Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit

At this moment, the biggest festival in Munich is coming to an end: the 175th Oktoberfest.

This year, I went there three times. Last Monday, we finished work early and dressed in our Dirndls in the restroom before we left for the Hippodrom (one of the tents).

On thursday, Nicole asked me in the morning to join her family and friends in the afternoon for another round in the Hippodrom. So enjoyed the festival again.

Friday morning, my friends and me left early in the morning to get a place in one of tents. We heard some horror stories that the tents get closed because of overcrowding just some minutes after tent opening. We ran into Fischer Vroni tent at 9 o'clock in the morning and found a table right in the middle. We sat down and did not leave before 5 pm. We ordered several Mass beer and food.

IAA Commercial Vehicles

My company sent me to the IAA to have a look at our competitors and their products. Here some nice buses:

TemSA Diamond (coach)

Van Hool T 917 Altano - sleeping cabin

Solaris Urbino 12 New Edition

Setra - glass ceiling

KingLong XMQ6900 (coach)

Irisbus - Hynovis (Hybrid city bus)

Regensburg

Two weeks ago, I visited Regensburg for Micha's and Tom's wedding and between the celebrations, we had a guided tour around the city.

Regensburg is one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Europe and was founded by the Romans as a fortress at their northern border. The Stone Bridge (on the two pictures below) was completed in 1146 and connected the town with the other side of the Dabube.

Regensburg's landmark is the Dom St Peter - a Gothic cathedral started in the late 13th century. It was built to show off the prosperity of the citizens and the first part was finished within 50 years, the rest took longer as the wealth faded away. Today, the cathedral is under current restoration.

Around the cathedral, there are patrician houses which are still used as shops, residential houses and restaurants.

Don't fence me in

For our pets we do a lot. Also for the pets of other people. For Inka´s skunk we built a fence around her house in Leipzig. It just took us 8 hours of hard work, sweat and a lot of fence, stones and soil. In the end, we were really happy and dirty.

The wheels on the bus go round 'n' round

The first two weeks of August, I spent in Plauen - a small town in the Vogtland in the South of Saxony. The reason for my stay there, was to start the training of driving buses. Every morning, we had theoretical lessons learning again all the stuff from car driving. In the second week, we concentrated on bus theory. We learnt all about brakes, driving times and special signs.





After the theory on the first day, we had an introduction to our driving school bus - a NEOPLAN Cityliner - and to the pre-departure control. We checked all the systems and then two of us five were to drive the bus - me being first.




After this two weeks and a bruised right arm from changing gears, I felt quite ready for the exam. So at the beginning of September, I returned to Plauen for three days and passed the theoretical and practical exam. So I´m now allowed to drive buses as the one below. You better get of the road and clear the way for me!!!

Together with my colleague Nicole, I baked two caked to celebrate our new driving licences´ with the rest of our colleagues:

Moscow's Metro

The Moscow Metro started its service in 1935 and a lot of the stations are made of marble, frescoed or gilded.

Here some more facts about the metro:

• upto 9 million passengers per day (more than London & New York combined)
• more than 150 stations
• one ride costs currently 17 RUB
• trains come nearly all 2 min

Long escalators bring the masses to the trains and back up to the surface.

Mayakovskaya Station, 1938

Taganskaya-Koltsevaya Station, 1950

Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya Station, 1952

Novoslobodskaya Station, 1952

Kievskaya-Koltsevaya Station, 1954

Belorusskaya Station

Moscow II

Another day, I went to the Kreml - the old fortified heart of Moscow and still the centre of the Russian political power. The Kreml consists of several buildings, palaces, churches and the Kreml wall. After buying a ticket I walked into the Kreml and it started raining, so I hid inside the cathedrals and the Armoury. In the later one, there are displayed jewellery, many Fabergé eggs, golden and silver plates and suits of armour.

In Moscow, shopping is a new leisure activity and so a lot of high-end shopping centres are to be found in the city: GUM, Zum, Atrium and a lot more. But these designer temples are for the rich and richer, the normal Russian shops in less expensive shopping centres, in smaller shops or on the markets. There is also a market for souvenirs - Izmaylovo Market - there you can get all kinds of Matroshkas - traditional, with faces of sport stars, politicians, the Simpsons or Winnie-the-Pooh.

The evenings, I spent mainly with Lena in front of TV watching the Euro 2008 matches, especially the matches of Russia & Germany. For luck, our teams always won:-). One evening, Lena, Alla and me danced at the Hard Rock Café Moscow and another evening Lena and her mother went with me to a Latin-American restaurant and live music bar.

On Saturday, I went to Alla's datsha at the countryside and met the rest of her family and we ate a lot of strawberries before we walked around the nearby lake. In the afternoon, I took an elektritshka (local train) back to Moscow. In the early evening, Lena and me went to a park and fed a squirrel that was very shy and ran away from us.

Moscow - capital of Russia I

I took an Aeroflot plane from St. Petersburg to Domodedovo Airport - one of five airports around Moscow. Lena picked me up and drove me her home in Grand Park - a new appartment buildings complex with security people. She has a wonderful appartment with modern furniture.

After we had some nice lunch, we left again for the city. Lena dropped me off near the Red Square and went to work. I started with my orientation around Moscow and first looked around Teatralnaya Ploshchad where the famous Bolshoi Theatre is. Unfortunately, one of the stages is currently under construction and on the other was only an Italian opera shown, so I decided against buying some tickets.

Then I went to the Red Square which is surrounded on one side by the State History Museum, the GUM shopping centre, St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kreml wall and in front of it - the Lenin Monument.


I went into St. Basil's which is the landmark of the Red Square and is to recognize by its 9 colourful onion domes. The interior is as colourful as the outside. Afterwards, I went to the GUM - a very expensive shopping palace consisting of designer stores. A prices are upper upper class. I just bought a fruit salad and a coke in the in-house fast-food restaurant. Then I got a call from Alla to meet her in front of the Lenin Monument.

As the opening hours for this monument passed already (10-13 o'clock on TWTSS), I visited him another day. I had to queue for an hour and pass a security check (nonetheless, I was able to smuggle my photo camera mobile inside:-)).



Alla went with me to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was destroyed by Stalin and re-built in 1997.

Afterwards, we went to her parents home and her mom cooked some delicious fish for us and then we ate some ice-cream. From there we went to Alla's home and she showed me her wedding video. We met her parents again in the park on the way to the metro station.

In the next days, Alla spent some more afternoons with me and showed me around, among others a photo exhibition with underwater pictures, Puschkin's statue and the arstists' district.

Pavlovsk, Pushkin & Peterhof

One day, I spent at the imperial places around St. Petersburg.

I started in the morning with a bus from Moskovskaya metro station to Pavlovsk - the site of the Great Palace that was built on the orders of Catherine the Great for his son and his second wife. The palace was built in the late 18th century and was burnt down two weeks after the end of the WWII by a careless smoking soldiers.
Two Russian words - "Adyn billet" - got me a reduced entrance fee to the park around the palace.

I crossed the park and looked for another bus station to catch a maschrutka to Puschkin.

In Puschkin, I practised my Russian again and entered again a park for less. The estate also known as Tsarskoe Selo was a gift from Peter I to his wife Catherine in 1716. Within the park stands the Catherine Palace - a fabulous building in white and blue. The empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great completed the palace in which there is also the restored Amber Room.
Unfortunately, I could not visit the interior as individual tourists are only allowed 3 hours per day: from noon to 2 pm and 4 pm to 5 pm. I already queued for more than an hour when they stopped letting people in and so I left as I did not want to wait another two hours under the burning sun.

I returned to St. Petersburg and took a bus to Peterhof - another imperial site by the seaside.

Peter the Great ordered the Peter's Palace to be built by the seaside surrounded by a park of fountains and cascades. You can throw coins in the fountains and make a wish.

This palace I also visited only from the outside because it is closed on Mondays. For my next stay in St. Petersburg, I will organise myself better and plan more time for all the site and will try to book tours or at least the tickets beforehand.

White nights in St. Petersburg

After a short sleepless night on a Mercedes bus, I arrived in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, I thought it would be good to get of at the bus terminsus and not at the Belorussia station. It soon came clear, that the next metro station was about 2 km away from the bus stop and no ATM wanted to give me money. So I walked the whole distance to the Moscow station where I left my heavy luggage.

At a nearby hostel, I joined a group of Peter's Walking Tours and we left by bus for the the Mariinsky quarter. There we had a look at the famous theatre, at New Holland (an old ship building site on an island - now up for new development) and Nikolsky Cathedral.

We crossed the Neva river and nearly entered a training sail ship, but as the sailors were busy loading the ship, we just took some pictures before we left for Newsky Prospekt. There our tour ended and I strolled on my own a little bit.
In the evening, I returned to the train station and picked up my little backpack and left the suitcase behind. I tried to reach the hostel by metro and bus, but ended in the middle of nowhere. The mistake was to get off the bus at a street named similar to one I was looking for. So I returned to the metro station one hour after I first left it. For luck, I found some nice Russians (see the picture) who took me to the hostel.

The hostel was not very nice, so I was happy to have booked another one for the next two nights. My second day was dedicated to art & culture. At 10:30 am, I joined the queue in front of the Hermitage which moved fast to the inner court. Less than an hour later, I entered the Hermitage which consists of state rooms, halls and imperial art collections.

I walked down the Jordan Staircase to leave the Hermitage and head to the train station where I picked up my big suitcase. I headed to the south to the other hostel that was very nice and welcoming. After check-in and registration I got redressed and left in a hurry for the Mariinsky Theatre. I just arrived in time for the beginning of Wagner's opera "Twilight of the gods". Six hours later, I strolled through the White Nights back home...