Hello From Germany!

I've been gone for five days, and finally today I found an internet connection that works! And by found, I mean my roommates and I bought a months worth of wifi from the hotel and we're splitting it. So finally I can tell my friends and fam what I've been up to since Saturday- I'm sure you're all dying to know! So far, I wrote down thoughts at the end of each day in a word document. I'm just going to go ahead and copy and paste that here. Enjoy!

Saturday, July 2: Flew to Chicago in the morning and then connected to Frankfurt for the rest of the day. Almost threw up on the airplane during some light turbulence, and had to mentally talk myself down from it. Flying with a cello in the seat next to you has its perks. Cellos don’t care if you drape all over them as you sleep mid-flight. Cellos don’t mind if your leave your blanked, pillow, book, headphones, shoes and snacks on the part of their seat that they aren’t using. Did you know that cellos have to be buckled in with a special seat belt extender? I didn’t. Also, cellos do not need a passport of their own for international travel- that should be obvious, right? Sometimes airport workers don’t know that. A grumpy man in the seat in front of my cello had a fit at me on our flight to Frankfurt, because my cello was preventing his seat from reclining all the way. I should have been grumpy at HIM for smashing my thousands of dollars instrument with his seat, right? Our plane to Frankfurt was a double-decker! I didn’t know those existed! But there was definitely a set of 16 stairs leading up to somewhere cool. I slept most of the time on both flights- without even needing sleep-inducing drugs! This day seems like it melted away in a cloud of uncomfortable sleep, tasty airplane food, confusion about connecting flight gates, chapters of “The Help” and late-night Glee reruns on the airplane TV.

Sunday, July 3: Got to Frankfurt early in the morning, and then connected to Hamburg. The flight was nice and short and I just slept some more. Then we got our luggage, and took a charter bus to our little city, Eutin. THIS PLACE IS GORGEOUS! So many trees and charming houses, and a town market square with shops and a fountain- exactly what you would imagine a little German city would look like. When we turned into the lane that leads to our hotel, everyone on the bus did a collective gasp, because the hotel is RIGHT on a magical looking lake, and the view is breathtaking. Our accommodations here are MUCH nicer than I was expecting. Back in Kansas, a few friends and I signed up for a 4 person room, which I thought would probably be like a dorm room at best, maybe with 2 bigger beds that we would have to share. But we are in basically an apartment on the top floor of a house that is behind the main hotel. We have two separate rooms, each with two twin beds, a desk, a armoire, and a sink. The walls are painted a cheerful shade of spring green. The view from our room is of a cute little courtyard with a rose garden and sculptures. So far, the weather has been kind of chilly and rainy and overcast. But it’s still beautiful. Especially in the morning, everything is misty and it looks like it’s straight from a fairytale. We also have a bathroom of our own, and a smaller “WC” down the hall. And we have a living room, which I don’t think anyone else has- with a sink and fridge and dishes and a couch and kitchen table and a TV! This place is very much not like a hostel- and I am very much happy with it. J That night, after a good long nap, our bus took us over to “the barn” which is actually a really nice building housed in a renovated barn, which is like the opera festival headquarters. We had an introduction meeting, which was all in German, so I’m not even quite sure what was said. And then we ate delicious dinner at the cute little café inside the barn. Then, even though it was still light outside, it was already 10:30 pm, so we went home, showered the two days of travel off ourselves, and went to bed. Jet lag is a strange feeling!

Monday, July 4: Happy Independence Day! My little jetlagged head popped off the pillow at 5:30 am, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I just laid there, with the sun already risen, in our cute room until the alarm went off at 7:15. German breakfast is delish! Soft rolls, scrambled eggs, slices of cheese, and peppermint tea. I had seconds. Then we had rehearsal for our opening concert. We rehearsed from 10-1 and then again from 4-7. I think all 4 of my daunting solos went ok- and my self esteem was boosted when people I don’t even know told me that it sounded good. Between rehearsals, we walked into town and found a market, because Brecklyn forgot her toothbrush. Life is tricky when you don’t understand anyone around you, or even what products say on them in the store. Ha, I didn’t foresee that. We also found the library. And a cool WWI monument. After rehearsals, we went back to the market square where the city hosted an independence day party for us. There were free bratwursts and beer- instead I had orange fanta and a baked potato. A nice man that understood English asked me if I wanted meat, and when I said I was a vegetarian, he ran to the market and bought me a salad. Who says Germans aren’t nice?? The city leader was saying stuff in German that I don’t understand, and then he had all the orchestra players for the festival come up and sign the city guest book. They gave us some very tasty chocolate covered marzipan gift boxes. It was kind of fun- I think the whole city might have been there. And the festival people had arranged Jazz music to be played- cause It’s so American. J After we were done eating, a lot of us non-drinking folk walked back to the hotel and skipped out of the rest of the party. But from people’s stories the next day, sounds like it got pretty wild. I appreciated the good sleep.

Tuesday, July 5: More rehearsals today, but this time for Don Giovanni. Our favorite German maestro that we met in Kansas conducted us today, and that made the day less long, and more fun. Between rehearsals, I went back to the hotel, and slept for a good 2 hours. I’m still not quite on a normal German sleeping schedule yet. Now it’s 10:30 pm and the sun is just barely setting. Weird, huh? Speaking of the sun, it came out for a little while today and warmed things up a bit. That’s probably about the most exciting thing that happened today. I really love walking to and from rehearsals. It’s about a 20 minute walk, but it’s partly through woods, and partly through a cute part of the city. In the woods, there is a pasture of sheep close by, and they “maaaa” at us everytime we talk by. Makes my day- these German- speaking sheep. Also, it seems like everyone here has a cute dog. And the dogs speak German too. I’m sure that if you told a German dog to “sit” he wouldn’t know at all what to do. But what ever the Germans say to them, the dogs here are so obedient.