Duly noted

This Whitsun holiday weekend is blessed with truly summery weather, with 15 degrees the overnight low and day's high forecast to top 30. I am fortunate that my little flat remains cool, however warm it might be outside.

Munich has its advantages in other respects, as I learned last week...

The 2013 national crime figures, which were leaked to Die Welt newspaper earlier this week, show just under six million crimes were recorded in Germany last year. When broken down to the number of crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, Frankfurt am Main rates as the most dangerous city in Germany with 16,292 crimes per 100,000 people. Cologne was second in the list followed by Berlin and Düsseldorf.

In Bavaria there were just 5,073 crimes per 10,000 inhabitants, almost 40 percent less than in North Rhine-Westphalia. Baden-Württemberg was the second safest state with 5,450 crimes. And Munich ranked as the safest large city in Germany. It had half the crime rate of other German cities with 7,400 offences per 100,000 inhabitants.