Well, to pick up where I left off, I'm here in Munich, spending lots of time with my sister and her family. The boys are both being lovely. The weather has been all over the place, in traditional Munich style. One minute it's hot and sunny with deep blue skies and views all the way into the mountains, the next it's freezing and overcast and raining. We had a hum-dinger of a thunderstorm the other night, which Tim & I enjoyed whilst sitting under the covered bit of the garden. Still, at least it hasn't snowed, like it did this time last year!

This is really the first bit of cold weather I've experienced since Canada. The perpetual summer we have had this year is turning out to be not so perpetual after all. Well, I'll just have to go to the other end of the planet then. Because I can't be doing with colds, coughs and sore throats (all of which I am suffering simultaneously right now - but we can blame the Oktoberfest for that, I suppose, what with hundreds of thousands of people descending on the place, each with a unique blend of germs in their bodies).

Right, enough rambling I think. I'm off to eat some more nice German bread, Hungarian salami and Austrian cheese.

Oooh I have a sore head as I'm writing this. Oktoberfest beer has a habit of throwing itself down my neck with regrettable aftereffects. But hey, that's part of the attraction.

Anyway, it's been a few weeks since my last update. What have I been up to?

I popped over to France from Munich in a hire car. No bloody CD player! Nightmare! Still, the 5 hours of journey time allowed me to become acquainted with several naff radio stations.

I arrived in Strasbourg to visit Claire & Mathieu, who I hadn't seen since Pascale & Pepe's wedding in Aranjuez. It was great to see them! They have a lovely new flat together, and they have been busy decorating. In fact, I was honoured to assist in the construction of a huge desk area for sundry IT equipment. We ate, we drank, we suffered in the ozone-laden smog that blankets this part of Alsace in summer.

Strasbourg is one of those places that are just pretty from every angle. The timber-clad buildings give me a sense of architectural continuity stretching from England through to the Black Forest. The luminous green trams jar slightly against this medieval flavour, but hey, they work and they keep traffic off the streets (except earlier this summer, when apparently the rubber bits that hold the track in place melted owing to the extreme temperatures, and the whole system was down for a few days).

From Strasbourg I went on to visit Isa & Andy and their new arrival Nicolas in Cadenbronn. It was so lovely to see them again! They couldn't come to Pascale's wedding because Nicolas was practically newborn. He is a sweetie! All smiles and eye contact, and hardly a peep out of him of the traditional screaming-baby variety.

Isa had some cousins visiting from Portugal. We met up with them at Jean-Mi & Betty's house, where we had a barbecue despite thunderstorms and big old rain showers. It was lovely to see Jean-Mi & Betty again (I hadn't seen them since New Year) and this time I got to meet Jean-Mi's brother too - you have to be told twice that they're not twins!

Then I headed back to Munich, and hit the Oktoberfest full of road rage. God the journey back was shite! I was sat for exactly one hour just outside Ulm, because they had decided to resurface half the motorway just after a big junction. In that time I moved 500 metres. But on the plus side, when I stopped to relieve myself at the next service station, I got a Finnish 5 cent coin in my change.

It was great to see lots of my ex-colleagues from E.ON at the Fest! I do miss them.

More to follow...