A few words from Club
President
A little
change has been made to the layout of the club’s newsletter where we
bring current and relevant notice to the front. There will still
be past events write-up, although Stammtisch gatherings will not be
noted anymore even though we still hold them regularly, just refer to
the site homepage. Thank you.
I, on
behalf of the club would like to thank all the loyal members for their
support throughout these years. The club needs all the membership
fees it can get to fund its existence. There are many fixed and
variable costs such as insurance premiums, notary fees, printing
materials, postages, the rent of Eine Welt Haus space for meetings, so
on and so forth in the running of its activities.
Any members
and prospective members who would like to know more on the clubs
financial status or what we do in the club, you are welcomed to do so.
I invite you to join us at the Annual General meeting which will be
held on March the 20th, at the Eine Welt Haus. It is an opportunity to
learn about the club and to contribute your input to the planning of
the activities for the year. I hope to see many of you there and until
then, may the promise of springtime finally dawns on us after such a
long and cold winter.
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Welcome, new member…
 My
name is Siva Nadaraja. My family is in Subang Jaya at the moment
but we were in a few places before this: Seberang Perai, Kemaman,
Sungai Buloh and Klang. So we are kind of the modern day nomads I
would say. I arrived in Germany in 2006 to do my Diplom in
Electrical Engineering at HS Karlsruhe Right now I am doing my
Internship in Odelzhausen under a daughter company of General Electric
for 6 months till February 2010. Currently staying in Pasing,
Munich in a WG. My hobbies are watching movies and hanging out
with friends. Munich is fun since there are lots of very friendly
and helpful Malaysians here. I found out about the Malaysia Club
Bayern through the official website.
July 12: Family Brunch & Sports Day
The
family brunch and sports day event was held at the Hort in
Unterhaching. A very big and heartfelt thanks to Tobi, Aine’s
boss for allowing us to hold our function over there. The
brunch was pot luck style. For those who were there that day, we
had great foods such as roti jala, chicken curry, rendang, fried noodle
and bee hoon – Malaysian style, nasi lemak and then for pencuci mulut,
there was a rich and creamy chocolate cake, sago in coconut milk and
Kopi O. I’m sure there were a few more yummy food contributions which I
have forgotten because there were too many dishes to recall.
As
for the sport part of the day, well, let’s just say that after chewing
so much food, we deemed that was sportive enough. And really, how
to do sport on a full tummy!
But for the sake of the
children, we did do some sports such as balancing-lolly-pop-on-spoon
race, ring-a-round-the-roses and some were happy just going on the long
slide in the playground and playing in the sand pit.
Sept 25: Hari Raya DinnerI remember
looking forward to the Hari Raya dinner because it was a long time ago
that the club last met. The lack of activities was caused by the
school holidays and also the month of Ramadan, with the result of the
Merdeka celebration being cancelled. Anyway, the time flew past
and soon enough, it was Hari Raya and we celebrated the festival at
Chantik Restaurant.
Sept 30: Ambassador Invited Comm Members to Dinner The
MCB committee members were pleasantly surprised to be invited by the
Malaysian Ambassador to Germany, His Excellency, Datuk Zakaria
Sulong to attend a dinner at Chantik Restaurant. To be
honest, I cannot remember who were present that night. All I know
is that they were important people of Malaysian organizations based in
Frankfurt such as MIDA and of course His Excellency and his wife.
Such good support is very much appreciated.
Oct 16-18: Trip to Vienna On
Friday, 16.10.09, I started my journey with the ICE 527 at 6.20 a.m.
from Dortmund Hbf heading to Munich to meet a group of Malaysians
travelling to Vienna. I never knew I would be able to find such a
club in Germany, ever since I have been living here for the past 28
years, the past 14 years as a single. I really missed speaking
the languages – English, Cantonese and Bahasa Malaysia. I was
constantly looking for Malaysians here, but here in the Ruhrgebiet-NRW
I was unsuccessful. Consequently, I took my courage and travelled
all the way down to Munich to meet this “unknown” group of
Malaysians. The President, whom I have been corresponding through
E-Mails for the past 2 weeks, seemed to be a nice woman, so I took the
risks and boarded the train. After 5 hours of train ride I was in
Munich.
 To
my great surprise I found an amazing cheerful group of Malaysians, who
gave me a warm welcome at the Munich Railway Station. We started
our journey from Munich on a cold and rainy October afternoon. On
board were Jaya and Hans Borchart, Alison Pereira, Shirlyn Wok-Meyer,
Josephene Kissol-Kretz and myself. On the way here, Alison
brought along a Mistletoe-Branch to bring us luck for the
journey. Well, you can guess how the ride was – lots of jokes
were made, especially as Hans is on bord, causing lots of
laughter. Naturally everybody brought something to eat and we
exchanged them among ourselves.
 When
we arrived in Vienna in the evening, we were joined by Kan Ern, Farah
Suib and her brother, Kausa. They preferred to travel in a
“small” car – Mercedes E3 Klasse. They made arrangements for us at the
Hotel Kaffeemühle which is a standard 3 star hotel - very far from a
Kaffeermühle (which means Coffee grinding machine). After
checking in, we decided to seek a cosy place to have dinner
together. Around the corner from the Kaffeemühle was a Italian
Cuisine Restaurant. We were so lucky in that we managed to get
some lovely hot meals, since it was almost late in the night.
The
next morning it started raining again. After the good breakfast,
we decided to do some sightseeing by walking through the streets of
Vienna.
  We
stumbled in the direction of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien.
Before going in, we were fortunate enough to meet a nice groomed young
man in uniform, who asked us if we would like to visit the Imperial
Orchester Vienna in the evening. To make a long story short, we
all decided to take this special offer for “small money” to enter the
Musical World of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Strauss. This
Saturday Evening was music for our hearts and ears and the best part of
it was - everybody enjoyed it. A splendid evening of classical
music.
 We
came back with the subway (the first time that we took the U-Bahn)
guided by Hans Borchart, so it can´t go wrong. Back in the hotel,
in our rooms we played “Medical Center”,
(Sorry, no pictures for that part)
We
had lots of fun and laughter and the result was we talked and talked
and talked till late in the night (almost 3 in the morning). I am
glad that only insiders (Alison, Josi and Shirlyn) know what I
mean. I had never thought that this could be so much fun.
 Our
target for Sunday was Schloß Schönbrunn, the residence from Kaiser
Franz-Josef and Sissi von Österreich, which we know from the TV-Films.
We
did not have problems buying tickets, since Kan Ern knew how internet
ticketing works. The guided tour with earphones lasted about 45
minutes. We had time to walk through their gardens. On the
whole, we spent almost 2 hours there. After that we went for
lunch and departed Vienna for Munich in the late afternoon and I took
my ICE 516 back to Dortmund. 
Incidentally,
I would like to mention that our lunch at Fussan Restaurant was really
good. We should earmark this for the next trip to Vienna.
To
sum up everything – I would like to thank the club (all participants)
for this memorable excursion. I have never had such a lovely
time; they gave me a feeling of home and Malaysian hospitality which I
lost (now found) a long long time ago. Now I have found new
Malaysian friends in a foreign country and Shirlyn Wok-Meyer has asked
me to be a member of this club. How could I reject this
offer. It´s a deal, we shall see each other again. In
conclusion, I can recommend this club to all, because the people are
really nice.
Article contributed by: Mov-Ching Brosig
ching.brosig@udo.edu
(pictures by Hans)
Oct 31: Annual Dinner & Dance The
2009 Annual Dinner & Dance was held at the Bürgersaal in
Forstenried. Many people were disappointed with the food
served. Okay, duly noted. Of course that tended to dampen
the good mood and atmosphere. Then came the programs for the
evening which one could see has definately no influence from the
caterers. It was authentic MCB program.
The
evening started off with the president giving a short and sweet
speech. She then read us the letter from the Malaysian Ambassador
which he has kindly written and sent specially for this occasion
explaining why the Embassy could not attend this year’s dinner and also
His Excellency’s support in the clubs’ continual success.
waiting
for the food to be arranged on the buffet table, we were kept in
anticipation with the Door Ticket draw. Three lucky winners
received their gifts. As for those we didn’t win, well, better
luck next time.
 A
small group of Malaysian women members has diligently been practicing
and produced an admirable medley of Malay, Chinese and Indian
traditional dance. JJ did an impressive Michael Jackson
impersonation. The little ones in the club showed amazing courage
by singing to the crowd; Franz Jr. and Stefanie sang an African song
while Alicia gave a great rendition of “Somewhere over the
Rainbow.”
The place was spacious, so much so that the
children could move about freely. And later on, there was a lot
of dancing both on the stage and on the dance floor followed by the
Lucky Draw. So while the food was less than satisfactory, I think
I can safely say that we all had fun meeting and being amongst each
other.
Dec 13: Christkindlmarkt in Salzburg As
usual, we all met at the Munich Hauptbahnhof very early in the morning
to catch the train to the Christkindlmarkt in Salzburg. We
thought being early would enable us to have ample sitting places.
Little did we know, many winter sports people had the same thoughts so
the train was full.
Anyway, we reached Salzburg without any
mishap. We then took the bus to the town centre. Upon
arrival, we looked for a typical Austrian restaurant and found
one. Well, we don’t know for sure if that was a typical Austrian
restaurant or not but they had Wiener Schnitzel on the menu, so it was
definitely not a Chinese restaurant.
Then we went
to the Christmas market. There our group split up so that we
could each go at our own individual pace. At the appointed time,
we all met up again. Some bought trinkets for remembrance, some
bought sweets, some just browsed, and then Shirlyn showed us her tea
for relieving stress.
When we have had enough of walking around
in the cold, we retreated into a nice warm coffee shop. Some of
us had coffee, some hot chocolate and those of us who had space in
their tummy to spare, had cake to go with their drinks.
After
that, we walked across one of the 3 main bridges to the other side of
the town to take the bus that would bring us back to the train
station. From there we boarded our train which brought us back to
Munich.
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