We flew out from Heathrow and after the gauntlet of security theater (one for another post methinks), a walk across the tarmac to the plane (totally felt like a Beatle) and a 20 minute delay on the runway we finally got airborne en route to Munich’s Franz Joseph Strauss airport.

Munich is a beautiful city with its mix of gothic revival, über-modern and traditional bavarian architecture. The level of cleanliness was astonishing coming from London, there was hardly any litter or graffitti in the streets. People don’t feel the need to chain up their bicycles (which are everywhere in the city) and there are practically no CCTV cameras to be seen. We only really noticed police officers in the airport (which with their sub-machine guns was quite a shock) and the occassional police car on the streets. There is a sense of civic pride and a feeling of trust all across the city, the U-Bahn (underground) for instance doesn’t employ ticket barriers, you are simply expected to have bought your ticket and to have stamped it.

We stayed at the K+K Hotel am Harras, which is (unsurprisingly) located in the district of Harras – a very quiet suberb of the city within a 15 minute U-Bahn ride of the centre. The room was a reasonable size, the multi-lingual staff were very helpful (which seems to be true of everyone we met, including strangers on the trains) and the free high-speed interwebs was a lifesaver; the only little thing we really missed was not having tea/coffee facilities in the room. A free tea and coffee station was open downstairs, by the lifts until 5pm, but the water wasn’t exactly hot and the mil was necessarily UHT – no good for an english tea-belly like me!

Deutsches Museum

It’s said that if you were to spend a minute at each of the exhibits at the Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik it would take you 36 days to see everything…So we went straight to the computing section.

From the Remington Rand to the Telefunken TR4, from Enigma to the CRAY-1 there were some great pieces of technological history – but all in all we were slightly dissapointed that their collection seemed to stop abruptly just short of the birth of personal computing. Still, if you’re a geek in Munich – you’ve got to go.

Sea Life

I’d never been to a Sea Life Centre before, what with being claustrophobic and all, but we decided that I should be brave and try it out. I’m so glad I did! Whilst some of the tanks did seem to me to be a little too small for the size and type of creatures living in them, I was totally distracted by the ability to be so close to such beautiful creatures. I lost my revulsion for Morae Eels once I saw three of them peeking out a treasure chest, and developed a crush on an Octopus (as you do!).

All in all, given that Sea Life inhabitants are captive bred and the impact that being able to see them has on the visitors in terms of increasing awareness of marine ecology and engendering a desire to protect the increasingly endangered species, I came away thinking that such centres are a darn good idea.

Also I saw sharks. ^_^

BMW Museum

One of the highlights of the trip for me was a visit to the BMW Musuem, set in the Olympic Park (home to the 1972 Summer games and one of the darkest moments in the event’s history).

BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Works) and has it’s headquarters and main manufacturing plant in Munich. The museum stands in a silver-bowl structure and is the finest example of how a museum should be. From a simple guided tour structure, so that you don’t miss anything, to multi-lingual audio benches with fantastic directional speakers and RFID books than enable audio-enhanced reading; it was superb. Each exhibit has plenty of space so you can view from multiple angles and get photographs without having too many other visitors in the frame. The best €12 I’ve ever spent.

Danke schön München!

All performances begin at 19:30 unless stated otherwise

Mozart – The Magic Flute:
January 24th, 29th & 31st (18:30); February 7th (14:30 & 19:30), 12th (signed), 14th (18:30), 20th & 26th

Pre-performance talk on 31st January (14:30) with Nicholas Till.

Puccini – La Bohème:
February 2nd, 4th, 6th, 11th, 13th, 15th (15:00), 19th, 21st (18:30), 24th (signed) & 27th; March 4th, 6th & 8th (15:00)

Pre-performance talk, Will Kerley in conversation with Jonathan Miller, on the 4th February (17:30).

Adams – Doctor Atomic:
All performances start at 19:00 unless specified otherwise

February 25th & 28th (18:00); March 5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 16th, 18th & 20th

Pre-performance talk on the 28th February (16:00) with Anthony Arblaster.

Janáček – Jenůfa:
March 12th, 14th (18:30), 17th (signed), 19th & 21st (18:30)

Pre-performance talks on the 17th March (17:30) with John Tyrrell.

Britten – Peter Grimes:
All performances begin at 19:00 unless stated otherwise

May 9th, 11th, 14th, 16th (18:00), 18th (signed), 21st, 23rd (18:00), 28th & 30th (18:00)

Pre-performance talks on 16th May, Philip Reed in conversation with Edward Gardner, at 16:00 and 21st May (17:00) with Philip Reed.

Mozart – Così Fan Tutte:
All performances begin at 19:00 unless stated otherwise

May 29th; June 4th, 6th (18:00), 11th, 13th (18:00), 17th (signed), 19th & 26th; July 2nd & 5th (15:00)

Pre-performance talk on 6th June (16:00) with Nicholas Till.

Puccini – Madame Butterfly
Revived in tribute to director Anthony Minghella, who passed away in 2008.

June 10th, 12th, 15th, 18th, 20th (18:30), 25th & 27th (18:30); July 1st (signed), 4th (18:30), 8th & 10th

Pre-performance talk on 20th June (16:30) with Sarah Lenton.

Saariaho – L’Amour de Lion
July 3rd, 7th, 9th & 11th (18:30)

Pre-performance talk, an interview with Kaija Saariaho, on 7th July at 17:30.

Tickets can be purchased online, at eno.org, or by telephone on 0871 472 0600.

“The journey will do it good”, she says.

3 hours, 70-odd miles and £160 later…we load the luggage into his car and start all over again…

The moral to this story, ladles and jellyspoons, is always make sure you have a usable spare tyre when going on a journey.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Following on from the hugly sucessful adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian follows the adventures of the Pevensie children as they return to Narnia.

Set a year (in human terms) after Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy return from their first adventures, the Pevensies find themselves whisked from the Underground to a desolate and dangerous Narnia. The film’s timeline had to deviate from the original book, where they returned to Narnia much sooner, to account for the time-gap between making the films and explain the changes in the cast’s ages (particularly obvious in Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley.)

The film is as georgeous as it’s predecessor, the cast perform well and the pace is fairly tight. Notable stand-outs for me were Eddie Izzard as Reep-a-cheep (my favourite character from the book, excepting Aslan of course) and Warwick Davis as Nikabrik.

My only real criticism would be that the sense of peril wasn’t as strong as it feels in the book, which is probably down to the fact that films can never match your imagination, and it has to be geared to a younger audience.

All in all an entertaining couple of hours and a film I’ll definitely watch again.

Wanted

I was really looking forward to Wanted, sometimes I’m just in the mood for a bit of mindless action.

I ended up slightly dissapointed. The set pieces were huge and (for the most part) well done. James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angeline Jolie delivered excellent performances and the cameo from Terence Stamp was a highlight.

In the end though, it felt too much style over substance, the drive for visceral action seemed to subsume the plot and in the end it was fairly difficult to care what happened to any of the characters, despite the actors’ best efforts.

It’s one of those films I think you’ll either love or go ‘Meh’.

Kung Fu Panda

My first reaction on leaving the auditorium after Kung Fu Panda? “ZOMG Kung Fu Panda is teh Awesome!”

Visually stunning, well crafted plot and at time stomach-achingly funny.

I’m not usually a fan of Jack Black, but his voice talent brings Po to life and makes you care for the character. Dustin Hoffman is fantastic as Master Shifu, Ian McShane once again delivers a hiss-booable villain of quality and the supporting voice cast all play a part in making the film enjoyable.

Go see this, seriously. Forget seeing WallE, and go learn Kung Fu…Panda style.

Via: Douglas Adams dot com

There are cash and Armani gift prizes for the winners, but the real reward is getting your work seen by Armani’s creative team, including Georgio himself.

If you’re entering, drop me a line and I’ll link to your entry.

We’re off to London tomorrow, Richy is launching a dancewear website at Move It 2008. We’re not exhibiting, just meeting and greeting, looking for new suppliers, that sort of thing.

So I thought I’d take a leaf from Meg Pickard’s book and decorate my Oyster card with some Moo stickers.

In celebration of our engagement, we’re also taking the chance to see Spamalot again, this time with Alan Dale in the role of King Arthur (we’ve just missed out on seeing Peter Davison). I’d have loved to see The (best) Doctor in full regalia, but I suspect Mr. Dale won’t a bad substitute.

The events include ‘Yugo the Negotiator’ on the 26th of this month and ‘Area 88′ on the 25th March, ticket costs around £10.

All performances begin at 19:30 unless stated otherwise

Puccini – Madam Butterfly:
January 31st; February 8th, 14th, 17th (15:00), 20th (signed), 26th, & 29th; March 5th & 7th

Pre-performance talks on 14th February (17:30) with Lesley Downer, and 5th March (17:30) with Sarah Lenton.

Gilbert & Sullivan – The Mikado:
February 2nd, 9th (14:30 & 19:30), 15th, 21st, 23rd (14:30 & 19:30) & 27th; March 2nd (15:00) & 4th (signed)

Pre-performance talk on the 4th March (17:30) with Sarah Lenton.

Donizetti – Lucia di Lammermoor:
February 16th, 19th, 22nd, 25th (signed) & 28th; March 1st (18:30), 6th & 8th (18:30)

Pre-performance talk on the 1st March (16:45) with Roger Parker.

Lehár – The Merry Widow:
April 24th, 26th (18:30) & 29th (signed); May 1st, 3rd (15:00), 7th, 9th, 10th (18:30), 20th, 21st, 29th & 30th

Pre-performance talks on the 26th April (16:45) with Edward Seckerson, and 20th May (17:30) with Andrew Lamb.

Strauss – Der Rosenkavalier:
May 22nd (18:30), 24th (17:30), 28th (18:30) & 31st (17:30); June 2nd (18:30, signed), 5th (18:30) & 7th (17:30)

Pre-performance talks on 31st May (15:45) with Julian Johnson, and 7th June (15:45) with John Deathridge.

Bernstein – Candide:
June 23rd (19:15, preview), 25th (19:15), 27th (19:15), 28th (14:00 & 19:15) & 29th (15:00); July 4th (19:15), 5th (14:00 & 19:15), 6th (15:00), 9th (19:15, signed) & 12th (14:00 & 19:15)

Pre-performance talks on 27th June (17:30) with Edward Seckerson, and 9th July (17:30) with John Snelson.

Tickets go on general sale on 5th November 2007, and can be purchased online at eno.org with no booking fees, or by telephone on 0871 472 0600.