Apologies for recent lack of communication.  Things have pretty much wound down for the summer on the opera scene here in Europe, but I was busy using the last weeks to keep the momentum going.  Well, that and (certainly in the past week) visiting other countries, figuratively or literally!

The figurative comes from celebrating Independence Day on the U.S. Army Base at Wiesbaden.  It's just up the road from me and I'd never visited before... but goodness, it really is America in miniature.  Bowling alley, hotdogs, ribs... but most of all, Americans in all directions, and all celebrating 4th July with gusto.  And with such *pride* in being American, not to mention good humour (I apologised for being British a few times and always raised a laugh).  The fireworks were splendid, too (even though an officious soldier kept on moving us back and back until we ended up sitting rather inelegantly on the tarmac road.  Whatever.) - the photo is of a firework on slightly longer exposure, which I posted as part of an album on Facebook, and a friend commented astutely that it looked like music.  I have been contemplating it ever since and trying to hear that particular symphony (Scriabin and his synaesthesia come to mind...).

The literal was hopping over to France for a camping trip with friends this last weekend.  Now camping is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when most people meet me, and certainly my friends were a little amused when I set to erecting the tent with gusto, dressed as always in lace, embroidery and sparkly stuff.  As I explained, my father would never have forgiven me for not knowing one end of a mallet from the other.  I ended up with sore hands (pride meaning that as long as someone else was toiling to hammer in tent pegs through what felt like solid rock, I was not going to give up.  (At one point, a group of Dutch blokes walked past as I whacked a particularly recalcitrant peg and the rubber mallet head flew off.  They were highly amused and let out a stream of ribald comments.  Minutes later, I asked my friend what I should do next.  "Oh, you could do the guys on the other side of the tent please," was his answer.  "Not really my type, but they certainly seemed keen," was mine...) (guys = guy ropes, hammered into the ground with previously-mentioned tent pegs in order to prevent the tent sailing off into the night when the inevitable gale arises, for those who don't get the joke...).

It was such a pleasure to speak French for a weekend, even if I was three times mistaken for Belgian.  I suspect that being taken for German last time made me think about my consonant sounds, particularly the "r", and modify them... but not quite enough.  I am certain, though, that *should* some work in France come off, my French would make a dramatic reappearance.  Fingers crossed.  And should some work in Germany come off, well I'd be pleased too; and of course I continue to try and improve my German.  In both cases, rain, or rather summer (indistinguishable at this point; rather like the English weather has followed me, damn it) has suspended play and I shall have to wait until the start of next season to hear anything concrete.

So... a few weeks of being unable to really chase anyone up career-wise.  Pleasepleaseplease let there be sun!!  When it shines here, it is absolutely perfect, and there's the most wonderful open-air swimming pool just down the road.  Meanwhile, of course, there is practice to be done most days.  Just because there are no auditions planned for the next few weeks doesn't mean that I can let the standards drop.  My job at the moment is to keep my audition repertoire fresh, learn thew new stuff thoroughly, and not get downhearted because there isn't as much work around as I would wish.  And the occasional trip to a foreign country, whether real or imagined, certainly helps in that respect.

CHRISTMAS!!

And there is even the possibility of a couple of days with my family (subject to the vagaries of the weather, which has been pretty appalling in the last week or so, necessitating urgent finger-crossing and underlying panic; and thanks solely to a wonderful director being human enough to recognise the need to get out of the rehearsal room and into the company of those we love at this time of year).  I am packed (finally.  Yes, I know I probably should have started BEFORE a long performance - somehow, the time between reaching home post-theatre and heaving myself up in order to reach the airport with three hours to spare, as per Lufthansa emergency guidelines, seems to have shrunk to a baggy-eyed and negligible amount) and heading off now, and very much looking forward to a couple of days' breathing space after the unutterable chaos of the last couple of weeks.  I am of course grateful to have had so many auditions, in various countries and cities (mostly at the moment for agents; I am hoping the theatre auditions will follow in the not-too-distant future!), but between those, rehearsals and performances, have been rather vague as to where I was at any given time, and in which direction I was headed.  I need a little non-singer family common sense!

Just before I go, though, I would like to wish anyone reading this the VERY best of the season.  Thank you so much for persevering - it makes such a difference to know that my words are not just vanity publishing in the 21st century.  To amuse even one person on a bad day; to revive the hope in a wilting singer's breast; to reassure a nervous expat that the bloody language WILL eventually give in if you hack at it with enough grit: reason enough to keep on scribbling - and thank you for all and any feedback and comments.  Merry Christmas!!!

Ahh, Italy, Italy.

I had a wonderful time.  How could one not?  (Thank you for all the good wishes!!)

I was lucky enough to have a base outside the normal run of hotels etc - my auntie was as it happens cat-sitting in Rome for a few months and the cat generously allowed me to stay (in return for plenty of worship, holding his plate up for him to eat and brushing him the wrong way up). TOTAL La dolce vita vibe - neighbours' washing hanging over the back yard, local market with everything fresh and home-made, other neighbours having near-fatal screaming match in the early evening, scooters, amusing and sophisticated octogenarian company... (oops, not my auntie I'm referring to there, but new acquaintances!).  Despite plenty of Cultural Stuff (including a visit to the Galleria della Villa Borghese - my goodness the Bernini sculptures are beautiful!), I think my favourite day consisted of a trip to the market in the early morning, short social visit, train ride to the seaside (costs one Euro each way from central Rome - bargain! - however had been given three-day travel pass so all was included), sunbathing and swimming in the sea, a long walk in the pineta (pine forest, a little inland in this case, smelling delicious and utterly peaceful), another swim and drying off, then back to the flat and cooking amazingly eccentric pasta, bought at the market and apparently unique to the maker, for dinner, washed down with robust Italian plonk.

Of course all my previously pretty fluent Italian has been utterly snarled up by the process of learning German.  I confidently assured my auntie (when she was laughing her head off at my Italian) that it was simply a stage, and that when the German was solidly fixed in, the Italian would return.  I can but hope.  And have to admit that the confusion was at times rather embarrassing.  On the first morning, I enquired of the waiter whether the cornuti were included in the bill I was paying.  As soon as it was out of my mouth, I stumbled over myself to say that I really didn't mean cuckolds (coming to a language via opera means you have some damned weird vocabulary), but rather cornetti - croissants.  And I scared the life out of a nice Thai lady who had given me a massage on the beach (what a luxury!).  She'd quoted five Euro.  Wonderful value for money - I was marvellously relaxed at the end.  So much so, that I slipped back into German when paying, offering her a 20-Euro note and saying distractedly, So - sechs?  (Now you see, in Germany this would be perfectly normal: five Euro asked, you want to give a tip, you say, OK, six (Euro) then?... unfortunately given language misunderstandings on both sides, her eyes widened, she virtually threw my change at me, and belted off down the beach before I even realised what I'd said...

Stalked up and down the Via del Corso for a while searching for the Ricordi shop (music).  Eventually found it lurking inconspicuously behind a van and went in hoping that they'd have a copy of the vocal score of Respighi's Il tramonto.  First of all, I've been told by a few people that this is a work that would suit my voice; but more importantly, seeing Rome, I automatically think of his Pines of Rome - so, when actually IN Rome, under said pines, I thought of him often, and wanted the music as a souvenir.  Surely, learning a piece of music thoroughly, whether as a performer or an engaged listener, is of more worth than the most expensive tangible souvenir?  (Mind you, that said, I did rather fall in love with a set of underplates decorated with cabbages etc which I saw in a shop off the Via Veneto and which made me smile.  Turns out, damn it, that they were Limoges.  One of these days... But I did have an amusing conversation with the shop owner.)  (Oh yes, and I did find the sheet music in the end!).

(And I really should at some point hand over the story my college singing teacher passed on, about the concentration camp survivor and the Verdi Requiem.  Too serious for now, though.)

Coming back, I was routed via Paris, weighted down with half the contents of the morning market (and that's AFTER handing over a load of spoils to the Sainted Aunt - one stall owner kept stuffing tomatoes into my paper bag long after he'd weighed it, for example.  No way to run a business, I told him - except, of course, it IS - and it works, and it's a sight more civilised than most of the alternatives.

Italia mia amore x

One of the most energising things about being an expat (although I do realise, obviously, that this view may well change over the years) is that friends and family who visit are naturally in holiday mood. So, whatever the weather, you really have to make the most of things (I don't know about you, but I would find it extremely hard to admit that I'd ended up in the lowest trough of the universe with nowhere else to go but cabbage fields or whatever...).

This was brought home to me by my auntie's visit last week. The weather for May was, to put it mildly, absolutely appalling. The sort of weather where, left to your own devices, you head back to bed and hide under the duvet until things sort themselves out a bit better. HORRIBLE!

However, café life, as usually lived in this city, was definitely not a goer unless you really fancied being laid low by pneumonia. We'd visited quite a few museums, but the one that interested us most was closed for restoration. We therefore decided to visit the spa in Wiesbaden.

Well, OK, I decided. Hadn't been there before, and it looked fabulous. Beautifully restored, originally Roman (Irish-Roman, said the translated leaflet; Celtic, perhaps, thought I, but for once decided not to quibble). I'd fancied visiting for a while, but not on my own.

It was indeed wonderful. Full points to my auntie for blenching only slightly when informed of the compulsory public nudity (on health grounds). And I thank her from the bottom of my heart for the glorious sight of her face when dared to lower herself into the freezing plunge pool... Given a little warning, I managed to compose my features into something approaching pleasure when doing the same, which was probably not fair, but rather amused me...

There are good grounds for trying to do this whether you're an expat or not (for those interested in the philosophical underpinning, Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel is a great read), but I think it's easier to do if you're on strange ground to begin with. I am very grateful for this opportunity!

The Day the Germans Changed...

I'm writing this with a large blue "VIP" ink-stamp on my left wrist which I was unable to wholly scrub off in the bath, the remains of a large pot of very strong black coffee by my side, and a huge grin on my face. I'm so glad I came back from Berlin to experience carnival (Fassenacht) here - I was having such a good time that I was sorely tempted to prolong my visit, but had I not seen yesterday's shenanigans with my own eyes, I don't think I would have believed in them!

Even before I left for my trip to the capital, things had been building up for a while. Oddly-dressed characters wandered chanting through wine bars, drumming was heard at odd times, balloons and banners started to appear on random balconies, and the department stores opened special areas full of fancy-dress costumes, wildly-coloured wigs and sparkly false eyelashes. The culmination of the carnival here, though, was yesterday, on Rosenmontag or Rose Monday, and I was determined not to miss it.

From first thing in the morning, wild syncopations of percussion filled the air, interspersed with increasingly alcohol-fuelled shrieks of the traditional greeting "Helau!" The good people of this city, who had always appeared to me to be solid, respectable and law-abiding citizens (although I was rather unreliably informed at one point in the afternoon that I had been associating with all the wrong people!), came out in their thousands, resplendent in their costumes (anything from Prussian soldiers, in reference to the city's history, through polar bears to scantily-clad and sequinned showgirls, although how the latter managed at first, considering the snowflakes gently falling from the sky, I have no idea) and with previously unimaginable wild glints in every eye. I was kissed by two complete strangers just walking down my street into the centre of town, and things just got wilder after that! I was glad I'd brought my hot pink flamenco ensemble with me to Germany (it hadn't had an outing since I got here); I'd added a red underskirt and cardigan, a red rose in my hair, and bright red eyeshadow, which appears to have got rather lost in the picture above; I was glad I'd made a bit of an effort, as the whole place, once I got to town and caught up with the huge parade of funny, satirical or just plain weird floats, simply exploded into colour and noise: balloons, flowers, beer bottles, chanting men, flashing lights, singing, sweets and streamers hurtling through the air from the floats, horns, dancing, laughter... and once the parade had passed through, the party continued in full flow well into the early hours.

I had initially arranged to meet up with a friend, and more and more people turned up as time whizzed merrily past. Conversations whipped in and out of German, English and French, although I do remember being taught a naughty phrase in Hungarian at one point, and I forgot the names of more people than I'd previously met all year. Sustenance, mainly in the form of garlic with added seafood, mayonnaise or meat, was partaken of at a Portuguese restaurant (this did not however deter the random kissers!), and beer flowed generously enough for me to finally give in to the entreaties of the party and launch into one of Carmen's arias. This established me as our group's secret weapon for getting into a heaving nightclub (which I'd previously visited in its daylight incarnation as a rather nice café); thus the ink-stamped wrist, and a surreal moment of climbing in through the kitchen window, helped up by the beautiful red-satin-clad proprietress - I'd agreed to sing Happy Birthday to someone special to her, as our guarantee of entry. All very, very enjoyable, and a million miles from my normal experience of this city. (Not to mention, proof that all those years of horrifically-expensive voice training have not gone to waste...)

As I eventually made my way home, in something probably slightly less than a straight line, I was serenaded by three separate groups of young men, the last of which all fell on their knees around me, it occurred to me what had actually happened: the Germans, just for one crazy night, had, despite the laws of language and probability, transmuted into Italians!!

A trip across the border

I have just returned from visiting dear friends in Alsace, whom I'd been threatening to drop in on since I moved here. It's only a matter of about two and a half hours by car, so I thought it would be reasonably simple to figure out some affordable way of tootling down and bothering them.

It's not quite as simple as that! For a start, I had to ask the man in charge of organising all the music rehearsals if it would be OK to disappear for a few days (as we only know the schedule for any given day at half past one the previous day, this can't be taken for granted). Permission gracefully granted, I had to fill in an absence slip, because I was going further than 50 kilometres from the theatre; this to be signed and double-countersigned...

Relieved I'd got the bureacratic bit over with, I settled down to browse the internet for cunning ways to get from A to B for as little money as possible. I pride myself on being a bit of an internet devil, and certainly, travelling within England and flying from England to various destinations, I've always been able to sniff out the best prices. I wasn't particularly in a hurry this time, and was indifferent to the means of transport.

It totally foxed me! Going by train was pretty blasted expensive, and the Deutsche Bahn (German railway) site had kittens every time I shyly suggested I might want to cross over into France - wouldn't give me timetables, refused to give ticket costs, etc etc. Sure, I could get to Strasbourg, for a hefty fee, but I didn't want to go quite as far as that, and Deutsche Bahn did not wish to help me get anywhere else. Fine, thought I, I'll see about coaches. Nope. Now it's quite possible I'm simply unable to navigate these sites properly as yet, but it would appear that the national coach network is (a) not set up to go the way I really wanted to, and (b) nearly as expensive as the train. They don't appear to have a cheap alternative, as we do in Britain. The expat forums suggest that the only way to travel without shelling out too much is to carshare, and I couldn't find a female driver going anywhere near on the dates I wanted to travel. Much frustration ensued! Eventually I chose the least-worst option and started to book a return to Saarbrücken, being the nearest border town to my friends, they having kindly offered to pick me up.

Well, firstly, the cheaper options available turned out not to be quite as available as I thought, not being available to print out online - they had to be posted and required quite a few days' notice. Hmm. Never mind. I chose the bog-standard return fare and pressed "pay now". It then wanted me to sign up; well, fine, I thought, I'll be making more trips throughout the year - no harm in storing my details. So I did. These included the number of my bank card and my German address, and I tried to proceed to payment. It wasn't playing ball. Despite having taken my debit card details, it also required a credit card for payment. (What?? Why?)

Of course I don't have a credit card in Germany, and if I had put in the details of one of my English ones, gathering dust at the bottom of my handbag and only used for emergencies, the computer would doubtless have jibbed at the mismatching addresses and probably arrested me on the spot. I banged my head hard on the desk and took myself off to the station. The ticket machine there eventually dispensed what I needed, but I resented having to make the unnecessary trip. I did ask one of the helpful ladies at the travel centre why, if the machines at the station would take my money happily from my debit card, the online site would not. If there was a coherent explanation, however, I'm afraid I didn't understand it!!

After all that, of course, I had a lovely time at my friends' place, throwing myself into family life and bottles of light, fresh Gewürtztraminer with a vengeance. I cleaned out rabbit hutches, helped with French homework, was fed royally, reciprocated with a rabbit dish with spätzle (egg noodles) with a tomato sauce thickened with dark chocolate (not the same rabbit, I hasten to add, and I had some nifty lying to do to the younger girls at the last minute...), and generally had a ball. We even managed to fit in a supermarket trip, where I stocked up rather desperately on everything I find lacking in German shops. I returned bent almost double under the weight of my purchases, but it was worth it!

An interesting occurrence in the supermarket - evidently the German is worming its way into my consciousness, but it was jolly embarrassing! We'd bumped into an extremely voluble French friend and her daughter, and had joined them for coffee in the supermarket coffee shop (I was impressed to note the variety of alcohol on offer!). I was happily nattering away in French, and at some point the conversation moved to cross-border travel. I was explaining the above complications, but as soon as I hit the word "Saarbrücken", my tongue flipped immediately into German. I started to apologise - aargh, it was still in German!! I took a deep breath, started again in French - and the same thing happened - TWICE!- when I hit the German place name. I was mortified; the others, naturally, were in stitches...

A last, slightly surreal note. Returning, I realised I could get a train from their village to Saarbrücken (this had not been at all obvious from my internet searches, due to the dratted border being in between). This was an unmanned station, so I went to the ticket machine to buy my ticket. It wouldn't let me buy a ticket to my destination!! I wondered about getting on anyway and buying a ticket from the inspector, but thought it prudent to at least get a ticket for the last station on the French side. French ticket inspectors are notoriously strict about such matters; you have to definitely get their attention before they try to get yours, otherwise you're fined within an inch of your life for trying to travel ticketless.

Not the ones I met!! The first one strolled along, grinned, and said he hoped I didn't have any ticket problems as his mate with the machine thought I was too good-looking to talk to and had skedaddled to the other half of the train. I started to say I hadn't a ticket to my actual destination; he laughed and whistled for the other guard, and I had to explain about the errant ticket machine to a background of toothless flirting on the one side and crimson-faced and silent embarrassment on the other. They had a look at my ticket, then explained that, as they were employed by the Alsace railways, they couldn't issue a ticket for the German bit either. Perplexed, I asked what I needed to do. Oh, said the voluble one, and winked, don't worry love, you're fine. Which I was, thankfully, saving eight euros; but I have to say, I reckon that's a slightly atypical brush with French bureaucracy!!

A week in Tuscany - a week out of time to enjoy the glorious Italian food and wine, and to be with family, and to celebrate my mother's 70th birthday in a lovely Tuscan villa. Highlights included a fabulous party with Cinta Sinese (a roast-pork speciality of the Sienese hills where we were staying); the rather surprising frescoes in the Collegiata in San Gimignano (I don't think I've ever seen breastfeeding portrayed in religious frescoes before, or such, er, blatant male nudity... my particular favourite was a dragon who was evidently having to apologise for a bit of mischief); the Etruscan museum in Volterra, where the most famous statue, an elegantly elongated bronze nude called by D'Annunzio l'ombra della sera or evening shadow, had served usefully as a fire poker for ages after being dug up before being identified as an Etruscan masterpiece (why that amuses me so much I can't tell); a bottle of lightly pétillant Vernacchia, the fresh white wine local to San Gimignano; and taking all the younger members of the family horde to explore an Etruscan tumulus at dusk, with candles...

I'm now lightly toasted and relaxed, and ready to start work!