timimoun part 1

We were in Timimoun for only 2 days, but so much happened i'll split this up into 3 posts.
Timimoun is a two hour drive from the airport in Adrar, not counting a stop at a solar farm that the Algerians wanted to show off to our ambassador.


Duly impressed, we caravan-ed on to our hotel.

My view

was this:

We haven't forgotten we have concerts to give. After dinner, we unpacked our things, changed strings on the cello, tuned, picked a piece to rehearse. ...... However, spontaneity is the word here. We got a call from the ambassador asking if we wanted to see the desert at sunset. Hm... What an opportunity. Crazy new plan, how about we go in our concert clothes and do a photoshoot. NOW? yes, NOW. Ok. let's go. So we did.

Klaus had to hook in all those tux buttons and everything, but he's a good sport.

Way in the back you can see our military escort standing watch over the crazy Austrians. 

Here it is! The desert at sunset! Breathtaking.

The ambassador standing next to her husband. And the consulate playing one of our violins.

During this wonderful experience, one of the military guys called a TV station, to film us. The guy who showed up to the filming got to see me and Barbara literally running and rolling down a sand dune, and asked to take his picture with us. I guess we made quite an impression.

A Tale of Two Airports, or, From Austria to Algeria

Now that I'm back from my crazy trip, let me tell you how we arrived! :)

We stayed up all night with some Schilcher champagne at Irmtraud's place, leaving with a van at 1am, arriving before the airline opened our check-in line. We waited. Klaus was exhausted and sick. Our singer, Birgitta, came later on her own. It felt so strange to be completely dependent. I had no ticket, no information. We had a group ticket, and all the details and assundries had been taken care of by Irmtraud and the Austrian embassy.

 L to R, me, Barbara, Belinda, Klaus, Irmtraud at the airport in Vienna.

A quick glimpse of the Mediterranean on our way to the hotel. This was all we saw of Algiers for now. We grabbed a quick dinner, but all I wanted was coffee, I was nearly falling over from lack of sleep.

We looked at the borrowed instruments. Poor quality student instruments falling apart at the seams with old disintegrating strings. We went to sleep around 5pm, and met again at 5am at the lobby. At the airport again, we met the Austrian consulate and his wife, and the Austrian ambassador and her husband, with whom we made the other passengers wait until we had boarded the bulky but fragile instruments, and then we were on our way to Arar - the first leg of our journey to Timimoun.

Adieu for now, Algiers.

We watched the desert appear, fascinated by the way signs of life came in tiny seemingly unconnected flashes.

We were met by a surprise reception for honored guests, in a part of the airport reserved for important visitors. The airport here is a bit more fancy than the Vienna one, or?

They served us special sweetened black tea with mint that is poured from a foot and half or so above the glassware, so that it froths and foams. 

I can honestly say it was the most beautiful airport I have ever seen.

Bill Bryson moves to America.

Bill Bryson moved to America 20 years ago, and wrote a column about living in America through foreigner eyes even if he's technically a US citizen, who lived here his entire childhood which was published as a book.

Helga loves books:

I met her at some concerts with Manfred, and she asked me to read some of Bill Bryson's stories at an event. She billed me as an American Musician, and we were overly enthusiastic about our topics and had to cut our thoughts short at the end of the evening. 

    

Here I am with her American Snacks (red white and blue popcorn) and  her poster board about Bill Bryson.
Long story short, Europe is just like America was 20 years ago, and they are converging, slowly but surely on all the commercialism Europe used to make fun of America for.

1one-by-2two

I recently spent an awful lot of time restarting an old project ....

Perspicuity and Perspicacity was a one-sentence blog, that Amanda and I did together. On good days, there are 2 sentences a day. We can both be a bit sporadic at times. I moved it over from livejournal one sentence at a time, and then I started writing there again myself. With a little bit of peer pressure, maybe Amanda will get the bug again.

here is the new link:
1one-by-2two.blogspot.com

My first Graz houseconcert.

Photo credit to the ever lovely new friend Nina.

It was a lovely day. the 17 of July. In Europe the dates are written "backwards"
We would write 07.17
They write 17.07

Europe also tends towards 24 hour time, similar to what we call military time. So 5:07 would be called 17:07.

We decided on the 17.07 at 17:07 for our little houseconcert get-together. My little party with a special thank you to our wonderful guests the Czerny's (in the photo above, Ingrid is contemplative, and Manfred is hidden by a music stand) who introduced me to the wonderful Mr. Stiegler. Together, he on fearless fiddle, me on viola, borrowing dear Cecilia's sweater, we played Mozart, Martinu annd Handel-Halvorsen, with a little extra Sibelius. Followed by plentiful wine and yummy snacks.

There were so many supportive and terrific friends there that I was a little bit overwhelmjoyed - that's a new word by the way, that will come in handy helping me describe many situations.

SPOILER ALERT:
It paved the way for my next wonderful endeavor, a reading of a Bill Bryson book about America. Which in turn paved the way for the shortest concert cycle (both Mozart duos, both Martinu duos, both Handel-Halvorsen duos) - Those two concerts will be in October, when we are back. Hooray!

housekeeping

it has come to my attention that blogger makes my pictures look very low resolution and bad within the context of my posts. very sad, and i don't know how to fix it. click on pictures to see them how i see them. :)

bach in the subway

a little bit late, but while i've been posting about birthdays, I forgot one: JS Bach's!

As a present, people all over the world play Bach's music in public spaces.

So i decided to play along, and go to the main transfer station in Graz, named Jakominiplatz and play.

Making a poster thing was important. I wanted people to know I wasn't playing for donations. I put way too much time into it. In the background, Felix is "taking a picture" of me taking a picture while Centa reads to him.

First I had to get a permit, which was easy enough after I found the building. 

Then to find a spot. Centa and Brian and Felix were very helpful picking the first spot:

directly next to a advertisement that says "Music tames the Beast"

Centa was prepared to spend all morning reading. Did I mention, it was COLD. 

'Twas the middle of March, after all.

Felix was most happy running around with music.

But we had to move often. Rules for how long you can play, and how far away a location is considered, and how far from doorways, etc. Everything is very exact.

Thanks to Brian I have photo and video evidence.

But this post is not complete without some crazy stories that come without pictures, crazier than the normal "thumbs up" and "what's a viola" and "cool"s and lots of coins left on my music stand under the sign that said "No Donations".

Three stood out.
The speed versions

*   One guy tried to give me a 20 euro note, holding it in my face, very physically trying to making me take it. I said no, and he walked away without listening to any music.

*   Two teenagers came up. One smoking and listening, one standing behind me and MIMING violin playing. For about 8 minutes.

*   One guy came to me and told me I had to let me try my violin.
"I used to play the violin, please, let me try, I would like to play your violin, it is so beautiful." After I said no, 3 different ways, and he begged again 3 different ways, I gave in. Centa is watching from the bench with very wide eyes. The guy takes my viola and puts the bow in his left hand, the viola in his right, and plays a very passable romanian fiddle tune, then gives it back without saying thank you. OK then.

Felix's Birthday

Felix is officially three.

Sometimes when I talked to people in the last few weeks, and they asked "how hold is he?" I would say something like "Oh, he's almost..." or "He's basically..." or "He's about to turn... three" 

and Felix would correct me and say "I'm TWO Mama," and show two fingers, "but my birthday is coming up, and when my birthday comes up, I will be three," and he would show three fingers.

Precision is very important.

There was an event at Schloss Eggenberg, where dancers from the Opera company were doing interpretive dances alongside people playing music from the Schloss Eggenberg time on period instruments. It was all day, all over the park, and all over the castle. We figured that was a good day for a picnic. Peacocks are absolutely everywhere there.

Stare-down.

Tante Centa and Henry amused.

 

We found a nice spot, waited for Brian to have food. We had so much fruit and salad and bread and picnic food. We couldn't find our picnic blanket, so we were sitting on an old sheet, which didn't protect us from the wet ground. But we were about to get a lot wetter.

Because ...

......

....

Thunder!

cheerfully we lit the candles on the cake in the rain.

Manuela took the quintessential birthday picture of our rainy day picnic. It was tremendous. 

We spent the next hour or so in the castle watching dancers, and they were simply incredible. Then we got home and planted some plants, had dinner and went to bed. The day was full enough, we waited for the next day to unpack anything.

When we did, Felix was enamored of his new things. A Scottish hat and tie, from his grandparents who had just gotten back from visiting Scotland, a xylophone, and ...

...all seven pairs of socks all at once from Didi Patz.

.

Henry's Birthday

It's Felix's birthday tomorrow.
But the title is correct. I'm posting about Henry's birthday today. A month late! I am hoping to post about Felix's birthday tomorrow, which should just be possible because we celebrated today.

He(nry) turned 5.

He's quite the wonderful little colossus of energy.

He wanted a pine-cone cake. He collected them himself on a hike we did. Actually, he wanted to burn them instead of candles, but we decided on candles and pine-cones.

Brian set it on fire, and we sang...

...But before even blowing the candles out, Henry wanted to make sure that everyone had a plate. We call him "helpful Henry" but only because of the alliteration. It's more accurately "thoughtful Henry."

My friend Manuela is also very thoughtful. She brought a gift for Henry, and also gifts for the other kids. She knew Agnes would be visiting.  

Here they model their new sunglasses.

Agnes helps Felix with his.

Henry did a birthday photoshoot with his new bow-tie. We have already tried it out at many concerts and events, to great success. It's a tie-it-yourself kind of bow-tie.

While we were doing the photoshoot, Felix thought climbing the banisters was a good idea. He couldn't convince us...

...but he could convince Agnes.

sooo....... Happy Birthday Henry. <3 p="">

Hey ja, my bike friend's back

And because Brian takes a run every day. And because I live a charmed life...

Brian brought the bike back about 18 hours later. It had only traveled about 1/4km. Probably the thief was disgusted with the condition of the bike and gave up on it.



Also, what are the chances? Very early this morning I did a quick search on willhaben (which is the Austrian equivalent of craigslist. The word means wanna-have) for "fahrrad" (just plain "bicycle") and the *first* result was this same EXACT model, same EXACT color (different seat, ok) and in my same EXACT zip code, being sold!  [so I called to buy it, and they had already sold it. - good thing, because now my bike friend's back]

Barbier von Sevilla

The Barber of Seville is an opera that I have never seen all the way through, but not for lack of trying: I have always fallen asleep. Generally, I value character development over plot, and honestly, the Barber of Seville doesn't have much of either, so despite the music being pleasant, it's little more than an entertaining lullaby. Last night I saw it at the Opera Graz, with a lovely friend.

It was a mess of costumes, but the set-element was very cool - namely the enormous rotating stage was a giant wig, and it used the idea of salvadore dali's portrait of mae west.

compare this:

with this:

At least the couch is the same. It came with a chorus dressed as head-lice, that hammer on the wig when everyone says that their confusion makes their "heads pound", and a hair-dryer wielding army. This led to the layer of "the story is all in their heads" except, they added cocaine and homophobia and distracted texting and a bunch of other strange concepts that had no place in the simple story, and did not really add an actual useful original idea.

Anyways, I got there on my bike, hitched my floor-length skirt up and biked, got special priced tickets from a friend, where we sat in the 10th row in typically very expensive seats. I didn't lock my bike, because I haven't been locking it. It's a very broken bike. I got into a bicycle accident, where my gear-cable snapped, and we never fixed it. And the breaks weren't very good either. Plus Henry likes to take my lock off my bike, so it's never on there.

After the opera, we walked my bike to the place we were going to have a post-opera discussion and glass of wine, and my friend asked me if I was going to lock my bike, and what to do if it were ever stolen. I explained it wouldn't be stolen. How many nice people have not stolen it. Hundreds of people have had the opportunity and haven't taken it. It's not good enough to be stolen or sold.

Well, when we left the restaurant and went along to bike home, hers was there. Mine was ....... not. "you're kidding" she said.

.....

It made me notice one thing. It takes only one mean person to color the world. Suddenly, all those people you pass who have never done anything bad turn into pigs. "How can people be so mean" goes through your head whether you want it to or not. 

But in the end, it's the only thing that has ever been outright stolen from me, and I kind of programmed it by accident. People are still terrific, and life is still pretty much picture perfect. :)

"New" "Kindergarten" and "lost" tooth

Our kids are in a "new" "kindergarten"!

"new" because it's been since March, but I am only posting now.

"kindergarten" because it is a kindergarten that is not officially governmentally bureaucratically a kindergarten. it cannot be classified as such because of one omission - it has no roof!

it is a waldkindergarten - a popular concept in germany. [answers to faq... 5 hours a day, heat up soup over a fire, 21 kids, 3 teachers, reading, playing painting, hiking, singing, dancing, stories, fantasy, no toys]

There is only one in our region, and it is so far away, but we decided it was worth the commute, and as soon as there was an opening for both of them, poof, we were there. (Actually, it was funny - two teachers came to interview us for the openings, and we had a rather chilly coffee in the garden just to prove our worth.)

The night before, we got our stuff ready. The list of things to bring with you to our new kindergarten are: A bowl. A Spoon. A washcloth. and....... A SHARP knife. Theodore also needed his birthday compass.

The first day of school it was a dreary rainy day. Brian had gone to London for the week, and we had rented a car. We didn't know the ropes yet. As we rode up the small mountain, on the narrow winding road, the drizzle turned to light fluffy snow. So beautiful.

This is the boys in their Christmas hats that I knit for them, with little bells on the end of the tassel. They are warm wool hats. Good thing, too. :)

The view from the top. In the distance is "Mariatrost" a church on a hill which is the destination of many pilgrimages, and at the very edge of Graz. The kindergarten is at a much higher elevation on top of a mountain.

Henry went right to work eating snow and rolling in it. 

Theodore observed for a little longer.

Felix wanted to stay here too.

At the end of the day, I went to pick them up and was told Theodore had "lost" his first tooth. 

"lost" because it was really truly lost.

The tooth fairy still came, and brought 1 of each kind of coin, covered in glittery dust, which we found for days after...