Wow, what a weekend! On Friday afternoon, a friend from Tokyo, Tomoko, arrived from Frankfurt where she was visiting a friend. To represent Bavaria and its hospitality, I took up the challenge of being her host and tour guide for the time she was staying here 🙂 We started off with some delicious food at the Paulaner im Tal and some cocktails at the nearby Sausalitos bar.

After that we just returned to my place and called it a day. On Saturday morning I got up and did some jogging with Andi – who had nothing better to do but to strain his ankle… Awesome, now we can’t go to the gym because his thumb’s messed up and we can’t go running because of his foot! 🙁 I’m gonna gain weight if his streak of injuries continues like this…

At the time I got back to my appartment, Tomoko was finally awake 😉 and we buzzed off to Schluss Nymphenburg. It’s one of the biggest royal palaces in Europe and features a huge park and impressive alleys from the outside. I’ve never seen the inside, actually and Tomoko wanted to take a look at the gallery of beauties in the museum. I’m usually not so much into old-fashioned architecture or arts but this was really impressive! Magnificent architecture, light everywhere and the original baroque stucco definitely are some things to remember.

After spending some time at the castle, we returned to the inner city where we took a walk around town. We then met Marcus at the Odeonsplatz, where the rehearsal for the open air classic concert was going on – pretty cool atmosphere there! Oh and San Francisco Coffee Company: Thanks for the great coffee 😀 (damn I should get paid for doing commercials like this…)

From the Odeonsplatz we went on to the Marienplatz in order to take a look at the new town hall of Munich and to climb up to the observation deck of the Alter Peter church tower. The view from there is just awesome – one can see most of the city and even into the mountains (on clear days, of course). Before we got there, we had a nice random encounter for which the chances might be even tinier than winning the lottery – let’s just say that maybe I got a first foot in the door at finding a job in Tokyo… Anyways, here are some pictures:

Oh and I completely forgot to mention that I was wondering the whole day what’s going on in the city because many people were there and a slight sensation of party was in the air – it happened to be Christopher Street Day! When we arrived at the Marienplatz, we finally found out about that 😀 Eventually we were really tired from walking and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Englischer Garten, Munich’s biggest park area.

Having returned to my place for a shower and a few minutes of rest, we rushed out again to Hieu’s farewell party. He’s departing for his new job in Tokyo today and I ENVY HIM SO MUCH for that 🙂 Unfortunately, my cam ran out of battery then and so I did not take any pictures there… In the end, it was a great party and I wish Hieu all the best for his future and hope I can team up with him in Tokyo soon – this is going to be legendary 😀