Hmm, a month later...

Well. I took quite a break from writing, now didn't I? Sorry about that, things got busy with the start of the semester and the old 'puter is getting slow... for a bit I thought it was my internet connection here, but now I'm pretty sure that dear Janet is trying to tell me something. She had her first "blue screen of death" and unexpected restart recently, which is never a good sign. I'm depending on her to last through the end of the year here, but my plan to hold off on a new laptop until I pick a thesis lab is going to have to be pushed up a bit... don't tell her I said that, though!

Anyway, I want to get a rundown of what I've been up to jotted down before I take off on yet another massive adventure. My family arrives Tuesday morning bright and early in Frankfurt, and we have a whirlwind tour of Germany planned over the course of two and a half weeks, followed by a few days in Austria with Mike and his relatives... and I'll be staying there with his family until June 11, which brings me to almost three weeks of vacation. Mike will come back to Göttingen with me for a couple of weeks, and we're also planning a long weekend in Florence, Italy during his visit... which means missing even more class, but I'm humongously excited about the opportunity!

I'm not taking the time to add pictures at the moment since it's already late and if I crash Janet this will never get written, but there are lots of new photos on the Shutterfly page, particularly the Göttingen album. Check it out if you like visual aids.

So, my last post brought things up to the weekend before my 23rd birthday. Whew. I forgot to plan anything until the afternoon before, at which point I started text messaging friends to see if anyone wanted to get together for a nice sushi dinner in town. Pat and Claire said they could come, and Claire invited Judy, an Australian friend from her German class, and her German boyfriend Ollie. We tried the other sushi place in town this time, which turned out to be a little bit classier but also harder on the wallet... after dinner Claire and I got ice cream and then went to Villa Cuba for Amaretto Sours, the first drink of a looooong night. Pat texted us from the Irish pub where he'd met up with some friends so we headed that way. Folks were already in fine form by the time we arrived, and several rounds were bought... then someone had the fabulous idea to tell the band that there was a birthday in the house. That was fine for me, since they had me send my friends up front to lead a sing-along and then gave me a free CD!

The drinks continued, including some strange shot with coffee beans floating in it and, particularly cruel, a round of Absinthe. Thankfully "real" (i.e. opiod-compound-containing) Absinthe is illegal in Germany, but this ersatz version was plenty disgusting. Rotten licorice flavored, super high proof alcohol... ugh.

I slept in Sunday morning, but felt surprisingly okay despite having probably quadrupled my previous highest single-night alcohol intake experience (which wasn't too high to begin with, but still...) I had no trace of a hangover, though. Then, at around 2 in the afternoon, I was invited on a mountain biking excursion with Martin. Despite the fact that I biked around town all year, I didn't know if I would be able to handle it, but I wanted to give it a try. I borrowed one of his bikes and we set off on our expedition up a fairly big local hill. It doesn't qualify as a mountain in my mind, but the lookout tower at the top should have had a humongous view had it not been fairly hazy that afternoon. At some point along the way I mentioned the previous night's festivities, and I think Martin was rather surprised that I was on my feet, let along mountain biking the next day!

On that Wednesday Claire and I started a new tradition after she told me that there is a mini-golf place in town and we found it and gave it a try. I did horribly, of course (55 on 18 holes) but we made plans to go back every week.

The following weekend (April 29th and 30th) I made a visit to Tübingen to hang out with Kola, which was wonderful! I arrived in time to go to Stuttgart for an opera on Friday night, so we saw Mozart's Le Nozza di Figaro. I had sung the Countess' role in a duet from this show (Sull' Aria) in a friend's senior recital last year, so of course it was cool to hear it performed by professionals. Like most theatrical performances here the set design was fairly modern as were some of the costumes, but there were also more "classical" elements, particularly the costuming of the Count and Countess. It fit well together, though, and the principal players were fantastic. Sung in Italian with German subtitles, yay!

Kola and I spent the rest of the weekend in Tübingen, wandering around a huge market and by the Neckar river on Saturday and visiting the Schloßmuseum on Sunday to see the HUGE collection of antiquities. Compared to the region around Göttingen, Tübingen is very hilly place, with large chunks of the city built on fairly steep slopes. I'm sure it's treacherous in winter, but I found it absolutely gorgeous. The river was particularly nice... you can rent paddleboats or gondola-type craft and go for a ride! Sadly we didn't have time to give it a try.

On the 3rd of May I bettered my mini-golf score by 4 whole points. Yay! The following weekend Elizabeth came to visit from Leipzig, ostensibly to visit the Bach Institute at the Uni and do some work, though it turned out to be closed so we were forced to simply hang out and have fun instead. Schade! I showed her the mini-golf course and we played a round... 46, even better! On Friday night we saw a play by Brecht in the Deutsches Theater, "Der Aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui." Like the last piece I had seen at the DT, there were plenty of wierd modern elements. I wasn't really familiar with the show at all, though I knew it was supposed to be a mockery of Hitler's rise to power. The actors were very good, but we left the show a little confused and it took some time to figure out what had actually taken place, and connect the dots to historical events.

I spent most of Saturday afternoon in rehearsal for Sunday's Bach Kantate with the Uni-Chor, which was BWV 102, "Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben." The opening choral section was very difficult, and thanks to the semester's schedule we had only two weeks in which to learn it! We ended up scheduling a couple of extra rehearsals to make it happen, and I think it went fairly well all things considered. Elizabeth is studying Bach in Leipzig and was familiar with the work, so I asked the director if she could join us for the final rehearsal and the performance, which he was fine with after I gave my word that she'd be able to learn it quickly enough... I only wish I had such reading skills!

I invited Min Jung, my friend from Chor and classes last semester, to mini-golf with Claire and I on the following Wednesday, the 10th. She doesn't speak very much english so I was a bit concerned that we would all be able to communicate, since Claire and I haven't really used german together, but it was great. I shot a 47, which was okay.

On the morning of Saturday the 13th I took off once again for Leipzig, in order to see a concert organized by several current Fulbrighters there (including Jen and Elizabeth) to showcase interplay.exchange, a German-American music initiative. Elizabeth's parents were visiting at the time as well, so I got to meet them and even kidnap them for museum exploration while she was in rehearsal for the concert! We ended up going to the regular Saturday Kantate at the Thomaskirche, and I had an absolutely unbelievable Kenyon moment... Elizabeth had told me that there was a Bach association conference going on in Leipzig that weekend (she was busy and sadly missed it) but I mentioned that we had a Bach scholar at Kenyon, and it turns out she had heard of Professor Sanders from Bach association publications. Anyway, I noticed a familiar profile about 8 rows in front of me during the Kantate, and whispered to Elizabeth that I thought I saw Reggie in the church. When the music was over I zipped through the crowd to say hello, since I knew him pretty well after eating together at German Table through most of my junior year. Sure enough, it was him, and he had even noticed me coming into the already-packed church before we found our seats. He was heading to Berlin the next day so we couldn't invite him to the concert, but randomly seeing a Kenyon person in Leipzig was amazing enough!

The concert, "spiel eins," was the following afternoon, and of course it was a world-class show. I expected as much after the performances at the Berlin conference a couple of months ago. I got to hear my Kiel friends Jen and Amanda again, and Elizabeth played piano and harpsichord. The first piece was J. S. Bach, Kantate Nr. 51, Jauchzet Gott in allen Länden, which particularly featured Jen and Amanda. Such Profis! Then we heard Partita for Wind Quartet by Irving Fine, a 20th century American composer. I had never heard of him before, but the piece was absolutely thrilling, with individual lines for the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and french horn running seemingly rampant most of the time and then suddenly interspersed with very tight moments when everyone came together.

The second half started off with Liebeslieder für Hohestimme, Op. 195 from Carl Reinecke. The three short songs were very sweet. Then came Luxury of Superstition, a composition from current Germany Fulbright grantee Paula Matthusen. There was plenty of interesting dissonance, and I thought it was cool that Jen's vocal part was integrated within the texture of the whole ensemble and sharing equal weight with the instrumentalists. The final piece was Wagner's Siegfried-Idyll, lush and opulent and utterly Romantic. I haven't heard a large amount of Wagner (though I have a passing familiarity with some of the better-known operatic themes thanks to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd) but I think I'll have to start seeking it out.

I had to hit the road pretty much immediately after the concert ended, unfortunately. It was lovely to see so many friends once again (Meghan and Andrew from the Kiel group were also in attendance) but I had to get back home in order to throw together a presentation on Germany's conservation movement for my Interkulturelle Landeskunde course, since I was supposed to meet with my teacher on Monday afternoon to go over my talk. Ugh, was that ever a headache! Granted, it was my own fault for going away for the weekend when I had work to do, but it didn't help that my computer problems picked up significantly every time I opened powerpoint to work on the presentation! I ended up having not much to show at the meeting, but I managed to throw things together at the last minute (as per usual) and aside from some technical difficulties which were actually NOT on my end it went pretty well. I've never had to give a talk in German that was longer than 10 minutes before, and this was easily 25 even without the fancy slides and photos, so I was glad to have survived and gotten it over with on Wednesday!

I started planning the Italy trip and talked to Mike on Thursday, which was our last "official" phone call night until I see him in Austria. I won't say that the time has always felt like it was flying by in the last 5 months, but it's amazing to think that I'm so close already. We've been arguing via email about a certain well-known topic for a bit now (ever since he sent me this, the weasel!) and it took quite a bit of energy... the back-and-forth of email rebuttals finally numbered 20 or so (and can provide the full transcripts to anyone with an interest, especially if you're on MY team...) but anyway, I think I finally got him on the ropes when last we spoke. I generally dislike conflict and could never seriously consider a legal career, but by golly am I stubborn when I know I'm right!

This weekend was the Chor Probewochenende, so I spent all day Saturday and the whole morning today (or I guess yesterday by now!) in rehearsal for our second Bach Kantate (BWV 45, "Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist") and our major concert work, Mendelssohn's Lobgesang. Once again I've self-selected into second soprano, and I'm still amazed that my voice survived the weekend... I still feel like our warm-up routine leaves something to be desired, and I have bad support habits (or rather, a lack of any support habits at all!) when reading new or only slightly familiar pieces, which was pretty much all weekend. I will be missing a few rehearsals thanks to my pending travels, so I don't know if I'll ever feel as comfortable with the music this semester. I'm sure it will be fine, but perfectionist tendancies die hard. On a more positive side, I ended up baking a couple of batches of brownies and a giant batch of snickerdoodles (from Elizabeth's recipe!) for the Probewochenende party, which were a huge hit. Even better was hearing all of the various attempts at pronouncing the word "snickerdoodle." From now on every time I miss an umlaut I'll just take a moment and remember... snickerdoods, snickeldoodle, snickedoo...

I spent this afternoon at the mini-golf place with Claire and Judy (whom I met at my birthday dinner) and shot 38, my best yet! The gentleman owner also asked me if I needed a blue or green scorecard... the blue ones cost 2 euro and are for adults, while the green are only 1 euro and for kids. Yet another person shocked to hear that I'm 23 already... Tonight was packing for the first leg of my trip and sorting stuff that can be sent home early with my folks, and tomorrow I'm meeting up with Claire and Laura for lunch. Claire will be out of town when I'm in Göttingen with my family, and then by the time I get back with Mike she'll already be back home in Dublin. I've also got to call a potential relative in Weimar to see if they have any family history information, and hopefully to organize a meeting when we get there. I've got class and Chor tomorrow night, and then Tuesday morning bright and early I head to Frankfurt to meet Mom, Dad, Kara, Steve and Grandpa Wuensch at the airport!

I suppose I should sleep, then... I don't know when I'll have time to write again, but I'm sure there will be plenty to say!