There’s a new travelodge in London built out of container crates made in China and stuck together on site in much less time than building a hotel from scratch. Read more about it on the Beeb site here – and hat-tip to Hugh McGuire for twittering about it.

Apart from the whole “building in China and shipping it across” thing, are there any downsides to this construction approach?

So, one distinct feature of my trip to Munich was Lederhosen.

I was recently forwarded a joke along the lines of daft American tourists who’d been to Germany and not seen any atual Lederhosen – well, I can report that in Munich in July they were definitely in evidence. Our host for the weekend said that people started wearing them in the late spring, once the beer gardens opened up again, and that they got progressively more popular as the weather got hotter. And by the time Oktoberfest comes around they’re practically compulsory.

Here is some documentary proof that people do wear them. Random Germans (presumably) going about daily life in central Munich

I was certainly intrigued by them, and when I saw that you could buy them in C&A, I decided to at least have a go. So one afternoon, I picked out lederhosen, a rustic shirt and snuck into a changing room with my camera and the outfit. As if by magic…

I couldn’t quite get the straps on right. But the big surprise was that they are really, really comfortable. The leather is soft suede, which feels really good, and there’s plenty of movement. The interesting rustic shirt had metal button detail finishing, and the whole ensemble was pretty nice.

But it did cost nearly €100, and I reluctantly decided it wouldn’t be money well spent on an outfit I’d almost never wear at home. And there was also the issue of cleaning them. Apparently, you don’t. Urgh!

I did see some more affordable baby-lederhosen in the window of a specific lederhosen shop, but on sending a picture-message home to my nephew’s parents, I got a pretty clear steer that this would not go down well back home.

Whilst browsing the traditional German clothes shops, I found two further things of note. 1) Dirndls (the dress the woman is wearing in the photo at the top) are masses cheaper than lederhosen.  But I figured if I was never really going to find an excuse to wear lederhosen, I definitely wasn’t going to find one to squeeze into a dirndl.  And 2) the Wolpertinger:

I have been enjoying the guest posts on Iain Dale’s blog – although I have come to them weeks late, and I have had to wait a while until I’ve had the time to give them a slightly closer reading than I give most of his content.

Special mention for last week’s post on German involvement in international diplomacy. I had no idea. Good for them. Our damaged national psyche does us no good when we can only think of Germans as Nazis. Hardly any Brit would consider Germany as a holiday destination; our arthouse cinemas have French films coming out of their ears, but German cinema hardly ever features, despite a healthy tradition of film-making in German-speaking countries.

I’ve been mentally writing blog-posts about my time in Munich last month, but haven’t actually typed anything up yet…

There’s a useful “what sort of job would suit you?” questionaire on the Learndirect website – but I think they missed a trick by not having it end with a badge you can post to your social network of choice.

They think I’d be good at something in the DATA field or something in the FINDING OUT arena. Not a bad match for what I do now, I suppose.

Remember the giant inflatable turd that lost its moorings, and flew over Switzerland, breaking into a children’s home and taking down some power lines?

The Flickr Blog has a photo of it.