Munster

This week is half term! Yay!  Although the half term has only been 5 weeks, it's been tiring (January has never been my favourite month), and we were ready for the break.  Just to make things even more hectic, Friday was the start of Karneval - this is a big thing only in our state, Northrhine Westphalia, and it is a 4 day celebration of the start of lent.  The English are happy with just pancake day, but the Northrhine Westphalians need 4 days of fancy dress and drinking vodka shots at 7am on the tram.  It;s horrendous, and really not my thing at all.  Last year, Matt and I went to a cottage in the middle of nowhere to avoid it all, and this year we had no plans to experience any of the mayhem.  

I went to Bochum, a nearby town with a couple of girlfriends from work for dinner (pizza and a white chocolate and banana filled waffle, yum!).  Matt had some people over to watch the start of the 6 Nations rugby.  They were still over by the time I got home, and it was nice to have a chat with everyone.  They all went out to the local pub at about 10, and Matt got home at 1am!  I'm not drinking alcohol until we go on holiday, and it's going very well so far as part of my healthy eating kick.  I'm continuing not drinking for lent, as well as giving up chocolate I think! Wish me luck!

On Monday we decided to go for a spontaneous trip to Munster, a nearby medieval town about an hour and a half on the train from Duisburg.  We decided to book a hotel and make a proper trip of it.  We arrived, and realised that it was Rosenmontag, ie, the biggest drinking and partying day of Karneval!  We didn't think that a small town like Munster would have a parade but apparently we were wrong!  There were people in fancy dress everywhere, and lots of drinking on the streets.  We had a coffee to take stock, and decided that we might as well embrace Karneval, only to discover that the parade had been cancelled due to the high winds!  Talk about a roller coaster of emotions!  I was actually disappointed!  We think that Munster may not be as bad as Cologne or Dusseldorf where the huge parades are, so may possible come back next year for the parade, just so that we can say we experienced Karneval while living in Germany.  We'll wear fancy dress next time too, so we don't stick out as much!

Having realised that the parade was cancelled, we decided to look around the town, except everything, even the cathederal was closed.  All the classy, nice restaurants were closed too because of the drunks.  We ended up having some drinks in the hotel and after a wander in the rain to find a restaurant, had a Dominos pizza (didn't think you could get them in Germany, so we were pretty happy to be honest!).  We saw a heron in a park too.

On Tuesday we decided to go to the Allweather Zoo - it has lots of covered walkways so you can get around in the rain.  Very useful as it turns out; the torrential rain started at about 2pm.  It's a really good zoo though, with lots on offer.  We even threw fish into the penguin area to feed them.  The animals have large areas, and all seem pretty happy.  It was a really nice day, and a highlight was the seal show.  They have a horse museum there, (not the most interesting place I've ever been), which had a small exhibition of the Natural History Museum in London's Wildlife Photographer of the Year.  It's my favourite exhibition, and I was thrilled to be able to see some of the fantastic photographs from this year.

I was really loving that big cats at the zoo. So many great photos of them. This next one is my favourite. I think the bars actually add to it.