Over the hills and far away..... tales from a long day :)

So, I'm in California! Getting here was interesting....

I flew from Bremen to Paris to New York to San Diego. Jealous? You should be. There was an air traffic control strike in Paris which delayed us more than an hour (we were lucky that we were on an international flight--Air France was canceling a lot of shorter flights)... but other than that the flights all went as planned. There were just too many of them...

But, because of the time difference it was a 33 hour day. And I had orchestra on Monday night, so I came into it off of three hours of sleep. I was quite loopy when I got here on Tuesday night.

But California is sunny and warm.... so I'm happy.

People with too much free time

How NOT to defrost your car

Man torches car battling frost

BERLIN (Reuters) – A 76-year-old German man trying to thaw out his car incinerated it instead when he decided to speed things up by putting a blow heater under the hood.

"He burned the vehicle out completely," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Hildesheim. Police said the man left the heater on next to the frozen windshield washer tank and returned indoors. Shortly afterwards he heard two explosions and returned to find the car ablaze.

He alerted fire services, who arrived in time to prevent the flames from destroying his house. Including charring of the building, total damages were estimated at 40,000 euros ($56,240).

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Steve Addison)

Remember when I said most people here wouldn't know a snow shovel if it bit them? I guess that goes for ice scrapers too...

Stories from the north...

So I realize I haven't updated in a long time, and I realize that makes some people sad. So, because it's either update my blog or do history homework, I'm choosing to tell some stories from the last month or so.... I know some of you have heard at least some of theses stories, so just bear with me, k?

So, as it turns out, Oldenburg has gangs. This weekend, two rival gangs threw two big parties, which basically meant that Oldenburg had to bring in police from all over the region to keep them from committing any felonies. The most fun part of this was when they closed down part of the street I essentially live on. I was, at the time, walking home. The nice police man told me I could either go a totally different way, or go through the grave yard that happens to be right there. So, 10:30pm on a Friday night finds me tramping through a snowy graveyard, in my concert black, carrying a horn, a backpack with my school stuff, and a large bouquet of flowers.

As the concert black implies, we had orchestra concerts this weekend, one on Friday at the Uni, and one on Saturday in Hage. Ask anyone here where Hage is, and they won't be able to tell you. I googled it, and it's about as far north and west as it is possible to go in Germany. We still don't know why we had a concert there... but it was fun, although it made for a rather long day with the bus trip and all.

I also played a sort of recital on Friday before the orchestra concert. A few months ago I was snatched by a composition teacher here, who thought it would be amusing for all of her students to write pieces for horn. So I premiered eight things on Friday.... some went better than others (*cough pieces about elephants that are microtonal and require water in the horn cough*). It was sort of cool to be part of the composition process.... to have veto power when there was something I didn't know if I could play, and to watch how people edit compositions. But next time I think I'll pass... its REALLY nerve wracking to perform a piece alone with the composer present...

The weather (I love complaining about the weather). As I've maybe explained, Europe is having a "snow crisis" filled winter. Today, for example, it snowed about 3 inches in the morning, so all the buses stopped running, I missed history, and now, two hours later, its just above freezing, melting, and raining. But hey, the humidity is only 95%, so it's not quite as wet as it could be.

Last night I went to Hamburg to play with an orchestra my uni orchestra conductor conducts. Hamburg is kind of far away, but I'm orchestra starved. I got home just before 2am because the trains don't run enough late at night. I actually met the orchestra director in Bremen (he was there teaching) and we drove the rest of the way to Hamburg together (which was nice because it meant I was only on my own on the way home)... and I invented a new word (which he will probably tease me about until the end of time). I couldn't remember the word for snow plow, so I made one up: das Strasseschneeputzmachineding. Literally street-snow-clean-machine-thing. He knew what I was talking about..... he also laughed for about the next ten minutes. The real word is der Schneeraümer, or the snow cleaner. I was on the right track...

The countdown has officially started.... I will be done with everything (but some papers I have until the end of March to write) on Sunday. I can't WAIT for a real break. Daddy also gets here on Sunday. Hopefully bearing gifts of burrito making supplies and spicy stuff.

Oh, and I passed my test :)

Holiday Summary

I've been told to "go update you're blog already" quite a few times since I got home from Switzerland. So I'm going to update all in one fell swoop. Or one swell foop. Take your pick.

So. I went to Berlin. It was COLD, but really fun. I spent six or seven hours in the museum of musical instruments, prompting the guards to decide I was obsessed (and then refuse to adopt me, sigh...). I saw some pretty strange stuff, like....

Are these piccolo violins? Who's bad idea was this?

An "upright harpsichord" or something along those lines...

And, of course, a stradivarius.

I have about 200 more pictures, but this really isn't the place for them. But if anyone wants to see the guts of a piano, or the inside of a valve, or how a reed is made, or really anything else about western instruments, just ask.

A quite a bit sadder thing that I did in Berlin was look for Stolpersteine. Stolpersteine are the result of an art project to commemorate the victims of the Nazis. Through private donations, a man makes a small stone that goes outside the house where any victim lived, that says their name, their birthdate, and where they died.

This is the most I found in one spot...

This says "here lived Uri Aron, born 1942, deported 1943 to Theresienstadt, killed in Auschwitz"

Stolpersteine are obviously not at every house yet, but they're trying, because the artist believes that none of the names of the victims should be forgotten.

The last thing I did in Berlin was see the Berlin Philharmonic play Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. It was amazing. I really can't say anything else, besides that it took my breath away.

Switzerland.... I have no pictures.... but I had a GREAT time. I saw a Baroque Orchestra concert, I saw a Strauss opera (Die Frau Ohne Shatten, which has the strangest plot), but mostly I just hung out. Chilled. Talked with Irene. Caught up on sleep, on thought, on myself. Was held, held someone else. It was wonderful.

So, any questions?

Goslar!!!

Goslar is a small town in the southeast of the state (Niedersachsen or Lower Saxony) that I live in. It's about three and a half hours away by train, and the closest large city is Hannover. I went to Goslar early last saturday morning (my train left Oldenburg at 6:35am) because I wanted to go hiking. Goslar lies at the edge of Nationalpark Harz, the Harz being the closest mountain range to where I live. Take the words "mountain range" with a grain of salt. The highest point is 3,743ft above sea level. Nonetheless, I really wanted to go hiking, and Oldenburg and the surrounding cities all being completely flat, I went to Goslar.

I knew nothing about Goslar when I embarked. Map? No.... Idea of where some trailheads would be? Nah... I got off the train, asked the person at the train station where to go hiking, and she sent me to the city center where the tourist information is. So I set off for the city center (I picked a random direction from the train station. The scary part being I was right), and found that Goslar has an adorable Christmas market, as well as an adorable city center!

Booths line the city center for the Christmas market.

My favorite part, mostly because the donkey let me pet it. There were also goats and an alpaca.

One of the large, pretty churches near the city center.

A snowball, a sort of cookie with filling. This a chocolate covered vanilla one, thus it doesn't actually look like a snowball. They're really quite good!

Having found the tourist information, I took a bus to Hahnenklee, which is a little village that exists, in all likelihood, solely as a place for tourists to start their outdoor adventures. I hiked until I got rained and frozen back out of the woods, at which point I returned to Goslar, and then to Oldenburg.

The woods as seen from my trailhead...

Through the deep dark woods. Believe it or not, this picture was taken around 1pm. It looks like dusk, I know.

Me looking COLD and wet and rained on, but happy.

For those of you wondering if I was mad to go hiking alone in November in northern Germany, the answer is probably. But I will say this: Germany has no bears or mountain lions, and I had perfect cell reception the whole time, so I feel the insanity lies more in the weather than the actual hiking alone part.

As for Goslar? I need to go back. I loved it, with its little shops, adorably cute little houses, and... I really can't explain my love. I just love it there. If the temperature hadn't finally dropped this week, I would have gone back yesterday. Hopefully I will be able to return soon, hike some more (weather permitting), and get to know the area better.

German, part two

I've had a few people ask me to write something in English but with German grammar..... this is the best I could do.... sorry if there are any mistakes!

Today had I a very long day. I am early out of bed up gotten, because I an early horn lesson had. Then went I to the office hour of my history teacher, in order her class better to understand. After I with my teacher, who very nice is, spoken have, went I home, and am I shopping gone. I noticed last night, that I absolutely nothing to cook had, because I not enough time shopping to go had have. After shopping, have I my German homework done, and am I to German class gone. Then I dinner cooked and ate, before I to orchestra gone am. After orchestra am I with the bus home driven... and to sleep gone.

I think that's about as well as I can do considering that German uses some cases that we don't have in English. I hope I got a laugh, if nothing else.