Beer and no knickers

Munich's English Garden

After a period of radio silence during which Daddy T had his birthday with a cacophony of cousins in a place called Wokingham, I am now in beautiful Bavaria, where the temperatures are soaring and I've been having some frightening encounters with long, fat white sausages and the occasional sour kraut.

Yesterday was my first ever day in Munich, which on first impressions over the course of a warm sunny summer's day is a rather lovely, compact and Italian-influenced German city. I spent the morning in the delightful company of Birgit, a local guide, who led me to beer kellers, through little alleys, into big look-at-me squares and for a stroll among some city centre parks.

A few things jumped out at me here. Under a bridge on a fast flowing brown river there was a young woman literally walking on water. But no, on closer inspection the person in question, and a few others also, was actually surfing. Surfing! Well get me out in the green room in the sharky brine for a bit of a lefty or some other blokey Aussie expression I've never had cause to use as the only thing I've ever done on a surf board is fall off it. This wasn't just surfing though as the wave never actually goes anywhere, just stands up like the squares saying "look at me" while the water smashes downriver from under the city at a pace that's guaranteed to clean your ears and everything in between. Bloody oath, this mob were surfing a standing wave in, well if it weren't the world capital of beer drinking you wouldn't believe me, Munich.



Only just over that shock, Birgit led me through this former Englishman home, to the Englistshe Garten, 6 kilometres of woods, small rivers and meadowy grass where Munich's finest go to sun themselves. Some with nothing on, not a stitch, no knickers or anything - in the middle of a city. As if it were utterly normal. Which to them, it is, but to those of us with a little less "look-at-me and all my tackle" tendencies is just a little risque.

The rest of my exceptional day in Munich panned out a little less alarmingly but there were still things sticking out at me at odd times like the characters in the city hall Glockenspiel at 5pm and the bosoms of some hearty frauleins dressed in traditional Bavarian attire at the beer garden I rested in.

By the evening I was ready for some rest and there's honestly no better place for that than at the Blue Spa at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. Set over the top two floors of the smart hotel, it features a pool with a retractable roof, deck with sun loungers, sauna and steam room and a bevvy of therapists ready to iron you out. I had a lovely dinner downstairs with Erena del Campo, the hotel's PR, then spent a couple of hours swimming, being massaged and finally trying out the sauna and steam room, which was of course, clothes... optional. Well if you can't beat them join them...