Life goes on

I hadn't realised that my social calendar had been booked for today until breakfast time. Thought we could have a quiet, relaxed, brunch type Slow Food breakfast. "Pfiiffkas" (Bavarian word made up of the two words Pfeifen (whistle) and Käse (cheese) but it has nothing to do with either - being Bavaria it has to do with beer).

So a hurried Frühstuck and Brigitte who had stayed overnight had to anyway get home early as her two daughters were coming to have Christmas Day lunch with her. We packed up the car with everything one needs, including the dogs and set off for Olching near Munich and Angie's father' home where we were invited for lunch.

As always a good event and with Angie's step brother, wife and children. Somehow I didn't get to take any photos but all of them should be coming to visit us on Wednesday.

After lunch, drove Angie over to other relations in the town while I looked for somewhere to take the dogs for a good walk. As it was lovely wind-still sunshine,  drove a few 100m to the local lake only to find half of the 29,000 inhabitants had the same idea. We took off in to the countryside and eventually I found a suitable place.

Driving through the town I was "shocked" at how the town had grown over the last 27 years since I lived just a mile or two away in Eichenau, Back in 1990, the population was 20,000 and now it's getting close to 30,000. Very close to the main Munich-Stuttgart and Munich Ring autobahns, it makes a very attractive site for businesses and commuters with good connections to Munich. Sepp, Angie's father told me the council is now putting the brakes on further development.

Our walk was close to the huge rubbish incineration plant at Geiselbullach, a suburb part of the town. It was there back in 1990 but has expanded as well and from the early days of heated discussion over such plants, they are today the norm. Infilling of rubbish has long been banned and this seems to be the only viable method for the moment. Naturally heat is produced for electricity generation and the remaining slag is apparently clean enough to be used for building roads. The fine filter remains are buried in disused mines.

These plants, just as the fire engine that crawled past all have to work 24/7/365 days a year to keep us safe and well. The fire engine, just after this shot, suddenly put on it's siren and shot off down the narrow road. No idea if there was anything untoward or whether the crew were simply bored and wanted a quick spin.

Eventually we returned home in the dark to a cool house and lit our wood fire to get some Christmas Day warmth.