The transfer window, though ultimately stagnant for Bayern Munich, was not without our particular brand of FC Hollywood drama. Danijel Pranjic and Franck Ribery have both publicly voiced their displeasure with January's lack-of-outcome.

Hello, February! The transfer window has come and gone, and Christian Nerlinger wasn't lying: Nobody came and nobody went. The closest things Bayern has to new signings are the imminent arrival of Arjen Robben's third child, and of course, all of us: Bayern's 12th men. Pfffft.

Eight days of humility. Not only did we get our proverbial butts kicked by 'Gladbach last Friday, then the Bayern PR team becomes the laughing stock of the footballing world with an ill-timed "new signing" press conference. Ah, another Facebook application! Just what I always wanted! Errrrrr... nope. I was, however, recovering from London and sleeping through the whole PR stunt. So, I wasn't really too bothered.

"We started extremely s***tily. In stages, it was OK, then it was s***t again. Then we tried again and then it was s***t once more." - Thomas Mueller rather neatly sums it up.

Ah, and we all had such high hopes for this match, now, didn't we? Coming off a stellar winter training camp, all the Bayern players happy, all the bosses exuberant and Schweinstieger fit... What could possibly go wrong?

Ahhhh... so the Rueckrunde is finally here. Many of us were bored for a month, or settling for watching matches in other leagues; but with the European Championships in June, I will take this break in stride- not only for the DFB, but also Bayern Munich. I have a feeling it will pay dividends.

Jupp Heynckes' €12.50 and a flip chart couldn't stop a Hannover 96 squad with the best home record in the Bundesliga. And, truth be told, if you're not a fan of Bayern Munich, it was one of the more entertaining matches in Germany so far this season.

This was my first time nervously pacing - not sitting - while watching a match this year. And the expletives and epithets coming out of my mouth were met with a small amount of consternation from my friendly neighbours. At least they couldn't understand most of what I was saying.

You knew it was going to happen eventually, right? But, I can guarantee you didn't think it would happen in this fashion. Holger Badstuber's own goal on 39 minutes at Napoli put an end to Manuel Neuer's remarkable streak of 1147 minutes without conceding.

I have, up to this point in the season, been hesitant to express how good Bayern Munich actually are, but after watching clinic-upon-clinic-upon-clinic ('Gladbach and Hoffenheim notwithstanding)...

...I've got to tell you, we freakin' rock. Unglaublich. Wahnsinn. Schoen. Wirklich. Whatever superlative words, in English or German, I can come up with, I'm feeling pretty free to use them now.

My personal Oktoberfest tally is: One busted up knee. Three dirndls that need repairing. 60+ Mass consumed (throw in a bottle of Williams Birne and a bottle of Jaeger). One lost phone. Three random encounters on the streets of Munich with people I know in the States. One sinus / ear infection. Two days with family. Two Bayern matches in the Allianz. Nine tents visited. Singing on stage eight times. I'm sure there's more, but as the saying goes, "Was passiert im Oktoberfest bliebt im Oktoberfest".

748. That rather large number is the number of consecutive minutes Manuel Neuer has kept a clean sheet this season, setting club records for consecutive Bundesliga matches and total matches. And while the numbers are impressive, even Neuer admits that he has considerably less to do than he has in the past at Schalke.

Remember when we used to suck against Bundesliga teams in the bottom third of the table? (Granted, it wasn't that long ago with our slip up against 'Gladbach, but I'm inclined to view that as an anomaly thus far.) The problem was never against the big guns; Bayern are always up for those. But, we seemed to lose our intensity against lesser opposition; as if we couldn't be bothered. Saying that, part of the reason is that less-gifted teams tend to play us differently- i.e., parking the bus in front of the goal, 10 men behind the ball, "Oh, hell! They're coming again!" and what will you.

So, it's been a busy but good week-and-a-half for the squad, but a little chaotic around my house because of a hurricane which ultimately decided to skip us. Now I've got a pantry full of junk food and booze, and not a whole lot to do besides feast and type. Of course, mindful of the fact that I need to fit in to my dirndls in a couple of weeks for my annual odyssey to Munich for some matches - and a small beer festival you might have heard about.

To be fair, Bayern Munich are a point up on what we should be after two Bundesliga matches. We should've drawn at home against 'Gladbach: Thomas Mueller's disallowed goal would've garnered us a point. And Wolfsburg's Helmes' disallowed goal on Saturday would've taken two away. I'm very-much-so trying to look on the bright side here.

To paraphrase the title of my last entry, the fun didn't start on Sunday. Not that it was a horrible showing against 'Gladbach to open the season, but when the final whistle was blown, our 0-1 loss was highly disappointing. Funny that it came in the form of mistakes by two men, Jerome Boateng and Manuel Neuer, who cost FCB upwards of 40 million Euro on the transfer market this summer.

"Sunday is when the fun begins." -Philipp Lahm

Yes, he's right. But, to be fair, Friday's Bundesliga opener was pretty terrific stuff. Especially Dortmund's very young Mario Goetze. Man, that kid is absolute shenanigans! And Saturday's televised match in the United States- Stuttgart / Schalke- was entertaining as well. Unless you're a Schalke supporter, that is.

Really, this whole summer has been filled with football: Youth tournaments, Women's World Cup, Copa America, Gold Cup... not to mention the U.S. tour of footballing juggernauts. My voice still hasn't recovered from supporting Chivas over Barcelona in Miami on Wednesday. "Bicicletaaaaaaaaaaaa!" But, football is only football when it's not Bayern Munich on the pitch. Yep, Herr Lahm, you're correct.

OK, admittedly there's not too much I know about Entracht Braunschweig. And what I do know won't play out in any way, shape or form in Monday's DFB Pokal opening match.

Here's what I do know (silly as it may seem). 1) They're a founding member of the Bundesliga, and won the Championship in 1967. 2) They're the first German club to put a sponsor on their kit. (And I know this because the sponsor was Jaegermeister; the delicious nectar that flows through my veins.) 3) They were involved in the match-fixing scandal in the early 70's. But, not for nefarious reasons: Players were given 40,000 DM to perform above standards. Not to lose or draw.

A testament to how crazy this Bundesliga season has been was the final Saturday when I used every platform in my arsenal to keep track of 5 games concurrently. GolTV was showing the Dortmund - Frankfurt match. I had the ESPN3 feeds of Bayern Munich - Stuttgart and SC Freiburg - Bayer Leverkusen playing on my desktop and notebook, following Wolfsburg - Hoffenheim on my Android pad and the Moenchengladbach match on my phone. Exhausting.

"Routed", "thrashed", "manhandled", "crushed", "destroyed"... and my personal favorite... "slaughtered" were all words used to describe injury-ravaged St Pauli's loss to Bayern Munich on Saturday. The 1-8 scoreline, coupled with Hannover's defeat at Stuttgart 2-0, guarantees die Roten at least a Champions League play-in spot for next season. And with Bayer Leverkusen's draw at home with Hamburg (doing what Leverkusen does best), Munich are playing for second place, and direct Champions League qualification Saturday against die Schwaben.

It's a curious week when I'm in the position of having to support Schalke 04 against Manchester United on Wednesday, only to turn it around on Saturday when die Knappen came to the Allianz Arena. A quick bit of maths will show you where my head is at: Bayern Munich > Schalke 04 > Bayer Leverkusen > Manchester United > Inter Milan.

Got it?

Who could have forseen this match being as crucial as it is? With all the subtexts? The large and small stories?

Jupp Heynckes, on one hand, has a shot winning the first ever Bundesliga title for Bayer Leverkusen. On the other, he's facing the team he will manage next season; in a match they must win to qualify for Champions League competiton.

And just when I thought my trip to Munich was going to be a bad idea...

Oh, wie ist da schoen! Saturday was, without a doubt, a wonderful day to be in the stadium! And doubt, I did, after a turbulent couple of weeks which saw Bayern with 3 consecutive losses and the sacking (ish) of Louis van Gaal. I was almost tempted to stay home, save my money and come back and try again next season. Needless to say, I'm ecstatic I'm here.

Never one to relish writing about losses, I find myself in the unusual (read: horrible) position of now having to write about them three times in a row. I pack enough snark and criticism in my blogs about the wins, so you might imagine my vitriol when we lose.

For 270-some-odd minutes, I have been shouting at my computer / television. In English and German. Very little of which is fit for print here. Not very fun to be a Bayern fan, presently, is it? And, you have to go back a full 11 years to find the last time Bayern lost three consecutively...

Well, that was 90 minutes of my life I'd like to have back.

The only real good news after the loss to Borussia Dortmund on Saturday was the nifty little statistic that Bayern Munich had never lost two games in a row at the Allianz Arena. So naturally, I figured we'd go through. I mean, it's only Schalke 04, right? Felix Magath's die Knappen have had a rather dismal record versus die Roten the last few years. And that, coupled with their horrible domestic campaign this season? "Wir farhen nach Berlin!"

Sometimes life gets in the way of football. My excitement over the Bayern - Dortmund match was eclipsed by a dear friend's wedding on Saturday. If all had gone according to plan, I would have been able to see the match live at 9:30AM EST, and then spent the day happy and unconcerned, enjoying a day of nuptuals. And, to be fair, if the bride were any lesser of a friend, I would have skipped the ceremony and just showed at the reception.

Last week saw me bemused with the bit of fluff that Luca Toni, and most of the press, considered a news piece. Apparently, LvG dropped trou on the Bayern team bus, back when Toni was still on the squad and Toni chose not to mention it until last week? Huh?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but European locker rooms can't be that much different from American ones- you know, where modesty does not generally apply. I'm sure that's not the first pair that Mr. Toni has seen, nor will it be his last. Bollocks, I say!

In my last entry I stated MY best possible Bayern Munich starting XI. Louis van Gaal, strangely, chose not to listen to me at all. I wonder why that is...

Instead he chose to start Danijel Pranjic and Andreas Ottl as holding midfielders, keep Schweini in the playmaker's role, sit Breno in favor of Antoliy Tymoschuk and give (my favorite player ever) Hamit Altintop a start, opposite Thomas Mueller, in attacking midfield.

Sigh. Well, the match against Wolfsburg didn't go exactly as planned, but it wasn't horrible either. Strange to say that about 90 minutes where Philipp Lahm missed a peno, Schweini gave up an equaliser and Franck Ribery found something new about his knee to destroy.

The eventual draw against the Wolves also means that, for now, winning the Bundesliga is quite unobtainable. There it is. Playing for second place is not the end of the world, however, as we're still in the driver's seat in the DFB Pokal and Champions League competitions. Solidifying a second-place finish, with direct Champions League qualification, seems to me to be a readily obtainable goal.

The Advent calendars are put away. The Christmas tree has been dismantled. Gluehwein has stained the teeth. Presents have been opened and given. 2011 has been toasted in. OK, so... now what?

Oh, yeah! The return of the Bundesliga!

I'm sure that all of you are salivating over the re-start as much as I am, as the end of the first half saw Bayern Munich clawing it's way back up the Bundesliga table, beat Stuttgart twice in a week's span, advance to the next round of the DFB Pokal and gave us our round of 16 Champions League opponents.

Part Three of my southern German tour found me in Frankfurt, hanging out with friends and waiting for the Stuttgart - Bayern Bundesliga match on Sunday. I couldn't get tickets for the Frankfurt - Dortmund clash and ended up watching the match in an Australian pub in Frankfurt. Rooting, of course, for die Adler.

Yay! Internet! I say this because I've been up in the Bavarian mountains in the middle of the coldest, snowy-est (yeah, it's a word) December that Germany has seen for 40 years. I'm now in Frankfurt visiting friends before Sunday's match against Stuttgart, and currently ensconced in my hotel with a stable internet connection.

Remember when you first started playing footie?

You were probably 5 or 6 years old. You might have started playing during break at school, or perhaps a bit more organized at the park on the weekends. The ball looked absolutely humongous as 16 or so kids chased it around the field in one big mass of screaming, shrieking and flailing delight. Someone players on your team would always start running the wrong way while the adults on the sidelines would laugh, yelling, “Turn around, sweetie! Go the other way!”

As many of you may have gathered, I am a bartender by trade. My weekends, for the last couple of years, have been spent getting up at ungodly morning hours, sleep-deprived and loaded up with tons of coffee, opening up my local, The Lion and Eagle, for fun, frivolity and football every Saturday and Sunday.

The Premiership takes precedence, of course, for it is a British pub. But my Teutonic presence has turned a few heads to the joys of Bayern Munich, in particular, and to the Bundesliga, in general. When I’m not polling the regulars as to which squad has the worst hair in the Premiership- Everton, Arsenal and Newcastle being my rotating top three- I’m often asked about our last few results, where we are in the table, and, more recently, where do I think Bastian will end up?

…with a little help from Gomez.

The re-re-emergence (am I missing a “re” here?) of Mario Gomez was certainly a pleasure to watch against Hannover 96 and CFR Cluj. With Ivica Olic and Miroslav Klose out injured, the ex-Stuttgart striker and German international showed a flash of his 30 million Euro transfer fee, netting a nifty hat-trick against the Hannoverians and a goal against the Romanians.

It has, so far, been a frustrating season for Bayern Munich. Die Roten have been (strangely) quietly full-of-suck, managing only 5 points in 4 Bundesliga matches and stuck, ignominiously, in a tie for 8th place. It seems like no one, not even UEFA, wants us to have any fun.

I don’t know about you all, but I often find myself in an internal battle of club versus country. Two recent examples of this being Neuer’s howler in injury time that cost Schalke 04 Bundesliga points on Friday, and Per Mertesacker’s broken orbital bone suffered during the EURO qualifier against Azerbaijan.

I have so been waiting for this day! My kits have been purchased. German satellite is ready. German friend is ready. My computer is set-up for optimal streaming, as back-up. I have a rare Friday off of work. My schedule is clear. Appropriate flags, pendants and shawls are hanging about. Heck, I even bought new Adi Pure boots, knowing I liked them, but forgetting they were Schweini’s…

Let’s get this started!

OK, let me get this straight:

1) Two teams play Friday.
2) Neither of them are members of the Premiership.
3) The match (kinda-sorta) means nothing.
4) It’s being shown on ESPN in the United States.

Huh?! Pinch me, I’m dreaming! I just knew that little tournament this summer would be good for something…

“Berlin, Berlin! Wir fahren nach Berlin!” It’s the chant that was sung by the Bayern faithful after Arjen Robben’s brilliant extra-time goal against Schalke 04, back in March, that propelled die Roten to this DFB Pokal final match against Werder Bremen.

Since the 3-0 win over Olympique Lyon to seal our place in the Champions League final in Madrid, and the 3-1 over Bochum last Saturday to essentially give us the Bundesliga title, I have pondered what to write. And thought. And agonized. And paced.

I’ve got nothing. I’m speechless.

After stringing together such an impressive run of matches, I figured FCB was going to be unstoppable against Fiorentina and Nuernberg. Apparently, I was wrong. And, boy, did some Italian fans let me know it! Whatever. As much as I’d like to think I’m always right (My ex used to say to me, “Susie? How does it feel to be right all the time?”, to which I’d reply, “Actually, it feels pretty damn good.”), I know it’s not really so.

The short version of this blog would be:

First half: Yay! And then 40 minutes of #%^$$&#!!#$#$!@@#$#$$!!!!

Second half: Ah, that’s much better…

When I last wrote, I was concerned about not being able to watch the Bayern - Bremen match because I was going to be in mid-flight. Luckily, Virgin America allows internet access. However, I still needed a nap, for I had to hit the ground running when I arrived in Los Angeles. My plan was to sleep during the first half, wake up at the break, and tune in for the second. As plans usually do, mine went awry. I didn’t wake up until the 65th minute, which meant I had to scramble to sign up for internet access, find the match on one of my favorite, ahem, “legal” websites and wait for the stream.

Friday found us back on top of the Bundesliga table, after a convincing 2-0 win over TSG 1899 Hoffenheim. Yeah, I know, it was only for a day… but, still… It’s been coming on two years since we’ve occupied the 1. Platz for any length of time. (We spent one day on top of the table last season as well.)

And just when it was all getting so, so good--- we’re about to break for Christmas. Figures. I’ll have to settle for visions of Schweini dancing in my head! But first, we’ve got one more thing to take care of--- Hertha Berlin.

Things are looking up in the land of Die Roten. I’d like to qualify that statement by tagging on a “for now” to the end of the previous sentence, but I’m happy to not beat up on my beloved club for, at least, a little while.

Although a 1 - 1 draw with Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday wasn’t the best result, at least we were saved the ignominy of Leverkusen going 9 points clear.

The problems we’ve had all season continue to haunt us. Namely, we can’t seem to get it together on set pieces, and our crosses in to the box have much to be desired. At this point, we’re not really crossing in to the box, as we’re more likely to cross over or to cross just short of. Ugh.

Gentle reader, you must pardon me, since I just got back from a week of Oktoberfest. Yes, in Munich. And I would’ve blogged from there, but my ethernet didn’t work in the hotel--- and then I lost my Blackberry as in what I could only describe as a “The Hangover”-type incident. No, Mike Tyson and a baby weren’t involved--- but a tiger may have been (wink wink nudge nudge).

I was / am / have been very lucky to have friends with, arguably, the best seats on the pitch at the Allianz Arena. (Thanks, boys!) I was pleasantly invited to watch the Bundesliga Bavarian derby of Bayern vs. newly-promoted Nuernberg, and the DFB Pokal match vs. Rot Weiss Oberhausen.

Normally this time of year is a celebration in Munich. The Oktoberfest is about to get started, and FC Bayern’s sitting pretty in the top quadrant of the Bundesliga.

Errrrr….

Paulaner’s giving away beer at the Allianz Arena, Bayern’s in 14th place; only having wrestled 2 points in 3 matches., and we’re playing Wolfsburg? Sounds like a recipe for disastrous fun to me…

Looking at Mainz tomorrow, here we sit in 11th place, taking two points out of a possible six. Should we be concerned? I don’t think so… yet.