A thoroughly German approach

To further reduce the already well-contained risk of pig deficiency, you will observe that they have put little shreds of bacon into the sauerkraut itself

The role of the green thing remains unclear; it may be a tribute to the unBavarian culinary tradition of the 'vegetable'. The wise diner would discard it at once.

Across the Alps

On Thursday I took the six-hour, three-country train trip from Ljubljana to Munich.

There is an awful lot of blather written about the British Discovery of the Alps, mostly along the lines of

ELIZABETH Howard, do not these mountains bear an aspect most unlike the pastoral climes of Gloucestershire?
HOWARD Indeed my dear: nor do the meadows reflect the most refined agricultural practices than my uncle Lord Townshend is pioneering in Surrey

ELIZABETH Do not the skies lower most greyly? Might one not feel a certain almost pleasurable anticipation of Peril?

HOWARD Indeed my dear one might. Is it not fortunate that this train is provided with the finest precautions that Man can contrive against such happenstance!

(an AVALANCHE sweeps train, Howard and Elizabeth away)

Traditional Bavarian ferret holster

From the Jagd- und Fischereimuseum on the main street through central Munich. This is an absurd museum, containing not only a fine collection of crossbows, not only a baronial hall lined with carefully-labelled antlers,

not only a set of stuffed exemplars of the fauna of Bavaria down to the Feldhamster and a pair of feral guinea-pigs that someone found living in a rabbit burrow, but an entire fifteen-metre-long side-gallery devoted to taxidermists' jokes with laborious multi-paragraph articles about the habitats and behaviours of the Wolpertinger depicted.

Lovely meal yesterday

Before the Bavarian Anti-Defamation League hunt me down and I find an angry Wolperting in my hostel bed, I should say that there is at least one really good restaurant here. It's at the Chinesische Turm in the Englischer Garten to the north-east of the city centre

and you are admittedly serenaded with oompah music of the most oompahorrific kind

but the menu is reasonably interesting and very pleasant. Goat's-cheese creme brûlée with a spiced crunchy apple mash and a fresh salad, served with an interesting rosé

fillet of local fish on a bed of spinach with finely-sliced radish bits in, in a fish broth with tasty tomato chunks, served with a vigorous white wine

and a trio of successfully weird puddings: chocolate brownie with apricot, tiramisu made with weißbier rather than the usual espresso soaked sponges, and gorgeous strawberry ice cream rolled in crispy rocket pieces and Szechuan pepper, served with a double espresso.