Christmas and New Years

This was our first Christmas in London, and while the lead-up had threatened it we just missed out on our first ever white Christmas. It was great being in London in the lead-up, and the highlight was Handel's Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall.


We weren't the only ones spending Christmas without our families, and were joined by Matt Williams for Christmas Eve and Christmas lunch, and then by Kylie and Anthony for Christmas dinner. A few things that stood out for us at Christmas this year:

• Public transport in the UK simply does not operate on Christmas day; we hired a street-car to do a shuttle run to drop Matt off and pick up Kylie and Anthony - and the roads were totally empty...
• It's impossible to buy a ham over here that doesn't need baking - but honey glazed baked ham is fantastic and I think we'll do that every year now...
• We were glad to have friends around but missed family a lot - thanks to Skype we could video-conference with them which makes the whole world seem a lot smaller...

For New Years, we'd arranged to go to Hogmanay (a street party in Edinburgh) with Rick, Matt and Jo, but Sarah was shaking off the last of the flu and with temperatures ranging from -7 to +2 we didn't think it was such a good idea for her to go. I went alone, and it was a really fun few days (quite reminiscent of the college days, including a Terminator movie marathon and a visit from our former exchange student Nikki). Sarah wasn't abandoned, catching up with Kylie and Anthony for NYE in London.

Pre-Hogmanay drinks in our apartment

We armed ourselves with light-sabers, but the crowd was fantastically well behaved and a really fun atmosphere

Fireworks over Edinburgh Castle were amazing

A rather sinisterly-named pub...

We went on a New-Year's day walk up Arthur's Seat - and boy was it icy (not shown - Rick, Matt and Nikki sliding down the slope on their bellies like penguins)

There was a fire festival all up the Royal Mile as part of the celebrations

And a giant puppet walking up the main street (right by our apartment)

Copenhagen

We were looking to go somewhere properly wintry for Christmas Markets this year, and got great flights to Copenhagen in Denmark (surprisingly less than 2 hours flying time away). The market there is in the Tivoli Gardens, the one of the world's oldest amusement parks and apparently part of the inspiration for Disneyland.

Santa's little helpers playing in the snow

By the 'Oriental' lake - there was also an 'Arabian' section, a pirate ship as well as more traditional Northern European alehouses and restaurants

We started Saturday with lunch, wandering around the markets in Tivoli, before heading out to the city streets. Denmark is famous for its sense of design, and we had a great time wandering through the shops along the pedestrianised city centre (which I could neither pronounce nor spell the names of). With the Climate Conference starting in a week's time, the city was gearing up for it, with many demonstrations and displays (the lights on the Christmas tree in the city centre were people-powered, while Greenpeace had set up a polar bear made of ice in the middle of one of the squares).

Lego and wind turbines - couldn't get any more Copenhagen in one place (and this was at the airport!)

Somebody has to work hard to keep the lights on...

Outside the Greenpeace tent (which looked like it had a gas-fired generator running, but I am sure that it was running on biofuel of some sort...)

Night fell early, and with it the cold – we guarded against it with hot chocolates (the perfect remedy). We had dinner in one of the restaurants that line the Nynhavn – a canal reaching up from the harbour towards the centre of town. The Danish food isn't cheap, but (at least at the restaurant we picked) was really good – if a little 'peasanty'.

One of the department stores lit up for Christmas

We finished our evening by heading back to the Tivoli Gardens, which by now were a wonderland of fairy lights. After a mulled wine and a quick blast on the rollercoaster (we picked the tamest one that someone taller than 4ft was allowed on) it was time to call it a night.

Looking back from the main entrance to Tivoli

More shots from inside Tivoli

We must have been more tired than we thought (or still on UK time) because by the time we left the hotel on Sunday it was after midday. We decided to walk north to The Little Mermaid, and see what we could see on the way. It was a pretty walk, but one of the highlights was the Marble Church, built as a perfect domed circle with incredible acoustics, and amazing decorations inside and out. The mermaid itself wasn't breathtaking, but was worth the walk (especially when the walk was so nice).

One of Outside the marble church

And inside - the acoustics were amazing, since it is a perfect circular dome

With the Little Mermaid statue

Copenhagen was a great city to head to for a city break – the streets are pretty and clean and the focus on quality and design was really refreshing. The weather was better than we'd expected for wintertime in Scandinavia, too – down around freezing overnight, but up as high as 5 during the day – so no snow for us. They way that the weather has been in London, lately, I think we'll see it here instead!

Dreamforce in San Francisco

I was lucky enough to head out to San Francisco for a work trip to Dreamforce, Salesforce.com's annual training and networking conference. To make the most of my first trip to the States, I tacked on a couple of extra days at the start to check out the city.

I flew in on Saturday evening and in a great coincidence, Adrian Biggs, a friend from high school that I'd run into in London a few times was in town. He lives in LA now, but had spent some time in SanFran – and knew all the best places to go. With a couple of his friends we visited some great cocktail bars – and because he works 'in the industry' they took great care of us (a big thanks to him and Borys if he ever reads this!)

Thanks to the change in timezone, I woke up bright and early on Sunday morning to catch my boat out to Alcatraz. The island isn't large in itself, but really does dominate the harbour, and the prison (which is looking very much the worse for wear) had some really interesting stories to tell. The views back to the city were stunning as well. It sounds touristy, but it is really worth it. I got there early, which meant that I was actually by myself at the solitary confinement area – which made it somehow so much more real.

Heading out to Alcatraz

Arriving into Alcatraz

I'm never going to complain about the size of my bedroom again...

Freedom doesn't look so far away - apparently on a still night you could hear the parties happening onshore

After a few hours the crowds had built up too much, so I headed back to the mainland and down along Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39, where I stumbled across a random marching band (I'm still trying to figure out who they were) and had the 'classic' clam chowder in a bread bowl – well worth it.

Random marching band - bonus points for anyone who can tell me who they are!

Lazy seals at Pier 39 - this was actually taken about 10am, and they're still just lying around basking in the sun

I continued along the waterfront to the 'Long Now Foundation' museum and shop. The Long Now Foundation was formed to encourage people to think about the 10,000 year view (that number is relevant given that civilisation really started 10,000 years ago) – I really enjoy their podcasts and they had been talking a lot about two of their projects, the 10,000 year clock (which is being designed to sit within a mountain and run, untended, for 10,000 years) and the rosetta project, which is building a collection of over 2500 of the world's languages, engraved in incredibly fine print on a titanium disk. They had samples of both the rosetta discs and small-scale prototypes for the clock on display, and it was really cool to see the podcast brought to life.

A model of part of the 10,000 year clock - the real gears will be something like 8ft in diameter

Monday I rented a bike (from Blazing Saddles, who I would recommend) and rode across the Golden Gate bridge – really spectacular. I carried on North from there up to Sausalito and to Old Mill, which had some amazingly tall trees. I had hoped to ride all the way around to Tiburon, but realised that if I did that I wouldn't then have time to get back for the dinner that was arranged for the conference, so caught the ferry back from Sausalito instead.

On the way to the Golden Gate bridge

Those are some big cables!

The spectacular trees at Old Mill Park

Wholefoods Markets - great spot for lunch (they had far more than pumpkin in store)

Tuesday I slept in (having been up until 4am because of a conference call in the UK – stupid time zones), then headed around to the Exploratorium, the science museum in SanFran which is right near the Palace of Fine Arts (an extraordinary Neoclassical slice of Rome in SanFran). This was brilliant, like being a kid again!

The Palace of Fine Arts - possibly the most out-of-place building in the world

From Tuesday afternoon the conference really got going, and I had a fascinating time learning about where the product is going, and how we can make better use of it at work. The also had Colin Powell speak about leadership, and the Black Crows played at their gala event (don't ask me, I hadn't heard of them either, but they were actually really cool).

The conference wrapped up about lunchtime on Friday, by which time I was well and truly exhausted. But after a siesta I was refreshed enough to check out one more sight that I'd heard on a podcast – 826 Valencia, the Pirate Store. Dave Egger is a writer from SanFran who was looking for a property to build his after-school writing program for disadvantaged children – the place he found was required by a by-law to include a shop. They didn't particularly want to sell anything, just fill the space with something cool – so they created The Pirate Store. They've gone the whole hog, selling everything from peg-leg oil, to anti-scurvy lotion. They also sell a range of propaganda to support their ongoing battle with 'Captain Rick's', the Walmart of pirate stores. It was hilarious, and a really fun place to visit – there are other 826 Valencia shops across the US so you should check them out if you ever get the chance.

The Pirate Store at 826 Valencia

I had only a few hours on Saturday morning, so took a brief run along the waterfront and then up to Lombard St, and finished up my trip by catching a cable car around to the cable car museum (an amazing reminder of how things could have gone if electricity distribution hadn't been developed, and mechanical power transmission was the way to go instead).

Classic San Francisco - a cable car, a steep street, and Alcatraz in the background - eerily close

San Fran was a great city to visit, but it wasn't more than just fun times and sightseeing – I learned a lot at the conference and met some really good contacts there as well (but won't bore you with that)...

Great weekend in London

Australia vs England at Twickenham for a Rugby Test is something that has long been on our list, but until now we've been unable to bring ourselves to join the England Rugby Supporters Club which seems to be the only way to get tickets. Fortunately, the Australian Embassy came to our rescue and reserved a block of seats for Australians living in London.

With Matt and Anthony we headed out to the game, where after a slightly shaky start the Wallabies got the right result and did it playing some of their best rugby all season. The atmosphere was incredible, particularly as the end of the game approached and the English made one last bid for the line, the stadium swaying to 'Swing low...' - answered back by 'Waltzing Matilda' as Australia's defence held.



That night we headed back to Battersea (having swapped Matt for Kylie along the way) to watch the Guy Fawkes Night fireworks – while Australia abandoned bonfire night long ago, the tradition is still strong in England, with many families holding their own and each borough throwing their own displays. While it wasn't as large as, say, the Sydney Harbour fireworks, it wasn't hard to get a great view, and we could actually hear the music that it was sequenced with to get the full experience.

Oktoberfest in Munich

Another must-do event on the European calendar is Oktoberfest in Munich. It seems like half the Australians living o/s go there...and so we had no trouble assembling a table at the Hofbrau tent for the Sunday afternoon.

We decided to make a weekend of it by heading out to Munich on Saturday morning, and spent the morning wandering through the surprisingly impressive old town of Munich. It was quite unlike what I'd been expecting, and I can see why it is ranked in the top-10 cities in the world to live in. With great public transport, lots of green spaces, beautiful old buildings and tasty food and drink, it would be worth visiting even if it didn't hold one of the world's biggest parties every year.

Mid-afternoon we headed out to Oktoberfest to pick up our tickets, and got a phone call from Amid, Bec, Victoria, Nat and Alex to say that they were on their way out. After a quick go on the fairground rides to kill the time while we waited (we figured that it made more sense to do that before we'd had a drink rather than after) we set about finding a table.

Finding a table is, as it turns out, the key factor in having a successful time at Oktoberfest. Each of the eight or so breweries in Munich run a tent, filled with bench tables (with seating for up to 10,000 in some). You can't get served, and will quickly be moved on by security, unless you're sitting down. There are two options for drinks – the beer from the brewery who runs the tent, or a Rattler, which is half beer, half lemonade; there's not a lot of green in the food options (but there is a lot of great meat, particularly the wurst).

Amazingly, having walked in the out door for the beer garden area at the Pauliner tent, a group got up and left their table right in front of us. Because we didn't fill the whole table, we had a rotating group of tablemates (including a couple of guys from Hungary who had driven up that day, were going to sleep in their car, and then drive back on the Sunday - epic).

We whiled away the afternoon catching up over a few steins – since nobody is living closer than a couple of hundred miles from each other, there was a lot to catch up on.

Nat is living in Germany now and she's already fitting right in

Saturday night we stumbled upon a great spot just off the Marienplatz (the main square); passing under the clock-tower brought us to a courtyard cafe, and off to one side was a very cool cellar restaurant. It was a veritable rabbit warren of rooms, and along with Kylie and Anthony and an ever-increasing band of friends (including Matt Williams who had made it across) and friends of friends we completely colonised one of the rooms as our private dining suite.

Sarah and Kylie in the cafe off Marienplatz

Dinner under the Marienplatz

Sunday was the day that we'd actually booked into a tent, and it was just as well we did. By the time that we arrived (at midday) the tent was full, and those that were there looked like they'd been drinking since 10am. As part of the ticket price we all got 2 litres of beer and half a chicken, which about sums up the standard dining options – you haven't seen anything though until you see the beer ladies bring 10 litres of beer or 5 whole chickens to your table...it was a great afternoon.

The Hofbrau Tent

The crew for our table

It was packed inside

So that is what 10 half chickens and three pork knuckles looks like

Monday we decided to atone for our sins by doing some exercise. Hugh arranged for us to hire some bikes and took us on a guided tour of Munich (he lives there, so knows all the good places to go). Highlights included the English Garden – stunning parklands in the middle of the city, the various palaces around the city, and the standing wave in the river where people surf year-round – you have to see it to believe it.

Oktoberfest in Munich = must do (with friends)