I'm a snob

I went to my choral concert Friday night, five local church choirs and audience participation! That would have been way cooler if I would have gotten there early enough to get a program... or a seat, for that matter. I wolfed dinner, ran through the woods, and got in the door about two minutes before everything started. The turnout was really impressive! Chamber Singers should totally tour Europe. We'd always have a full house!

Unfortunately, that's not to say that the music was particularly impressive... That's where the title of this post comes in. I'm a spoiled brat when it comes to choral performances. How is it possible for an adult choir to have a less mature sound than a college group? When the performers looked like they were having a good time, I felt a little better. But that was pretty rare. The liturgical pieces went well. When they tried to spice things up and get toes tapping, however, it just kind of fell flat. And then there was the attempted spiritual. *shudder*

See? I'm a total snob.

One really noteworthy, if unfortunate, social observation... I witnessed an interesting display of German masculinity: sometime in the fourth set, a man in the audience started to get rowdy. He was apparently drunk, and at one point he actually walked up to the conductor mid-song and started talking to her, loudly. The choir kept going as if nothing was happening, which was pretty darn impressive. A man from the back of the room (I later found out he had organized the event) went up and got the guy back in his seat, but it only lasted a few minutes. When he started making noise again, about ten men from all around the hall got up and formed a group to escort him out of the building. Standing in the back I had a great view of the whole thing, and one of the professors from the Lektorat (who also happened to be there a little late) accompanied the lot of them outside. It all happened really fast, but I was amazed at how organized it seemed at the time. I've never seen anything like this happen in the US.

I can't even imagine a drunk guy heckling Doc Locke mid-performance. Do choral directors have an onstage emergency contingency plan?

*****

Saturday was the group trip to Flensburg, the castle Glücksburg, and Tønder, Denmark. (Okay, enough linking for now, I promise!) The day started with a walking tour of Flensburg. The town has an interesting history. It spent a few centuries under the Danish crown and flourished as a trade center until the 30 Years War. The city was rebuilt largely on the value of the rum trade in the late 1700s, and by the time it fell under German rule in 1867 it was again a popular commercial city, becoming part of the Hansa confederation. The town escaped bombing during the second world war, and after Hitler's suicide the majority of the remaining Nazi governmental officials holed up there for two or three weeks until the Allies came through and made the surrender official.

A view of Flensburg and its fjord from the site of the old castle.

Why is it that on these city tours we always have to see the red light district? Looks normal enough... The tour guide made the point of telling us that the street is zoned for "mixed usage," which he seemed to find amusing.

(Kiel's is bigger.)

Meghan and Abi listen interestedly while the function of the bolt between them is explained. If you got in trouble with the church, they'd chain you up and passers-by could spit on you or otherwise make your life miserable. The eye of the bolt is worn almost completely through.

Meghan with mushrooms in front of the lunch restaurant. Some explanation: (1) Fungus biologists are crazy, (2) Meghan is a fungus biologist, thus (3) mushrooms are obviously awesome.

"Glücksburg" literally translates to "the castle of happiness." The tour here was completely amazing, but unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside, so all I have is this wonderfully backlit exterior shot.

The tour... how to describe it? Our guide reminded me so much of Ms. Mason, my high school world history/western civ teacher. Same dry, cynical sense of humor, and a seemingly endless store of wry anecdotes about the lives of historical figures. I'm no history buff, but storytellers like that always hold me completely captivated.

Highlights included the torture room in the basement, the "concubine's door" leading from the duke's room to the servant's stairwell, the supposedly haunted tower where a pregnant princess hung herself, the door to the other tower in which another supposedly "possessed" princess was locked and left to starve (must've been hard to be a princess back then!) and of course, the plumbing. Or lack thereof... in its earliest form, each tower had a "plumpsklo." (Klo, from Kloset, a cognate to the British "WC.") In this case, there was an actual closet in the room that contained a fancy (velvet-padded!) board with a hole in it, which led down to the artificial lake (*descending whistle... plump*) surrounding the castle. Full of very large carp. Which were often part of a royal banquet. An actual quote from the tour: "This was the earliest form of recycling."

Yup, totally channeling Mary Jo Mason on that one.

Our hour in Denmark was a little dissapointing. It reminded me of a trip I once took to Canada for 45 minutes. Nobody was really around, barely anything was open, and we had the wrong kind of money anyway. If F-bright can no longer afford a Copenhagen weekend, it might be better just to give this one up.

We did see this guy, though:

Cap'n Hook? No, we checked, behind his back is another regular hand. The plaque was in Danish, which is crazy. Our guide only knew a bit of the language, but he had enough to tell us that the scurvy scallawag here is a replica of a statue that used to stand on the wall to the city, "to scare away thieves and whores." I wonder if it worked?

*****

Friday night didn't go too late, although the group did stop by the 100th anniversary of the Forstbaumschule, a beergarden/brewery in Kiel. I had a great dream that night, though. I was in one of the tower rooms at the castle, looking out into the green algae-filled water of the lake. A giant fish (like, think a smallish airplane) slowly drifted out of the murkiness towards the surface, and disappeared back into the opaque water. A few more slightly smaller fish appeared and disappeared as I watched, and then the big one came back. I leaned out of the window to get a better view... and then I was falling. I must've been almost conscious at this point, because I realized as I hit the water that I was still bundled up in my blanket. Hmm... fish can't eat me if I'm wrapped in a blanket, right? (I love dream logic.) So I swam to shore from within my blanket-bubble. Then I was in some kind of ceremony celebrating my miraculous rescue... of myself... and all sorts of administrators and professors from Kenyon were there, and Magda, my writing teacher from the Lektorat. Tacci from the SAC gave a speech, and then started to translate it into German. Inner monologue at that point: "Huh, I didn't think Tacci knew German. Wait a minute... "gucken" durch das Fenster is definitely northern dialect, and I really doubt that she... Oh wait, I'm dreaming! In German! I'm dreaming in German!" And I woke up smiling.

It's one thing to dream that you are talking or hearing a different language. I'm perfectly capable of dreaming that I know Swahili and carrying on a conversation with native speakers, with my brain secretly playing babel fish. I know for a fact that I've had dreams like that... but it's quite another thing to dream the specific words, to think about the language itself. Definitely a landmark!

*****

Another landmark, and I promise I'm almost done with this giant post... I made dinner tonight! Spaghetti and tomato sauce with bits of chicken. Okay, I made the entree. With lots of input. But still, it was my dinner night and we didn't end up eating carpet or sawdust. I'm giving myself mad props for that. Next time, I'm going to have beverages... and side dishes... maybe even dessert! Oh, the possibilities!