25 Mai 03 bis 10 Juni 03

Well folks here is a bit of a summary of the last few weeks. If I have done it right, clicking on the photos should bring up a full size image!

FÜSSEN & SCHWANGAU

Without my visitors I spent a little time getting to know the main town 

that I live near. I was a little surprised to find out that many of the buildings date back to the 1500s and that there is history in the area from well before that. 

Back streets and a local:)

Old square - dates back to the 1500s. Note the hand painted archives. 

Quite common this part of the world

I was rudely awoken one Sunday by a noisy band. I think it was the royal

family having a bit of a look around. I think they could of chosen a better time

for it though, but thought it was not best to go out and abuse them in my boxers,

especially with my German!

I have been making the most of the lakes around here. They have filled up with water and are quite warm now. I don't miss the beach so much now:) In usual German efficiency many of the bathers go starkers, so I guess it saves on carrying your togs around and that uncomfortable wet togs feeling:) These ducks have been stalking me for weeks now! The other photo is from after 9pm as the sun set over my closest lake, Forgensee. Quite a nice spot to relax and drink some beer! I thought I would also try riding around the lake. It was a little bigger than expected, at around 38kays. I was in pain for days after that. 

Austria

In early June I popped over the border to Austria on a couple of my weekends, Firstly to check out Innsbruck. This is a pretty little town sitting in the middle of supposedly the best ski areas in the world. 

As you can see it is surrounded by some darn big mountains, some still have a little snow so I guess that gives you an insight into how bloody high it is. 

A few weeks later I popped down to Reute which is about 20kms from FÜSSEN, to check out the lakes in Austria. I jumped on the bike and found the roads to be a little bit on the busy side so I thought I would take a short cut. There was a sign pointing to the lake I was hoping to go to which in German said "over" someplace. I Naively thought it might be a small hill, but after reviewing my map when I was most of the way up (pushing the bike not riding it!) I had realised that it was basically going straight over a mountain. I think in the end I had climbed over 700m, which is why it was getting easy to see some snow up there! I was a little dissapointed initially by the view up the top, but it was worth it a few hundred metres down when I was able to see the lake I had set out to find in the first place!

The lake was very beatiful, and like most lakes around here its water is sourced from the surrounding mountains. As such, the locals have some great ways to keep their drinks cold.

On the way back from the lake, I took another "shortcut" and happened to stumble across some swans and a waterfall.

Rocking German Style

I have spent some time getting stuck into the Deutsch rock scene. Firstly I headed down to FÜSSEN for a local concert, that had 5 bands from the area. Most of the bands were doing covers of the typical english songs, but generally on the heavier side. One band in particular was pretty cool. They basically made old balads rock including "Country Road" and "Papa don't preach". It was quite a refreshing night to meet people from the area under the age of 80, although they had some peculiar traits. I am not sure if this has happened to the folks in Aus yet, but instead of moshing these crazy Germans prefer to ram into each other at high speeds:) Girls, boys everyone gets involved.

I also managed to make my way up to Rock im Park in Nuremburg. Basically this is 3 days straight of Rock. People from all around Germany and the world typically camp on site to see bands from everywhere. I went a long for a couple of days and had the pleasre of catching the follwing:

- Zwan - Not bad, but didn't quite get the German's moving

- Mana - Call Mexican band, very funky

- Silver Chair - Yes I went to Silver chair over iron maiden:) I thought I should be a little patriotic. They really did rock and put on a darn excellent show. They even played the Aussie anthem for one of the few Aussies that was there (I caught up with him later wearing an Aussie Flag). Robyne, don't feel ashamed about buying their CD. They are really good! I spent some time up the front while the roadies were setting up to here the Aussie accent. Strange how you can miss little things like that.

- The Hives - Cocky front man who was bloody rude to the Germans but they loved it. He rocked.

- Placebo - Final act, sun setting (9:30pm), great light show and even as a fan I was surprised how hard they played as well. They are great live.

On top of this I saw the cardigans, everscene (great new heavy band) and a few acts from Germany and the rest of the world. I met up with some great German's from south of Berlin which I hope to catch up with over the coming months.

I hope I can get some people together next year to do it properly by camping on site. It looks like a lot of fun.

Early Morning

I woke up a couple of weeks ago around 4:00am and it was starting to get light. Since I wasn't much in the mood for sleeping I jumped on my bike for a bit of a look around. I have been spending a bit of time getting stuck into the photography side of things over recent weeks/months. Here's a few shots from the early hours of the morning.

Work

Work has been keeping me very busy during the weeks, but overall the projects are going quite well. Here is a picture of my tractor:) It is quite cool, it even has a CVT, that is a gear box that has infinite gear ratios. Quite an achievement for a vehicle with so much torque!