Finally!

Spring in the Englischer Garten.

Didn't spy any naked sun bathers, but I expect it's merely a matter of time until I do. We saw plenty of all the other ingredients for Munich spring: beer, ice cream, street musicians, including an enthusiastic young man having a go at Habanera on his violin. And a brass band playing in the Chinesischer Turm as people were drinking beer down below, of course.

Something also happened at the Monopteros.

Viennese waltzes at Hofgarten.

Finally enough snow! We've gone sledding every day to take advantage of this rarity. We've also shoveled a goodly amount of snow with our set of hers and hers shovels, one for myself and one for Her Majesty, who insists on helping.

I remain highly amused by the impractical southerners Bavarians venturing out in jeans, ear muffs and no gloves and then complaining about the cold. I suppose this goes a long way in explaining why wool socks are so hard to come by here and wool socks for small children more so: nobody wears them.

The Moon And The Hanging Ham

Deutsches Museum, I love you.

Friday mornings are for forest playgroup. We both enjoy traipsing about in the woods, and it certainly helps to prepare the spawn for starting forest kindergarten in April. Being Finnish, I cannot write a sentence without the inevitable "fine, but..."; here's the downside: like many activities for children, it's at the ungodly hour of 9 am. No, don't tell me kindergarten will start even earlier, I've ignored this up until now and can do so for a few months still.

But, come on, this is not winter. Look!

Behold: loot!

And then my sister-in-law and I took advantage of my spawn and made her model hats and clothes for our webshop.

Wordless Wednesday: Wiener Markt

Munich winters

This is what our winter looked like for a brief while.

I knew it couldn't last. This is the more typical Munich winter:

Children don't seem to care much; my views are not fit for printing. In retrospect, my decision to leave buying ice skates for next winter wasn't the worst one...

Still, there's a lot to do in town. We obviously go out, even if it involves some degree of whining on my part. (Merino wool underwear? Best thing I bought this winter.) For indoors fun, we have Deutsches Museum, the public libraries, a variety of indoors play parks around town, The Botanical Gardens, and of course our favourite haunt Hofbräukeller, complete with play room and childcare for the daytime hours. I'll get back to you on that last part tomorrow.