a little restaurant in Munich Station as her favourite of the lot. In between we had bountiful, gourmet breakfasts in the hotel restaurants and were satiated to the point that we could sustain a whole day walking, visiting and admiring, miss lunch and just have a dinner in the evening. Considering the amount and variety of food we were enjoying, this minimal effort at food control was probably a very good thing!

We visited a range of museums and galleries in Frankfurt as we strolled around and got used to the layout of the city. We criss-crossed the road and pedestrian bridges across the Main, walked riverside and conversed with the ducks and stalked the museum quarter in search of  tiny or non-existent queues in front of sought after sites. A surprise was the German Film Museum, in which we spent many hours: as both students of film and teachers of film in our language instruction in high school, we were keen visitors and reveled in the techniques on display and some of the special film artifacts. An Oscar, the Alien and the real red drum were just some of the golden highlights!

We succumbed eventually and joined the line for the Making Van Gogh Exhibition at the Staedel. The crowd waiting patiently in the line outside slowly froze as it inched inside only to be met with a press of humanity rare in an art gallery and only matched in our experience by a crush of people in the side rooms at the Musee D'Orsay, again stuffed with iconic Van Goghs: he's a popular guy now! It was a feast for the eyes but a bit too much for my delicate claustrophobic tendencies!

We took a series of trains, each more quaint, as the countryside grew more bucolic all the way to the charming Rothenburg ob de Tauber. The day trip was planned in scant and it seemed quite miraculous that we made the changes required and eventually disembarked at the requisite town! It's just so easy traveling in Europe compared to Asia...nearly everyone everywhere speaks at least a little English! A perfectly preserved pearl of medieval architecture greeted us after a short stroll from the station and we spent the rest of the day exploring the streets and the inevitable tourist boutiques as well as the more hardy city walls where we circumnavigated the town dodging turrets and treading uneven flagstones. It was a blast and reminded us of a mini version of our beloved Carcassone!

We did a similar trip to the castles of the Rhine, preceded by a local lunch and some wine tasting. Usually eschewing the delights of an organized and guided tour, we relented in the cold and miserable weather to be ushered around in a luxurious mini bus by the mercurial Misha. We were whisked to the tops of mountains to view giant statues, hosted for lunch, taught about local wines  and feted on our own Rhine cruiser. The crumbling edifices clinging to the clifftops and more substantial piles renovated into luxury hotels were beautiful to view from the river. The company and the intimate quarters were all a little too much however, confirming our decision to avoid these trips as much as humanly possible and rely on our own auspices!

Ignoring our own better judgement we went on yet another guided trip later in the week, this one just a half-dayer and it was spoiled a little by by failing spirits brought on by a slight fever and some bone chilling, seeping, sapping cold! We went to Heidelburg to check out their famous castle, 14th century university, and various incarnations and add-ons that have survived the centuries. It was suitably grand and majestic, the viewing deck overlooking the river and town most spacious and impressive with precipitous drops to the valley below. A funicular purred and poured itself down the mountain to the impossibly long main street and the hotel of the knights, supposedly the oldest in the world. We were picked up after an interminable stint in the bone sapping conditions: we were that desperate we even took shelter in a church at one point to escape the conditions! It was fun, but we were pleased to be back under our own controls after being deposited back in the city.

Sapped by cold, then zapped by jet lag we enjoyed being back in positive temperatures again despite having to face the whirlwind of work 24 hours after we returned. Our Germanic experience was delightful, varied and eye-opening and we were pleased with our travel choices. Next time, considering how awesomely efficient the train system was, we might elect to do a bit more city hopping... we're just so lucky to have these experiences we know...spoiled and very lucky!

 here's the album.

 Since stumbling across my German heritage some years back via a distant relative's research, I've been slightly conflicted: is my Bavarian blood a significant factor in my fascination with the National Socialists or am I just a naughty "war-boy"? Am I inflicted with procedural purism or am I just slightly anal? Did I buy a Hugo Boss suit for some ancestral jolt or did I just think it looked stylish? These and many other questions of great import were swirling around my mind as we contemplated our second trip back to the Fatherland, the first being in that period in which I was blithely unaware of any Germanic antecedents.

We'd decided without too much fanfare or planning to re-visit Germany as we had fond memories of the raw and edgy Kreuzberg in Berlin, where we spent an eye-opening week some years ago. We were battered by an increasing work schedule and were barely able to devote a day one weekend to brainstorming, planning and deciding where and what to do, but happily, all eventually worked out well. We figured out some rough ideas, went ahead and booked some flights, a four day train pass and gave the holiday scant attention until we were actually winging our way to Frankfurt!

The inter-city ICE train from Frankfurt to Munich deposited us at the Munchen Hauptbahnhof where it was a hop, skip and jump in the rain to our hotel. We trundled our tiny trolleys across the road and deposited our bags for a couple of hours while we stretched our legs and took in the local environs waiting for the room to be ready. Cass had picked brilliantly: the hotel was slick and modern, right on top of the station, and in walking distance to all the major attractions. Good start!

From there we settled into our usual European pre-Christmas routine. The arcades and malls were reminiscent of the 70s in Australia in terms of bustling crowds by day, and only swelled exponentially as the light faded and the temperatures dropped into the evening. Locals bustled home juggling gigantic branded cardboard shopping bags, gluwein was being quaffed at twinkling Christmas markets, beer halls rocked and bratwurst stands were stacked. It was delightful and exciting to be part of such human happiness en masse and we enjoyed our stints in the magical period before the celebrations wound down and then ceased altogether as the holiday festivities shifted to the private home.

We took in more than our share of fine art, visiting the Althe Pinakothek, the modern Pinakothek and the design Pinakothek over a few different days. We got a tip from a young local hipster about a gallery in the heart of town as we all huddled away from the rain on the verandah of a closed gallery. We eventually followed his directions, employed some phone GPS and found a jewellery box of wonders of Miro and Picasso and other tapestry design masterpieces in the middle of a glitzy shopping mall! The permanent collections at all these galleries were dripping with masters old and new. Some paintings we'd seen before and some examples of families of works in other parts. Many, in fact the vast majority, were new and fresh for us....what wondrous luck to spot early and later works by artists with whom we're very familiar as well as some iconic treasures from the greatest in their prime periods. As usual, wandering these vast caverns became a little enervating and we marveled at the many thousand steps we walked each day when we arrived back in the evening and checked the app!

In between these galleries we walked, explored, marveled and admired. Prior to this walking, though, we braved the touristy hop on/hop off bus for a tour of the city. Cass likes to do this to get her bearings and it's a great idea. We got some ideas where and what to visit in the next few days as well as other places we probably didn't need to visit. We did make a special visit to Olympic Park. As a ten year old I was enamoured with the Munich Olympics and the exploits of the impossibly young 15 year old Shane Gould as well as macho swimming superstar Mark Spitz. The terror attacks on the Israeli athletes also shook me awake politically at a tender age. It was incredible to see these facilities first hand, the stadium a little smaller than my ten year old imagination, but the swimming hall just as grand and "futuristic"!

A trip to Salzburg was undertaken and we employed our rail pass to reserve some seats and make our way just over the border into Austria for the day. The countryside was interesting and we were amazed as mile after mile of farmland flew by carpeted with solar panels and dotted by wind turbines. We've noticed this over the years in many parts of Europe: the frost was covering the panels in many of the deep dark valleys: if it's viable here, what's up Australia?!

The city's magic was not subdued by the dull weather, but it did restrict our progress a little. We resorted to the bus to make our way around the city and took in its various charms and curiosities. There were references and reminders of Mozart seemingly around every corner and the topography of the town with hills "alive" and castles gripping the outcrops added to its allure. My shoes managed to blow out, so I had saturated shoes and socks for the entire day, dampening my experiences a little! We visited gardens, cobblestone streets, places of interest and basically soaked up the Mozart/Sound of Music vibes before sharing a cubicle on the train ride back to Munich with a very amorous couple (nicknamed "lovey-dovey" by Cass)! Apparently, they'd got the news that Salzburg is the number one destination for 2020!

On Christmas Eve we discovered the Eisbach wave, walked to the edges of the city, saw a crappy movie in a magical cinema and got caught in the rain! Traditionally, nothing at all is open on Christmas Eve so we planned to visit the world famous Munich Eisbach wave, where swiftly flowing waters rush under a bridge, get forced into a narrow and shallow channel thus providing a ride-able wave for hardy surfers. Fully wet-suited and hooded, these intrepid heroes put on quite a show and kept the audience on the muddy banks thoroughly entertained for hours. Their boards were modified with tape to withstand the bashing against concrete walls and they had developed their own sluicing and fluid styles to deal with the vagaries of the continuous swell. It was wonderful entertainment!

We kept on walking and walking, eventually finding a cinema open, but showing only movies in German. The super helpful employee, however, pointed us even further afield to a little cinema showing English language versions. We watched "Last Christmas" which was abysmal, but we delighted in the tiny old-fashioned theatre, reminding us of the Regal back home. We needed to sprint through the rain for a few blocks at the end of the show and managed to catch the subway back to the warm sanctuary of the hotel.

Dachau Concentration Camp was open on Christmas Day, so, lacking any brighter options we decided to follow-up our trip to Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen some years ago and see if the German memorial was like the Polish ones. It was another quirky train and bus ride away from the city but we did it independently and we were glad we did. There are times when one needs to be introspective and contemplative and move at your own pace and this was one of them. The horrors were all too evident in the excellent museum housed in the original dormitories and bathrooms: it seems so important that as many people as possible experience these places and the authorities have done a great job in educating them.

On a similar note, we stumbled on the excellent "Documentation Center for the National Socialist Party" one day when stopped in the rain checking a map on the way home from some galleries. We wandered in and were educated over four floors of documentation and auto-biographical accounts of the rise, rule and fall of the Nazis. It was fascinating and illuminating and tragic. Munich was a hot-bed for the formation of the party and Hitler lived in the art quarter as a young man before returning to take over the party. Sobering.

Munich, for a city virtually re-built after being obliterated in 1945, was interesting and surprising. We found it to be quite intoxicating! Our next week in Frankfurt and surrounds loomed so we found our reserved seats on the ICE and jettisoned on up the steel road (more about that next week...)


 here's the album.