During a recent business trip to Munich I had the great pleasure to attend the fantastic live performance from the Chinese State Circus.

The venue was a previous residence of a German monarch which is now used for a variety of events… (note: it actually was covered in snow when we were there)…

Click here to see it on Bing maps.

During the summer the gardens provide a tranquil area for Germans and tourists to get away from the cars, busses and trams of Munich.  The interior reminded me of the British Museum a little, with lots of marble, staggeringly high ceilings and beautifully designed rooms separated by grand pillars.

We were with a bunch of Microsoft people, so they arrange for us to have dinner before the show.  The food was very nice, consisting of fresh bread, rare cooked beef and a imaginatively presented ice cream dessert…

It felt a little weird sitting at a table in the corner of the huge reception area, surrounded by other theatre goers (is that a word!?! Spell checker didn’t pick it up, so I guess it is!), but it was a nice start to the show (particularly after a couple of glasses of Champagne

The meal only lasted for about 45 mins (since we arrived a bit late), after which we wondered in to the next room to wait for the show to start.  The stage looked fairly basic without any of the performers on and kind of reminded me of a nativity stage from my old school productions….

The show started with a tubby German (I think) guy walking in from the left, with a spot light focussed on him whilst he struggled to lift him self up on to the stage.  The skill required by the acrobats in the show required huge amounts of concentration and seriousness, so the comedy element added by the tubby guy was a welcome addition.

Gradually the Chinese acrobats entered the stage and performed absolutely breath taking acts as part of a continuous story line.  I must be honest and admit that I have no idea what the story was supposed to be, mainly because I was so mesmerised by the various ‘stunts’ on stage.

The audience area was dark, so it felt a little rude to take photos during the performance, hence I do not have any.  Photos was not really do the show justice anyway.  Some of the amazing acts we saw included dives and sumsauts through wooden rings barely wide enough for a man/women to fit through, one guy balanced upside down on another guy’s head whilst they mirrored each others actions as the guy on the floor walked along the stage, juggling giant vases (I think they were plastic), human pyramids (although that description hardly does it justice), a women shooting a bow an arrow upside down with her legs and toes and a lots more absolutely unbelievable routines.

(Photo from Idene)

(Photo from augschburger)

If you would like to spend a couple of hours being shocked and amazed with increasingly risky and unbelievable performances right in front of your eyes, I strongly recommend going to see one of these shows.

A quick search of Flickr for Chinese State Circus photos shows acts which were not included in the show we saw, so I suspect each show has it’s own unique combination of performances and routines.

…see what I did there?

Had a bit of a travel knightmare on Friday

We were in Munich all week whilst southern UK had it’s heaviest snow storms in a couple of decades.  Heathrow and Gatwick have had closures, hundreds of flights have been cancelled/delayed and Munich airport was expecting heavy snow on the day we were travelling.

We woke up in the morning in the hotel and checked BritishAirways.co.uk to find out that our flight had been cancelled After calling American Express travel we found out that all BA flights to Heathrow were cancelled/unknown, so our best option was to fly to Amsterdam with KLM, and then from Amsterdam to Heathrow.  We booked the flights, but decided to head to Munich airport to see whether Serena’s “I’m a gold card member’ line made any difference with BA.

On arrival to Munich airport it became apparent that NONE of the planes which should have come from Heathrow had arrived at Munich, so there was little chance of getting on a BA plane.  Serena did try the BA Gold Card line, but the response was “We can’t change the weather, not even for Gold Card members” – fair enough   Our thoughts were that BA would have been hit worst by the problems, since they have lots of flights from Heathrow and Gatwick, so they are having to cancel/reschedule lots of planes to clear up the mess.  So, we decided to head to Amsterdam using KLM.

KLM flight went well.  The Dutch flight crew were pleasant enough and they served drinks and snacks even though it was a relatively short trip.  Serena did a bit of preparation reading for our unexpected trip to Amsterdam (airport)…

Thankfully on arrival to Amsterdam our KLM connecting flight was on time, although we still had 3 hours to kill.  The British Airways flights from Amsterdam Heathrow were all delayed, so in this instance KLM was definitely the right option.

The airport was enormous.  It is split in to three different sections each of which host many shops, bars and restaurants.  We grabbed some food in a little noodle bar…

…and then split up to do a little shopping.  Well, more accurately…Serena did shopping and I went and sat by the gate, listening to tunes on my iphone and caught up on email/blogs on my netbook.

Travelling is one of my favourite times to read or catch up on work, so I’m not a big shopper.  However if you do prefer to shop in airports, then Amsterdam is a great place to be…

There is even a museum…

After a few hours waiting/shopping in the airport, we finally took off (on time) and got back to the UK at about 5pm.  Unfortunately we landed at Terminal 4, and my car was in the business car park of Terminal 5, so we had to go on mini mission with a couple of buses to get back to the car.  I got a nice pic of a snowy English country side as we made our approach to Heathrow…

Based on the amount of abandoned luggage, I am assuming that there were quite a few disappointed travellers missing their essentials…

Two of my friends were having a leaving party in Reading in the evening, so I got back home as soon as I could (which took a while thanks to the lack of grit on any of the roads in my area), got showered and changed and headed to the train station, where I had to wait for another 45 minutes due to cancelled trains.

I eventually got to Reading at about 9:30pm, missing the buffet, but in time for wine, champagne and plenty of dancing Crazy travel day, but still lots of fun