Happy New Year! Firstly, I’m very much still alive and well (thanks for asking). I was so busy with work and the move to Munich last year that I rather neglected to update here. Also, after focusing on Asia for the past 17 years, I somehow lacked inspiration despite all the changes in my life.
I hope to post more in 2025 but while my memory is still fresh (and I still have the energy) I thought I’d do a brief month-by-month diary update on what happened in 2024.
January: Sayonara Kamakura
January was a rolling series of goodbyes to our friends and many possessions that we sold or gave away. There was also loads of paperwork to do to unwind our lives in Japan, and without wanting to be overly dramatic, building a life in one place over many years and tearing it down so quickly felt quite traumatic. Nevertheless, it all went smoothly, and we waved goodbye on January 31st.
Feburary: Hallo München
We arrived in Munich at the crack of dawn on February 1st and moved straight into a temporary serviced apartment with our overstuffed suitcases. The grey winter weather did nothing to lift my apprehension, but my fears began to dissolve once we started exploring the city. Munich is quite a different animal from anywhere I’ve lived before; neither big nor small, old nor new, but certainly with a strong sense of tradition and copious consumption of beer and bratwurst. I guess Bavaria is the stereotypical image of Germany that comes to mind for most people.
March: A new home
With spring starting to show its face and all our incoming paperwork completed, we began hunting for an apartment in earnest. We had been warned that because there is more demand than supply, this would be very hard, but with good preparation and persistence, we managed to find a great place in a beautiful quiet neighbourhood (thanks to Chen!). Unfortunately, we couldn’t move in immediately because most of our stuff was still on a container ship on its way from Japan.
This was also the month when we got our first taste of the lakes and mountains nearby with trips to Tegernsee and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It was exciting to see how easily accessible nature is from the city.
April: Moving in
In late April, we moved into our new place with only our suitcases, a new mattress, and just enough kitchen stuff to cook a basic meal. It felt great to have our own place again after effectively living in a hotel room for three months.
Meanwhile, we slowly watched the rest of our stuff take an extended voyage around the world due to the instability in the Middle East, which all but closed the Suez Canal. Watching it sail past Madagascar, I rather wish I’d taken the long route myself!
May: Departures
The weather in May was beautiful, and in addition to spending more time in the mountains, I had my first trip back to the UK for a friend’s 40th birthday party and to visit my brother. It was nice arriving there without jetlag for a change.
June: Arrivals
Germany hosted Euro 2024 in June, so for a few weeks, Munich was full of football fans. Even more excitingly, all our stuff from Japan finally arrived, so we were no longer camping in our own place. Nippon Express did a great job carefully moving all our belongings—a Japanese level of service that I will miss!
Later in the month, my parents visited us from the UK, which gave us another excuse to go to the mountains with them.
July: Glacier training
The highlight of July was taking a weekend course on safely traversing glaciers at Dachstein in Austria. The first day was spent learning various knots and self-recovery techniques after falling in a crevasse.
On the second day, we roped up in teams and went onto the glacier to practice what we had learned. The sad thing is that glaciers, this one included, are rapidly disappearing worldwide, so what we were doing may soon be a thing of the past.
August: Mountain meditation
Continuing the outdoor theme, in August, a friend took me climbing in Austria on a via ferrata route. These routes have steel fixtures such as cables, ladders, and bridges to which you can attach your harness for a degree of safety. It was simultaneously terrifying and electrifying.
Later in the month, we spent a fantastic week in Boden, Austria, hiking and meditating in the mountains with a zazen group that we had met through a friend in Japan. I will try to find the time to write more about this separately.
It was also my turn to turn 40 this month 👴🏻
September: World tour
After the tranquility of the mountains, I was immediately thrust into a month-long business trip to Singapore, Hong Kong, and then Poznań in Poland. In hindsight, the schedule was a bit much, but between work, I managed to find a few opportunities to get out of the office.
I’ve heard many people tell me that Singapore is boring and maybe I’d feel differently if I lived there, but I always find something interesting each time I visit and can’t wait to return.
Hong Kong continues to enthrall me like no other place.
Having never been to Poland before, Poznań was a really nice surprise. The city felt young and vibrant, and the food was surprisingly affordable and delicious. I would love to come back and explore more.
I had one last stop on the world tour to Norfolk in the UK to take part in the Yare Navigation Race with my father, sadly for the last time since it’s become too expensive to maintain an over 100-year-old wooden boat.
October: Autumn
Of course, after all the travelling, I was bound to catch something and almost as soon as we touched down back in Munich, I went down with flu/COVID-like symptoms for almost a week.
With Autumn in full swing, we managed a few trips to the mountains for hiking and climbing before my brother and his son came to stay for a few days.
We had a fun time taking them to the sites and the excellent BMW Museum and Deutsches Museum.
November: Kaiser mountains
As temperatures rapidly plummeted, we spent the night at Vorderkaiserfeldenhütte, a historic mountain hut in the remote Kaisertal. Until 2008, the Kaisertal was the last inhabited valley in Austria without a road link.
We hiked a little higher to Naunspitze at dusk to watch the sunset overlooking the Kaiser Mountains. Moments like these made the whole move worthwhile.
December: Amsterdam, Aachen & Norwich
In mid-December, we spent a weekend in Amsterdam, staying on a lovely houseboat. The weather was atrocious, but we spent most of our time in museums. Of particular note was Our Lord in the Attic Museum, a 17th-century canal house with an ornate Catholic church hidden on the top floor.
I took a train from Amsterdam to Aachen in Germany, which borders Belgium in the southwest and the Netherlands in the northwest. The Christmas market here is fantastic, and my work held its Christmas Party at Phantasialand, not far away in Brühl. The theme park has some really good rollercoasters.
We spent Christmas at my parents’ home in Norwich before returning to Munich to welcome the New Year. While we were away, there was a fair amount of snow, so we got our first experience of walking across a frozen lake and tobogganing, which was great fun!
What’s next in 2025?
I expect 2025 to be another big year of change. I’m excited to visit Japan and China in late January for Chinese New Year and some fresh adventures. After that, I will hopefully slow down on the international travel, but have some big plans in Europe for later in the year.
Last year I got a bit lazy and mostly only took photos with my iPhone but looking above, you can really tell the difference in quality between photos taken on a phone and those with a “proper camera”. This year, I want to reverse that trend and get back into the habit of posting here regularly.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! I wish everyone a fantastic 2025 🎊
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