We had ninety short days in Continental Europe. The period was dictated by my Schengen visa (which all South Africans require, unless, like Claire, they possess other, more useful passports) and meant skipping through Austria – with only one full day and two nights in Vienna and two days of hiking in the Alps, sleeping in a caravan near Innsbruck – on our way from Germany’s south to Italy’s north.

We feel qualified to write about neither, and would, besides, have only a dull list of sites to impart. But we feel it worth mentioning that, in the course of our pleasant day’s meander through Vienna, we stumbled on hundreds of two metre high, brightly painted fibreglass bears, filling an enigmatic circle in Karlsplatz. All were facing inwards, arms outstretched. (Read on …)

Munich is the heart of golden Bavaria, where the beer flows in litre sized steins, Sunday lunch is sausage and sauerkraut, and men really do don the traditional high waisted, above the knee lederhosen.

Its old city charm gracefully survives amidst fast paced European living. Her tall pastel buildings stand with poise amongst a sprawl of shopping streets. Pedestrianised and linear, Kaufinger Strasse is easy to navigate, and still has enough shoe stores to keep any shopper satisfied. Its uber-efficient transport network and modest pollution levels has helped it rank in the world’s top ten most “liveable” cities. And in the midst of this modern metropolis looms the grand old Glockenspiel, as ever, clocking up the city’s years. (Read on …)

Rain crashed on the tin roof of a small caravan dispensing draught beer. Claire and I huddled beneath it, sipping Becks from refundable plastic cups. Dance music thumped from neat piles of speakers lining both sides of Strasse des 17 Juni, played by DJs now frantically trying to cover their equipment. A ray of sunshine escaped from a crack in the black clouds, reflecting gold streaks off the tarmac. The trickle of people gyrating between the intermingling sounds pulled out umbrellas and danced through the downpour. (Read on …)