Friends and Family
#3 It's fun to live our little adventurous life, even if the whole thing starts off on the wrong foot. You have to do that with traveling abroad, and actually with every endeavor you undertake. I've always had what I considered to be a good philosophy about this kind of thing, but now that I've gone through it again as an adult, I feel like I've grown even more. We've been to three stops on our trip, having flown into Frankfurt (didn't stay--took off straight away!) on to Koblenz to visit my friends from conservatory.
Our friends Stelli and Jaco, and their colleague Michael, a British basso.
Noticed a few things in Germany that were really great. In many places in a downtown area, if there is a staircase, there is a section that is made for strollers. They really take care of mothers and women here--the other thing was that parking garages reserve spots near the entrance not only for parents with children, but also a section for women, so that they are less likely to be attacked, or at least be able to run outside. We need this kind of courtesy in the US.
Headed down to Bühl to visit my extended family, the descendants of my great, great, great grandfather's brother who stayed in Germany, rather than traveling to the United States in the late 1840's. Incredible how genetics work--the look of some of my relatives was uncannily similar to the US side, and could have fit in among my direct uncles, aunts, and cousins very easily.
The south of Germany is very laid back, maybe because of it being the beginning of their two-week holiday, but we think it's like the south of any country. Plus, Strasbourg, France is very close by, so my cousin's husband was cool as a cucumber and French-seeming. My cousin teaches kindergarten, and her husband has a good government job. But this was holiday time, and they were ready to relax. Going out to a café twice a day was not a big deal at all. Near Baden (just a few kilometers down the road) we visited Schloss Favorite, a summer residence of the local Grafine (little contessa).
Hardly Versailles, but the schloss had all the excesses of the very rich at the time. Mirrored rooms, Japanese rooms, and rooms themed on the signs of the zodiac--very cool. We followed the guided tour witha drive out to Baden-Baden, an upscale spa town further south. Gorgeous.
After a few days there, we drove up to Köln for two days of voice study, fresh food and Kölsch bier. We stayed with our wonderful voice teacher and his new wife, who was probably the most beautiful woman my wife and I had ever met--when I walked up after parking the car, my wife was actually petting her!
The couple brought us on a quite complete tour of the Altstadt, and took us to a standup dinner at Peters--many small glasses of fresh Kölsch-style beer and delicious pork medallions with steamed vegetables.
Flughafen Köln/Bonn. Off to provincial Salzburg, where I studied in 1994. We're here very early, and it is a complete breeze through security. Overstaffed, but not in the crummy American bumping into each other style. Here, we've got a trading-off system, where three security people are calmly herding you through, and helping you get your stuff into bins and onto the belt. We've got a few more people who seem to be in charge of keeping the others entertained, and one pretty security staffer reclining slightly on a high chair with her feet up on an unused belt. The whole scene could be from a film or sitcom about an airport security station. I should copyright that scenario, shouldn't I?
Waiting at the gate, the people seem a bit more affluent, and dressed up, ready to go on their holidays, perhaps. Seersucker suits, miniskirts on women of all ages.
Next: muddling through in Austria.
Our friends Stelli and Jaco, and their colleague Michael, a British basso.Noticed a few things in Germany that were really great. In many places in a downtown area, if there is a staircase, there is a section that is made for strollers. They really take care of mothers and women here--the other thing was that parking garages reserve spots near the entrance not only for parents with children, but also a section for women, so that they are less likely to be attacked, or at least be able to run outside. We need this kind of courtesy in the US.
Headed down to Bühl to visit my extended family, the descendants of my great, great, great grandfather's brother who stayed in Germany, rather than traveling to the United States in the late 1840's. Incredible how genetics work--the look of some of my relatives was uncannily similar to the US side, and could have fit in among my direct uncles, aunts, and cousins very easily.
The south of Germany is very laid back, maybe because of it being the beginning of their two-week holiday, but we think it's like the south of any country. Plus, Strasbourg, France is very close by, so my cousin's husband was cool as a cucumber and French-seeming. My cousin teaches kindergarten, and her husband has a good government job. But this was holiday time, and they were ready to relax. Going out to a café twice a day was not a big deal at all. Near Baden (just a few kilometers down the road) we visited Schloss Favorite, a summer residence of the local Grafine (little contessa).
Hardly Versailles, but the schloss had all the excesses of the very rich at the time. Mirrored rooms, Japanese rooms, and rooms themed on the signs of the zodiac--very cool. We followed the guided tour witha drive out to Baden-Baden, an upscale spa town further south. Gorgeous.
After a few days there, we drove up to Köln for two days of voice study, fresh food and Kölsch bier. We stayed with our wonderful voice teacher and his new wife, who was probably the most beautiful woman my wife and I had ever met--when I walked up after parking the car, my wife was actually petting her!
The couple brought us on a quite complete tour of the Altstadt, and took us to a standup dinner at Peters--many small glasses of fresh Kölsch-style beer and delicious pork medallions with steamed vegetables.
Flughafen Köln/Bonn. Off to provincial Salzburg, where I studied in 1994. We're here very early, and it is a complete breeze through security. Overstaffed, but not in the crummy American bumping into each other style. Here, we've got a trading-off system, where three security people are calmly herding you through, and helping you get your stuff into bins and onto the belt. We've got a few more people who seem to be in charge of keeping the others entertained, and one pretty security staffer reclining slightly on a high chair with her feet up on an unused belt. The whole scene could be from a film or sitcom about an airport security station. I should copyright that scenario, shouldn't I?
Waiting at the gate, the people seem a bit more affluent, and dressed up, ready to go on their holidays, perhaps. Seersucker suits, miniskirts on women of all ages.
Next: muddling through in Austria.
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