Heya,

You may know already, but on 1st of September I start my new job at University of Dundee, and as such for the first time in my life am moving away from the West Coast of Scotland.

To celebrate/mourn this, we are having one last night out at Blackfriars on Friday 28th August. Feel free to come along.

Dave

I'm in Munich at the moment for a student OSA conference. I flew out from Edinburgh on Wednesday morning and arrived at the Hotel Modern around 1pm. Hotel Modern is about as modern as a steam engine. No tv, no internet, not even a gideon bible in the room. Anyways, I'm just using it to sleep in, and as such I've not been in it that much!

Wednesday afternoon I put the finishing touches to a wee presentation I gave on Thursday and then walked about the city a bit and sample some bratworst mit mustard. Awesome! Although, by 7pm I was shattered so decided to go to bed early.

Conference started on the Thursday morning at 9pm at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optiks. It's been alright so far, the talks haven't been in my field at all, but at least I know more about attosecond control than I ever did or could. We were given meal tickets for the staff canteen - cue endless plates on my tray. I think I had Meat Soup, a salad with sourkraut, half a roast chicken with chips and relish, followed by a whipped cream dessert. All paid for by MPQ.

The day ended with a buffet (cue more meet and saurkraut) and beer from a keg. And then!!!

We headed in to Munich City centre to the Haufbrau House which is every thing you've seen of german beerhalls on the TV. Long benches and tables, glasses you could sit in filled with foamy Pils, buxom barmaids in traditional dress, oompa oompa tuba music and lots and losts of lederhosen. The beer was so good, proper german beer - I could live here purely for the beer. Anyways, we stayed there till it closed around 12pm and then headed out on the street to find another bar...

Down an alleyway we could see a neon glowing heart with about three x's in the middle of it above a door. Tempting as it was we decided (on account of a group consensus) to try the bar next door, the Eden Bar. As soon as we entered we realised that neon sign was for this place as well. Anyways, we were told it was 10 euros (7pounds 50) for entry which included a pint of lovely foamy golden smooth german Pils and a schnapz. So, being students we agreed.

This was the first time I had been in a strip joint, and therefore I'm not able to make a valid argument for if this was a seedy one or not. I think it was. The whole place was the size of my bedroom with private dance stalls on one wall and faux leather couches on the other. The beer arrived and so did the dancers. Probably saw around 5 dancers, each as bored looking as the next. Leg's being twisted and contorted around the poles with faces conveying thoughts of "eggs, milk and bread before my hair appointment, did I leave the gas on when I left? Hope he's done his homework for school in the morning".

We decided to leave when one of our party's stomach decided it had taken enough, and thus emptied it's contents over the faux leather couch mid dance. I think the girl was a bit offended, but luckily the guy was sitting alone and no one got splash back.

I finally got back to my hotel around 4am and woke up for sight seeing today. Walked around for a couple of hours seeing all the sights then headed to a pub for lunch. Lots of meat and beer then some more walking. Ended up at the Deutsche Museum. If you are ever in Munich, go to see this, it is utterly fantastic. We were lucky in that we showed up around 4.15 and it was closing at 5pm, so the door staff let us in for nothing rather than 8euros! Although, with 36,000 exhibits, we no where near saw it all. What we did see though was great, i'll post some pictures when I get home.

And now I'm in an internet cafe writing this, waiting for 9.30pm to come so I can go get some more beer, cause you know, I think it's alright.

So, the split with Kenny Leckie has been catalogued and is now ready for your buying/listening/binning pleasure

Four tracks, two each.

Can buy and hear snippets of it here
http://davehughesmusic.co.uk/shop/pr...