Photo Tease

There are finally photos thanks to the lovely Miss L.

Check ‘em out at right.

Wheee!!!!!

Facebook Photos

My dear friend and partner in embarrassing-displays-of-exuberance-at-inopportune-moments, L, has put a bunch of photos from London and Muenchen up on Facebook. Check ‘em out, peeps!

Warning!!!! View at your own risk. We do titillating things to phone booths.

Do not judge. You would too.

Restlessness pinned down

Travelling is great, and my nature doesn’t let me stay still for too long. But I really value living somewhere for a while. Not a long while but with some impersonation of permanency. That entails working a job, building friendships, evoking a little bit of home in the spaces, contributing to community, creating under new influences, and learning to perceive and appreciate the tenants of a particular culture.

Perhaps I’m built to value remaining in one place for a while. Perhaps it’s where I’m at in life right now. Perhaps that’s the enigma of my internal clock. Perhaps that’s what I’ve been conditioned to value. Whatever the reason, I know that being itinerant for another six weeks will be a stretching experience.

Tour Groups

Tour groups are simultaneously miraculous and annoying inventions. No travel guides, no surprise expenses, no train to bus to bike to bus to plane itineraries, no missedconnections, no unstable connections. It’s one flat fee, one knowledgeable guide, and it’s all been done plenty of times before. Me likes. The people are generally nice too. I find it’s a great way to meet people in a non-creepy way, because let’s face it, meeting random people as short, friendly, single girl when you live/travel/work alone can be a questionable activity.

The problems that accompany tours may outweigh the benefits though. People, myself included, tend to get lazy on tours. If the tour company does all the work, why invest in the experience? Other problems may include self-important tour guides, slow walkers, tourist traps and a plethora of Americans. I want to meet people, but, girlfriend, I did not come all the way to Germany to work on my twang.

Travel Tip #4,937: If you do your homework on the destination, most tour guides can give you very specific times and locations to meet up with the group after uninteresting component x finishes. This, I tell you, is bliss. It cuts down on the bulk of travel planning (e.g. fares, reservations, timetables) and lets you really focus on the local area. And, if the ENTIRE tour promises to be tourist hell, then you can always find out the time of the return ticket you paid for and meet up with the group at the station for the return trip.

My trip to Dachau yesterday was with a tour group. Great decision. The tour guide was genuine, well-informed and interested in learning along with us. He also considered each person’s questions with an appropriate level of sophistication and sobriety that you don’t often find in tour guides. If he didn’t know the answer to a question, he deferred to one of the memorial’s staff members. Per usual, travelling went off without a hitch; the annoying people stuck together like glue; and the crowd was decently international. It made the whole experience very enjoyable, and I was able to experience the memorial free of banalities. Honestly, no one should have to think about bus schedules at Dachau.

Next up: Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, Bavarian Food Tour, Bike Tour to Starnbergersee, and a day trip to Nuremberg.

Photo Update

I have yet to post any photos from travels because I can’t find an economical shop that will take my photos off the photo card and put them on a CD. Also, phone cameras are the handiest invention.

So far I took about 225 photos in a week and a half. If this rate continues, by the end of the summer I should have around 1,000 photos. Ack!!!

In the meantime, I posted some photos of my (not so) little brother’s graduation from boot camp in Oklahoma and subsequent send-off to specialized training in the Carolinas. I’m so proud of him!!!! The family went out to visit him, and my bro, his fiancee, cutest lil’ dude ever Hunter, my Dad and my step-mom all make appearances. To access, click on the Flickr album link on the right hand sidebar.

Behold, people, the stock from whence I come.

Have I mentioned, I’m really proud of my brother??? ::beam::

June 20-25: So busy I didn’t have time to come up with a title

The trip to Salzburg, London and the two days in Muenchen since have been an unparalleled whirlwind of activity.

While in Salzburg I …

Walked through the Old City, shamelessly danced and sang at all the Sound of Music sites, visited Mozart’s birthplace and house, soaked up sun in the Maribell Gardens, marvelled at the Churches of St. Blasius, St. Sebastian, St. Erhard, the Schlosskapelle and St. Peter’s Abbey, climbed the heights of FestungHohensalzberg, bought postcards, ate lunch at Berchtesgaden, and walked around Koenigsee for pristine views of an Alpine lake.

While in London I visited,

Kew Gardens, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, the Globe Theater, the Tate Modern, Leicester Square, Big Ben & Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. Margaret’s Church, the Jubilee Gardens, the London Eye, Dali Universe, Charing Cross, the Victoria Embankment Gardens, Trafalgar Square, the London Stock Exchange, Regents Park, the Royal Academy of Music, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Barbican, London Bridge, Cleopatra’s Needle, and three traditional English pubs.

“Chamber Music Insurgents”

This is what happens when classical musicians act ‘hood…

So Percussion! So what?! Think they’re in touch with the street./On your minimalist tip we got that champion beat./ Iannis Xenakis. What? You think you bad playin’ hard shit/ with nested triplets and septuplets?

You down with MTT? Yeah you know me!/ S.F. Symphony, but that’s not all the he be./ American Marvericks , spinnin’ fab shit,/ like Milton Bizabbitt, but HGP’s so past it.

…

“Eighth Blackbird we can play your music backward/ Then chop it up and serve it to you 13 Ways!/ Y’all stuck on Kronos carbon copy new music cliches/ Straight pimpin’ Fred Rzewski for that Grammy mo-NAY.

There’s something hilarious about the misspelling of “mavericks” in the second stanza that makes me want to put sic after it.

In Gouda Waits My Guru

This just in… the voice teacher I wanted to study with in the Netherlands agreed to teach me this summer! Yahooooooooo!

Jetzt gehe ich nach Holland.

Details: Every two weeks I’ll take a ten hour overnight train ride to Holland, where I will spend two days in Gouda eating cheese and throwing red wax around like confetti. Oh to dream! Want to join me?

This teacher is intense, and I’m going to get some serious teaching. Here’s what I mean…

She doesn’t give one hour lessons. Instead, she spends a HALF DAY on one lesson, working technique, working repertoire, working Alexander Technique, and then working the voice some more. There are lots of breaks, but I gather that it’s all very body/singing oriented. Then, she wrote that she believes she can (Huzzah!) help me with my middle voice, as long as I don’t try to avoid it anymore.

First item on the agenda… Una Voce Poco Fa. Gulp. And then Oscar, Tytania and the Schumann set.

So. No making nice and no fear of the middle voice. 

I’m told Persephone hails from the Edith Bers and James McDonald school of singing.

You ask, what exactly do they teach?

Balls. To. The. Wall. Singing.  

I’m in for a trip.

On delays and the limitations of language

Just to clarify, I write little every day in order to capture what I experience, and sometimes I write twice or three times a day. It may take up to three or four days after writing till I post though, because I don’t have immediate access to the internet. I’m trying my hardest to get them up as soon as possible!

I also like to write a post, and then let it sink in for a few days to see if any forthcoming experiences temper what I wrote. In many cases they have, and I like seeing that change.

Finally, I haven’t been writing in German, because it’s exhausting to speak in German all day. When I write about this summer, I want my reactions to be as honest as possible, and I find that difficult to do when I’m struggling for words that don’t _exactly_ describe what I mean. Perhaps I’ll begin posting in German as the summer progresses, but for now, it’s English with Deutsche Woerter for some local flavah.

 

Muenchen riecht nach…

Muenchen smells like …

 

…beer, meat and bread. Punkt. Even bread can smell reminiscent of beer because of the yeast content.

 

Then there’s the smoking. Everyone smokes here. In the US we have vending machines for water, soda, candy, etc. Here, they sell cigarettes.

 

Outdoors, it smells of fresh air all the way from the airport to Marianplatz. You can smell the plants, the cool air from the mountains. The smell of sweet, ripe fruit permeates the areas around the vendors. The air is rife with pollen. I left the windows in my apartment open for four days now, and there’s very little dust to be seen. If I did that (and I do) in downtown Boston, all of the surfaces in my room will be covered with filmy, black dust within 48 hours. And that makes me start to wonder how Germany, Austria, and Switzerland all rank ahead of the USA for the lowest lung cancer mortality rates. Hmm.

 

Now I’m hungry…. the question is whether or not I want to chew my carbs.