Since the appointment at the Agentur I've thought of writing a book set in Brittany and southern England during the French Revolution, with a plot loosely along the lines of the fable of the lion and the mouse. Embarking on a story is really quite like trying to ride up a hill on a bicycle; it's hard to tell beforehand if there will be enough momentum or staying-power to complete the ascent. So the story may fizzle out, but on the other hand it might not. At any rate, first I wrote a plot synopsis of the beginning of the story, determined the name of the main character, and decided to simply entitle it "The Lion and the Mouse." Then I looked up de la Fontaine's version of the tale, but as I told Papa and Mama later "The Lion and the Rat" isn't particularly poetic, besides which the poem is a little spare; so I found Aesop's original tale in Greek on the internet and will presumably quote that at the beginning of the book instead. Since then I've been burrowing into information on the Bretagne, specifically the Breton and Gallo dialects, Breton cuisine, the crops and livestock that were around in the 1790s, the history (I've gathered a broad outline and will fill in the details later), and the landscape. For the last I looked at photos at TrekEarth.com; needless to say that was too enjoyable to feel like hard investigative labour.
Today I've been acquainting myself with sails and navigation, e.g. fore-and-aft rigging, the gaff sail, the genoa, and the luff. But after I finish that I still need to decide which type of ship my emigré will use to escape to England, and to find out about everything from the currents and landmarks and topography of the Breton coast, through the winds, setting a course for a ship, and determining latitude and longitude, to how and when to manipulate the sails and rudder. Apart from the nautical details I want to learn about the local traditions (there are Breton saints and ghost tales, like the one about the Bride of Trécesson), the Parlement and lower-level administration, personalities like Madame de Sévigné, and the individual towns and villages. That's only the first step in the research; after that I want to learn about what went on in Paris during the Revolution, and then about what went on in England. And then I'll think about my characters and the niceties of the plot.
I've been at this for four days or so, and though of course I read online books on the side and occasionally become bored and lazy, I like the cycle of resting, pushing myself to do work and then enjoying the new information and ideas. It's only a daydream, but if the book and internet research hasn't petered out in three months' time I would love to go on a lengthy bike tour of Brittany, and see the ocean and the castles and the towns in person. Either way it would be nice to finally write a story with intellectual substance, though that's more my ego speaking than my nice ideal of twinning art and knowledge in the pursuit of a nobler vision of the human condition (to put it in an obscure and wordy way).
Apart from that I've been learning new pieces on the piano, like a Scarlatti sonata and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 (obviously I've only played the very short second movement all the way through; the first and third movements will require much more time), and revisiting old ones like the partitas in the Notenbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach. What I'm watching for now is the phrasing given in the score; I've tended to ignore it but after practicing chamber music I've realized that it can indicate the composer's intentions very helpfully. Besides I am trying to figure out how to play Bach so that it sounds quintessentially Bach, Scarlatti so that it sounds quintessentially Scarlatti, etc. One aspect of that, which I'm not close to mastering, is being able to inhabit a piece, as if it were a course of true events, so that the performer shares the mood and the notes come alive.
Besides I've found more treasures on YouTube:
1. Andrés Segovia: 5 Pieces by Purcell
2. Agustín Barrios: La Catedral
3. José Iturbi: "Rigaudon," "Musette" and "Tambourin" by Jean-Philippe Rameau
(On the harpsichord. Pleasantly peculiar twanging and nasal tone, and a dancing rhythm, reminiscent of medieval folk music with hurdy-gurdies and the rest of it.)
4. Jussi Bjoerling: "An Silvia" by Schubert
(This recording made me reconsider the opinion that the song is boring.)
5. Wanda Landowska: Excerpt from Concerto No. 3 for Harpsichord by Bach
(An impressive lady. The tone of the harpsichord is really immensely protean; it sounds at times as if there were indeed a string orchestra playing in the background.)
6. Wanda Landowska, London Philharmonic: Piano Concerto No. 26 in D major, by Mozart
(The orchestra's style is dated — either the recording is at fault or the strings really slide all over the place — but I think their understanding of Mozart is uncommonly good, with the right combination of tranquillity, intelligent refinement, and genuine sensitivity.)
7. Benedetto Michelangeli: Sonata in C major by Baldassare Galuppi, Mvt. 1
(Papa used to practice this piece. The theme repeats often, but it's lovely.)
8. Clara Haskil: Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor by Mozart
(This was the second piano concerto which I listened to almost every evening before falling asleep during my second year at UBC. After a few times I decided that it "describes" a vicious storm at sea with shrieking winds and titanic waves and pelting rain, intermittently lulled. It's dark and unsettling, not only in comparison with the rest of Mozart's oeuvre, and not an obvious choice for bedtime, but also lyrical and quite beautiful especially during the second movement.)
Anyway, the question of an income remains unsettled, but if I continue to spend next to no money apart from insurance payments, my bank account will only run out in perhaps a year. What I've been daydreaming of doing, besides being immersed in music and writing an epic historical novel, is learning to cook well, picking up new languages, reading history, and finding out as much about physical pursuits like sailing and carpentering as I can in books and on the internet. As far as the cooking is concerned, I haven't been doing much lately except boiling spaghetti and concocting a tomato sauce out of the miscellany in the fridge and the pantry. This time there was a jar of basil tomato sauce from the store, a box of tomato mush, three onions, a clove of garlic, green peppercorns, a bay leaf, red wine that has been sitting behind the coffee-maker since before the trip to Austria, ground paprika, and a heaping tablespoon of spicy pepper paste. One thing I've learned from the countless improvisations of this repast is that the garlic is too strong if it's minced and fried golden-brown; instead I crush the whole clove and pop it in before the olive oil is properly warm so that it stews more than it fries.
Another frequently attempted (though not recently) recipe is porridge. We buy the tiny rolled oat flakes, which tend to congeal into a grey mush when they are worked into the venerable Scottish dish, but the matter is improved if the oats are only shaken into the milk after the milk is already warm, and if they are not cooked long. Uncle Pu, a past master at porridge, says that he just boils the flakes with water and then pours milk over everything once it's in the bowl, but he uses large oat flakes and I am convinced that applying that technique to the tiny flakes would result in a Dickensian slop. So the Platonic ideal of porridge that I had in my mind's eye — tender goldeny and brown-speckled flakes suspended in a gentle, pale cream matrix, surrounded by a sea of whiter milk and crowned with a sprinkling of brown sugar — has hitherto been unattained.
[N.B.: The Ploumanac'h of the blog title is a little seaside spot in Brittany where the shore is covered in pink granite boulders which the waves have worn into fascinatingly peculiar blobs. It seems as if it's as easy to find unintended sculptures in them as in cumulus clouds.]
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The Final Tale of the Lowly Statistic
Yesterday I went to the job counselling appointment at the Agentur für Arbeit, in which the counsellor essentially informed me that my complete lack of work experience barred me from the professional work which the Agentur could procure for me, and that if anything I would be compelled (the way the agency operates I would be forced to accept any job that is offered) into shift work that I might hate. So he advised instead, given my proficiency in languages, that I search out and apply to tour guide companies, or find "minijobs" (i.e. jobs that come attached with minimal social security benefits and that pay no more than 400 Euros per month or do not last more than two months) on my own. I've already searched for minijobs and therefore didn't feel too thrilled that this was offered as an exciting and novel concept, but on the whole this was the only part of the concise but friendly session that disgruntled me. At length I suggested a "Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr," and he seized on the idea enthusiastically and went to a colleague to give me information sheets.
So now I find that the responsibility of finding work is entirely mine again, instead of being only partially mine as I had expected. How nice.
So now I find that the responsibility of finding work is entirely mine again, instead of being only partially mine as I had expected. How nice.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Tales of the Lowly Statistic, Cont'd.
Deadlines are not much pleasanter than the sword of Damocles (as I think most people will agree), even if their unpleasantness is less literal and more figurative; consequently I haven't been very happy over the deadline for handing in "Arbeitspaket Teil 3," or in other words the third form one must complete in order to search for viz. receive a job through the Agentur für Arbeit. This form must be sent back to the Agentur by tomorrow, i.e. within a week after a job counselling appointment was made. Fortunately I bit the bullet this morning, filled out the form (asking Papa's advice here and there, because I read it through yesterday and some points were impossible to answer given my situation), printed out a copy of my c.v. to send along as requested, went to the post office and bought big envelopes, and finally tipped the whole thing into the mailbox.
The form basically wanted to know the location, hours, and remuneration which the unemployed individual would prefer, and then required information about one's computer skills, previous firms to and job titles for which one had applied, and one's best character attributes. For the latter one must check up to and including 5 qualities off a list, which includes "teamwork," "reliability," and "analytical thought." There were descriptions of the qualities underneath, but I still find the exercise quite worthless (aside from its being disagreeable to "toot one's own horn").
Firstly, behaviour is dependent upon the circumstances. It may not apply generally, but at least in my case I could be capable, intelligent, punctual, industrious, and openly cheerful in one job, and be incapable, stupid, tardy, idle, and withdrawn in another, depending on whether I feel suited for the work or not and depending on how detailed the employer's/superior's instructions are. Even within a job, there can be fluctuations. I would not be reliable, for example, if an employer wants me to come to work, or hand in an assignment, at a specific point in time every single day just because; on the other hand, if the employer has an urgent reason for wishing me to be on time, or if customers would otherwise be waiting, or if a co-worker would get into trouble if I were late, I would be extremely reliable. Secondly, it's difficult to judge of one's own qualities. Thirdly, one could lie through one's teeth to make one seem more appealing to future employers. But I guess that these types of character assessments are also required in North America, except that there the employer induces them from one's references, which I personally think is better.
The form basically wanted to know the location, hours, and remuneration which the unemployed individual would prefer, and then required information about one's computer skills, previous firms to and job titles for which one had applied, and one's best character attributes. For the latter one must check up to and including 5 qualities off a list, which includes "teamwork," "reliability," and "analytical thought." There were descriptions of the qualities underneath, but I still find the exercise quite worthless (aside from its being disagreeable to "toot one's own horn").
Firstly, behaviour is dependent upon the circumstances. It may not apply generally, but at least in my case I could be capable, intelligent, punctual, industrious, and openly cheerful in one job, and be incapable, stupid, tardy, idle, and withdrawn in another, depending on whether I feel suited for the work or not and depending on how detailed the employer's/superior's instructions are. Even within a job, there can be fluctuations. I would not be reliable, for example, if an employer wants me to come to work, or hand in an assignment, at a specific point in time every single day just because; on the other hand, if the employer has an urgent reason for wishing me to be on time, or if customers would otherwise be waiting, or if a co-worker would get into trouble if I were late, I would be extremely reliable. Secondly, it's difficult to judge of one's own qualities. Thirdly, one could lie through one's teeth to make one seem more appealing to future employers. But I guess that these types of character assessments are also required in North America, except that there the employer induces them from one's references, which I personally think is better.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
A Minor Announcement
I've finally published the blog posts about Austria; since the draft posts are a few days old they've appeared underneath the "Tales of the Lowly Statistic" post instead of at the top of this blog. As I write in the mini-introduction, I wish I'd done a better job of writing it and I wish it would have made sense to keep on revising it; this is pretty much the only time I've sacrificed (figuratively speaking) professional pride to the realization that providing something to read is better than providing nothing. But hopefully it's still interesting.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Tales of the Lowly Statistic
Since the story of the trip to Austria is evidently not forthcoming yet, I'll discourse about what has happened in the meantime. If this is boring or too much information (as I was kindly but sternly told was the case with my last post), I apologize, but doubtless there is a pithy quote out there about the cumulative importance of trivial events in life, and hopefully the ones in my particular life reflect the broader human condition. Even if that were not the case, it is my blog and no one is forced to read it. (c:
My solo search for work hasn't gone anywhere and frankly I don't blame myself for it. If people don't want to hire me they just don't; and if I apply to few places it's because I genuinely try to find the right workplace and, given my inexperience, want to be especially careful. It doesn't make me feel happy, of course, to be apparently not only unemployed but also unemployable; on the other hand the things I've done instead of work are also worthwhile. So the other route I've chosen is to register with the Agentur für Arbeit (work agency) and get a job through it, since with the larger field of employers accessible through it the likelihood that one of them will find a use for me is greater.
Yesterday I went to the Agentur location at the Sonnenallee, and was told that I was at the wrong spot, but at least the women there entered the vital statistics and information about my education into the computer, and referred me to the Agentur location at the Gottlieb-Dunkel-Straße in Tempelhof. After that I went to the bank — inwardly kicking and screaming because the last times I've been there I felt under pressure, stupid, irritated, and humiliated — to take care of equally urgent business. Overcoming so many inhibitions and dislikes at once was draining, and after I came home playing the piano didn't help relax me much because my concentration was bad, and at last I unwound by reading online novels far into the morning. At some point after 9 a.m. I crawled into bed.
In the afternoon J. gently woke me up by informing me that our lunch of spaghetti was served, but I wasn't hungry and therefore dozed on. Then there was a phone call from my advisor at the bank (which I thought I had done with for at least the next two months after yesterday's splendid effort), informing me that because I had failed to sign and send in a form permitting the tax authority to access my bank records, the government has apparently withdrawn a fine from my account. At the same time she mentioned the bank's phone survey of a month or so ago. It consisted of three, of which these are the first two, questions: 1) On a scale of 1 to 10, what is the likelihood that you would recommend this bank to someone else?; and 2) Would you mind if your advisor at the local bank branch contacts you about the results? My answer for the first was 7, and for the second was "no."
At any rate, the advisor wanted to know what the reasons were for the relatively low score, and I said (truthfully) that I'd feel better talking about it in person when I drop off my signed tax form. So we have an appointment for tomorrow. First of all I have to read the form through and understand the technical terminology before I sign it; secondly I have to arrange my thoughts and decide what to tell the advisor about the score. I'll be truthful, of course — the trip to New York somehow left me convinced that lying is (usually) weaselly and cowardly, and that an integral part of courage (which I am still trying to acquire, being naturally more stubborn than brave) is the strength to speak the truth and stand to it at any cost — but I don't know how much of the truth to tell and how to be sure that personal pique doesn't colour it. But essentially I doubt I'd talk about my bank to people anyway, since I grew up thinking that personal finances are an icky but important fact of life, which is to be disposed of quickly and privately, much like going to the toilet.
After that inspiriting phone call I went to the Agentur location in the Gottlieb-Dunkel-Straße. Having unwisely decided to eschew the bus, I walked from the Alt-Tempelhof U-Bahn station for ages — not entirely certain of the route since the Google map and U-Bahn station map disagreed on some points — and, perspiring profusely, reached the building at last. I thought I'd have an hour to spare. No such luck. The lights in the foyer were already dimmed and the lady at the desk informed me that it was five minutes before closing, and that an application for unemployment status takes a long time to process. She did extend the deadline on the writ that I'd received from the Sonnenallee so that I have more time to submit the application. But as I went out again into the heat and fully realized that I'd immediately have to go back all the way I had come I was not, as a teacher at J.'s school once put it, a happy camper. Then I lost my way, but not badly, and went home with mildly blistered feet.
Once I was at home I repressed the latent urge to cry out of frustration and fatigue, and have instead been enjoying myself. I've started reading another American romance novel translated into the Spanish, and it's still going very slowly. But my vocabulary is expanding easily, and it's fun to hop from the internet browser tab with the novel on it to the browser tab for the online Spanish-English dictionary, and back again. Besides, I feel proud of myself for doing it.
Still, I'd hoped to have all the bank and unemployment paperwork finished by this evening, and instead the horrid mess is seemingly only just beginning, and I don't know how much longer I can keep up my strength and ignore how much I hate this all and how much it hates me. At first I was proud of myself and I'm still pretty sure I'll stick things out, but the cost worries me. I keep on thinking I can handle things but then they leave me unhappy and tired and discouraged for months afterwards. I just hope that I'll find a job by October, and be too mentally and physically busy and satisfied to mope. Either way, since I'm too straightlaced to deploy more powerful verbiage, I will leave the swearing I'd like to do in the meantime to our collective imaginations.
My solo search for work hasn't gone anywhere and frankly I don't blame myself for it. If people don't want to hire me they just don't; and if I apply to few places it's because I genuinely try to find the right workplace and, given my inexperience, want to be especially careful. It doesn't make me feel happy, of course, to be apparently not only unemployed but also unemployable; on the other hand the things I've done instead of work are also worthwhile. So the other route I've chosen is to register with the Agentur für Arbeit (work agency) and get a job through it, since with the larger field of employers accessible through it the likelihood that one of them will find a use for me is greater.
Yesterday I went to the Agentur location at the Sonnenallee, and was told that I was at the wrong spot, but at least the women there entered the vital statistics and information about my education into the computer, and referred me to the Agentur location at the Gottlieb-Dunkel-Straße in Tempelhof. After that I went to the bank — inwardly kicking and screaming because the last times I've been there I felt under pressure, stupid, irritated, and humiliated — to take care of equally urgent business. Overcoming so many inhibitions and dislikes at once was draining, and after I came home playing the piano didn't help relax me much because my concentration was bad, and at last I unwound by reading online novels far into the morning. At some point after 9 a.m. I crawled into bed.
In the afternoon J. gently woke me up by informing me that our lunch of spaghetti was served, but I wasn't hungry and therefore dozed on. Then there was a phone call from my advisor at the bank (which I thought I had done with for at least the next two months after yesterday's splendid effort), informing me that because I had failed to sign and send in a form permitting the tax authority to access my bank records, the government has apparently withdrawn a fine from my account. At the same time she mentioned the bank's phone survey of a month or so ago. It consisted of three, of which these are the first two, questions: 1) On a scale of 1 to 10, what is the likelihood that you would recommend this bank to someone else?; and 2) Would you mind if your advisor at the local bank branch contacts you about the results? My answer for the first was 7, and for the second was "no."
At any rate, the advisor wanted to know what the reasons were for the relatively low score, and I said (truthfully) that I'd feel better talking about it in person when I drop off my signed tax form. So we have an appointment for tomorrow. First of all I have to read the form through and understand the technical terminology before I sign it; secondly I have to arrange my thoughts and decide what to tell the advisor about the score. I'll be truthful, of course — the trip to New York somehow left me convinced that lying is (usually) weaselly and cowardly, and that an integral part of courage (which I am still trying to acquire, being naturally more stubborn than brave) is the strength to speak the truth and stand to it at any cost — but I don't know how much of the truth to tell and how to be sure that personal pique doesn't colour it. But essentially I doubt I'd talk about my bank to people anyway, since I grew up thinking that personal finances are an icky but important fact of life, which is to be disposed of quickly and privately, much like going to the toilet.
After that inspiriting phone call I went to the Agentur location in the Gottlieb-Dunkel-Straße. Having unwisely decided to eschew the bus, I walked from the Alt-Tempelhof U-Bahn station for ages — not entirely certain of the route since the Google map and U-Bahn station map disagreed on some points — and, perspiring profusely, reached the building at last. I thought I'd have an hour to spare. No such luck. The lights in the foyer were already dimmed and the lady at the desk informed me that it was five minutes before closing, and that an application for unemployment status takes a long time to process. She did extend the deadline on the writ that I'd received from the Sonnenallee so that I have more time to submit the application. But as I went out again into the heat and fully realized that I'd immediately have to go back all the way I had come I was not, as a teacher at J.'s school once put it, a happy camper. Then I lost my way, but not badly, and went home with mildly blistered feet.
Once I was at home I repressed the latent urge to cry out of frustration and fatigue, and have instead been enjoying myself. I've started reading another American romance novel translated into the Spanish, and it's still going very slowly. But my vocabulary is expanding easily, and it's fun to hop from the internet browser tab with the novel on it to the browser tab for the online Spanish-English dictionary, and back again. Besides, I feel proud of myself for doing it.
Still, I'd hoped to have all the bank and unemployment paperwork finished by this evening, and instead the horrid mess is seemingly only just beginning, and I don't know how much longer I can keep up my strength and ignore how much I hate this all and how much it hates me. At first I was proud of myself and I'm still pretty sure I'll stick things out, but the cost worries me. I keep on thinking I can handle things but then they leave me unhappy and tired and discouraged for months afterwards. I just hope that I'll find a job by October, and be too mentally and physically busy and satisfied to mope. Either way, since I'm too straightlaced to deploy more powerful verbiage, I will leave the swearing I'd like to do in the meantime to our collective imaginations.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Holiday in Austria, Part V: The Concert
The evening after the climb T., Ge., and I went to a concert at the music school in Ebensee, which was one of the official events of the reunion but also open to the general public. We were early so Papa, who was bringing us, drove us around Rindbach and showed us a boat launch on the Traunsee first. My great-grandparents' families had spent their summers in close proximity to each other, and Rindbach was where they had met. The Fichteneck (Fir Corner), once the haunt of the Mendelssohns, no longer exists, being torn down in the 1960s or so, but the Dreieck (which is just down the road) persists. Papa took us past both these properties, and after seeing the lake, too, we returned to the school.
This was the concert programme:
Felix Mendelssohn: String quartet in e minor, Op. 44 No. 2
Fanny Hensel [N.B. Felix's sister]: Piano trio in d minor, Op. 11
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat major, Op. 20
We were still early and so I watched the rest of the audience and kept an eye out for people I knew. There was Uncle Pu, of course, and later Aunt L. and M., whom I was especially excited to see. Then I recognized the daughters of Opapa's youngest uncle, despite only having seen each two to four times (one of those times being back in 1995), and, with pleased surprise, Opapa's cousin from the US, who we thought for some reason wouldn't be coming after all. Then I looked around the room, which attached to a yawning storage room that also served as the musicians' passage to their green room, and where the stage was marked by the cluster of spotlights hanging from the ceiling. There is also a chandelier, a modern take on a traditional flower-like fixture, over the rows of chairs, and windows from which the dark reddish curtains had been drawn back. In front there is an haut-relief in bronze, a contemporary take on the portraiture of medieval royalty, which I found particularly peculiar as most of the figures were in their birthday suits and their anatomy was highly stylized so that one unfortunate lady appeared to be sprouting twin billiard balls on her bosom and her stomach was detached into a sort of spherical balloon. Anyway, the room was torridly hot, so naturally I flushed beet-red, which bothered me until I noticed that everyone else was in similar straights. I did fan myself but wondered whether it was polite to do so, and was careful not to send whooshes of air toward the nice lady sitting beside me lest it annoy her; a little while later she had removed her coat and so it was probable that she wouldn't have minded the ventilation.
Then the music began, and soon proved to be of a high calibre, not only technically, and I enjoyed it very much. It did not come across as rehearsed and the first violinist, though as Pudel later opined not one of the great violinists, had a very good sense for Mendelssohn's style. I was only surprised and a bit disappointed to find (when she was finally visible betwixt the heads of the audience) that she is a Grimacer. At the beginning the playing was rather chaotic but in the course of time it was better calibrated, the violinists being particularly in synch with each other. There was a lull after the first movement of the quartet when the cellist (and Opapa's niece) rose with wryly smiling determination, stalked across to the window, and finally let in fresh air. The relief of those assembled was tangible.
The trio was composed of a pianist, a different violinist, and the same cellist; they went for a heady passion and more high romantic approach that gave Hensel's composition a distinctly Schumannian flair. I felt that the approach wasn't entirely right but, in a weird revisionist way, it worked.
Lastly there was the octet, which was considerably enlivened by the thunderstorm that broke out during it. The chandelier flickered and if I were a betting sort of person I would have said the odds were 1 to 5 of it going out entirely and plunging us in darkness. Musically I felt that the concert hit its stride here and that everything came together. In a grand coup, a cellist formerly of the Amadeus Quartett was to have played in the octet, but he fell ill along the way to Austria and had to turn back. But I thought it was nice either way.
The concert entrance, by the way, had cost 10 Euros, which considering the transportation fare of the musicians and other logistical questions was probably reasonable, and considering the quality of the music was extremely reasonable.
I could write more, but I've already given detailed run-downs once each to Mama and Papa, besides contributing my two cents in a brief post facto discussioon with Pudel, and don't want to bother doing it again. Besides, I don't like carping about the hard work of others or running the risk of being inaccurate and at the same don't want to gush indiscriminately, so exhaustive music reviews are an ordeal out of which I will in this case wriggle.
At any rate, we drove away again pretty much right after the concert had ended, and threshed through the impressively thick rain back to Bad Goisern.
This was the concert programme:
Felix Mendelssohn: String quartet in e minor, Op. 44 No. 2
Fanny Hensel [N.B. Felix's sister]: Piano trio in d minor, Op. 11
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat major, Op. 20
We were still early and so I watched the rest of the audience and kept an eye out for people I knew. There was Uncle Pu, of course, and later Aunt L. and M., whom I was especially excited to see. Then I recognized the daughters of Opapa's youngest uncle, despite only having seen each two to four times (one of those times being back in 1995), and, with pleased surprise, Opapa's cousin from the US, who we thought for some reason wouldn't be coming after all. Then I looked around the room, which attached to a yawning storage room that also served as the musicians' passage to their green room, and where the stage was marked by the cluster of spotlights hanging from the ceiling. There is also a chandelier, a modern take on a traditional flower-like fixture, over the rows of chairs, and windows from which the dark reddish curtains had been drawn back. In front there is an haut-relief in bronze, a contemporary take on the portraiture of medieval royalty, which I found particularly peculiar as most of the figures were in their birthday suits and their anatomy was highly stylized so that one unfortunate lady appeared to be sprouting twin billiard balls on her bosom and her stomach was detached into a sort of spherical balloon. Anyway, the room was torridly hot, so naturally I flushed beet-red, which bothered me until I noticed that everyone else was in similar straights. I did fan myself but wondered whether it was polite to do so, and was careful not to send whooshes of air toward the nice lady sitting beside me lest it annoy her; a little while later she had removed her coat and so it was probable that she wouldn't have minded the ventilation.
Then the music began, and soon proved to be of a high calibre, not only technically, and I enjoyed it very much. It did not come across as rehearsed and the first violinist, though as Pudel later opined not one of the great violinists, had a very good sense for Mendelssohn's style. I was only surprised and a bit disappointed to find (when she was finally visible betwixt the heads of the audience) that she is a Grimacer. At the beginning the playing was rather chaotic but in the course of time it was better calibrated, the violinists being particularly in synch with each other. There was a lull after the first movement of the quartet when the cellist (and Opapa's niece) rose with wryly smiling determination, stalked across to the window, and finally let in fresh air. The relief of those assembled was tangible.
The trio was composed of a pianist, a different violinist, and the same cellist; they went for a heady passion and more high romantic approach that gave Hensel's composition a distinctly Schumannian flair. I felt that the approach wasn't entirely right but, in a weird revisionist way, it worked.
Lastly there was the octet, which was considerably enlivened by the thunderstorm that broke out during it. The chandelier flickered and if I were a betting sort of person I would have said the odds were 1 to 5 of it going out entirely and plunging us in darkness. Musically I felt that the concert hit its stride here and that everything came together. In a grand coup, a cellist formerly of the Amadeus Quartett was to have played in the octet, but he fell ill along the way to Austria and had to turn back. But I thought it was nice either way.
The concert entrance, by the way, had cost 10 Euros, which considering the transportation fare of the musicians and other logistical questions was probably reasonable, and considering the quality of the music was extremely reasonable.
I could write more, but I've already given detailed run-downs once each to Mama and Papa, besides contributing my two cents in a brief post facto discussioon with Pudel, and don't want to bother doing it again. Besides, I don't like carping about the hard work of others or running the risk of being inaccurate and at the same don't want to gush indiscriminately, so exhaustive music reviews are an ordeal out of which I will in this case wriggle.
At any rate, we drove away again pretty much right after the concert had ended, and threshed through the impressively thick rain back to Bad Goisern.
Holiday in Austria, Part VIII: An Afternoon near Munich
On the final day I was still sleeping like a log when Mama came around to those of us who were less than awake to tell us that, if we wanted to see Uncle Pu before he drives back home, now was the time to arise from our slumbers. A while afterward I toddled down to the kitchen table and informed the round that I had interrupted REM sleep for this session and that they could feel flattered (which was not meant, and hopefully did not come across, obnoxiously). During the breakfast we bade goodbye to Pudel; after it we packed everything up and finally left before noon.
Our route to the German border was an eminently picturesque, circuitous one that took us through the mountains around the Dachstein. We crossed the border near the Chiemsee (a surprisingly huge lake nicknamed "the Bavarian sea") and then hastened on to Munich. What really kept me busy, besides admiring the mountains, was admiring the multiplicity of license plate origins. This stretch was a veritable European Parliament, with cars and trucks and motorcycles from all over Austria, and then from Germany, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary, and Italy, and there were one or two each from France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Denmark, Norway, and even Russia.
It was saddening to leave Austria again especially because it seems to me to be such a lively and lovely country, from the geographical and architectural and botanical point of view, and because I'm so fond of mountainous terrain. But I was looking forward to being near Munich again.
The town that was our destination lies outside of the city, and lies in a region noted for harbouring well-to-do people who wish to live in retirement from the sordid hurly-burly of the urban sphere. The streets were narrow and winding, and though the neighbourhood (aside from the Four Seasons hotel along the way) did not seem especially rich the houses often had gardens and were large enough. Being used to the generous property sizes of North America, my awe was within bounds. Logistically it was a bother trying to find a parking spot and navigating the narrow thoroughfares, besides which it was hot. We paused at a train station so that Papa could consult the map, when a round-faced man evidently at a loss for other ways to while away the afternoon came trundling over from a distant table to inform us in surly fashion that no parking was allowed at that spot. A sign had already informed us as much, but as far as we could tell we were in nobody's way for the short period we were there. Mama told us later, slightly huffily, that the man, grumbling as he turned away, had called us "Saupreußen," or Prussian pigs.
After this interlude we adjourned to a Biergarten for refreshments. Having forgotten my theoretical horror of it as usual, I wanted dessert and therefore ordered vanilla ice cream with bilberries (Heidelbeeren). Gi. and T. and J. got two king-sized bilberry pancakes, dusted with powdered sugar and studded in the centre with a neat mound of vanilla ice cream, and they looked delectable. Papa, long deprived of it, chose a sirloin tip roast (Tafelspitz, and based on the cooking method he says that it could be properly denominated a pot au feu) that arrived with grated horseradish, boiled potatoes, rice, and a half tomato. Ge. and Mama went the traditional route and opted for Bavarian white sausage (Weisswurst), which arrived in a white covered bowl with lion-head-shaped handles, with a basket of two obligatory large pretzels and a little plate of packages of sweet mustard. To drink we had coffee, mineral water (mine again!), beer, and Coke.
At around 5:30 the Prussian pigs were expected at the house of a friend of the family, P.K., with whom Papa had studied and worked in his early years at the Freie Uni. Now this friend is a doctor and married with two little children, and though the latter were off with his wife to be immunized, he gladly welcomed us and, sitting in the garden at a round table, Papa and Mama and he caught up. The last time they had seen each other was in 1989. One topic that recurred was medical ethics, especially the lack thereof, and medicine in general. I was surprised when P.K. posited that talking and personally engaging with patients helps far more than medication does. The other remark that struck me, and which not knowing much of the profession I didn't understand, is that the majority of his work is statistics. Perhaps it means that many likelihoods must be calculated when one treats a patient, for instance the likelihood of a certain diagnosis being correct and of a certain drug working or conversely of a certain drug having bad side effects, etc. Anyway, all of this interested me particularly because I've often thought of going into medicine; because I was around and very much involved when my grandfather and great-aunt were ill, and when they were helped or not by their prescriptions; and because Papa has read and seen and thought a lot about the field and likes to discuss it. Later, at any rate, we walked around the garden, where the hydrangeas and other blossoms were flourishing, as were the tomatoes and beets and other vegetables, and I wished yet again that my enjoyment of gardens were not tarnished by the consciousness of the hard and tedious work that goes into them. (c:
By 9 p.m. we had to take our leave again and drive back to Berlin. A gentle sunset accompanied us as Munich receded in the distance, and then it was entirely dark and rather boring. I was tired but was pretty sure that Papa had probably gotten less sleep than me, and so decided to stay awake in solidarity. Mama and I therefore spent some two hours straight travelling through our song repertory: folksongs, gems from The Sound of Music (alas (c: ) and Mary Poppins, classical pieces including a handful of Schubert Lieder, and Beatles hits. Unfortunately I doubt any of us can sing a Beatles song all the way through, but we muddle through at least the first verse of "Nowhere Man," "Hey Jude," etc. anyway. Ge.'s knowledge is comparatively encyclopaedic but since he didn't sing along that didn't help. Then I was too tired to stay awake or be selfless any longer, and thought that I had helped to stave off a hypnotic silence long enough, and therefore had a nap. I woke up again before we reached Berlin and was immensely grumpy that we weren't there yet. But it was exciting to drive through the deserted city streets when we were at last there, and I was chipper enough to carry a lot of luggage and baggage up from the car into our apartment. Then, having unpacked my stuff in an unusual example of swift action, I went to bed and slept like a dormouse.
Since then the sense of deflation after an adventure, which I had expected to set in and make life difficult for the next few weeks, has not set in. The trip was strenuous and I can't say it was the most fun I've ever had in my life; but I have been feeling surprisingly enterprising and energetic after all, and I am happy that Austria is even nicer than I thought.
Our route to the German border was an eminently picturesque, circuitous one that took us through the mountains around the Dachstein. We crossed the border near the Chiemsee (a surprisingly huge lake nicknamed "the Bavarian sea") and then hastened on to Munich. What really kept me busy, besides admiring the mountains, was admiring the multiplicity of license plate origins. This stretch was a veritable European Parliament, with cars and trucks and motorcycles from all over Austria, and then from Germany, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary, and Italy, and there were one or two each from France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Denmark, Norway, and even Russia.
It was saddening to leave Austria again especially because it seems to me to be such a lively and lovely country, from the geographical and architectural and botanical point of view, and because I'm so fond of mountainous terrain. But I was looking forward to being near Munich again.
The town that was our destination lies outside of the city, and lies in a region noted for harbouring well-to-do people who wish to live in retirement from the sordid hurly-burly of the urban sphere. The streets were narrow and winding, and though the neighbourhood (aside from the Four Seasons hotel along the way) did not seem especially rich the houses often had gardens and were large enough. Being used to the generous property sizes of North America, my awe was within bounds. Logistically it was a bother trying to find a parking spot and navigating the narrow thoroughfares, besides which it was hot. We paused at a train station so that Papa could consult the map, when a round-faced man evidently at a loss for other ways to while away the afternoon came trundling over from a distant table to inform us in surly fashion that no parking was allowed at that spot. A sign had already informed us as much, but as far as we could tell we were in nobody's way for the short period we were there. Mama told us later, slightly huffily, that the man, grumbling as he turned away, had called us "Saupreußen," or Prussian pigs.
After this interlude we adjourned to a Biergarten for refreshments. Having forgotten my theoretical horror of it as usual, I wanted dessert and therefore ordered vanilla ice cream with bilberries (Heidelbeeren). Gi. and T. and J. got two king-sized bilberry pancakes, dusted with powdered sugar and studded in the centre with a neat mound of vanilla ice cream, and they looked delectable. Papa, long deprived of it, chose a sirloin tip roast (Tafelspitz, and based on the cooking method he says that it could be properly denominated a pot au feu) that arrived with grated horseradish, boiled potatoes, rice, and a half tomato. Ge. and Mama went the traditional route and opted for Bavarian white sausage (Weisswurst), which arrived in a white covered bowl with lion-head-shaped handles, with a basket of two obligatory large pretzels and a little plate of packages of sweet mustard. To drink we had coffee, mineral water (mine again!), beer, and Coke.
At around 5:30 the Prussian pigs were expected at the house of a friend of the family, P.K., with whom Papa had studied and worked in his early years at the Freie Uni. Now this friend is a doctor and married with two little children, and though the latter were off with his wife to be immunized, he gladly welcomed us and, sitting in the garden at a round table, Papa and Mama and he caught up. The last time they had seen each other was in 1989. One topic that recurred was medical ethics, especially the lack thereof, and medicine in general. I was surprised when P.K. posited that talking and personally engaging with patients helps far more than medication does. The other remark that struck me, and which not knowing much of the profession I didn't understand, is that the majority of his work is statistics. Perhaps it means that many likelihoods must be calculated when one treats a patient, for instance the likelihood of a certain diagnosis being correct and of a certain drug working or conversely of a certain drug having bad side effects, etc. Anyway, all of this interested me particularly because I've often thought of going into medicine; because I was around and very much involved when my grandfather and great-aunt were ill, and when they were helped or not by their prescriptions; and because Papa has read and seen and thought a lot about the field and likes to discuss it. Later, at any rate, we walked around the garden, where the hydrangeas and other blossoms were flourishing, as were the tomatoes and beets and other vegetables, and I wished yet again that my enjoyment of gardens were not tarnished by the consciousness of the hard and tedious work that goes into them. (c:
By 9 p.m. we had to take our leave again and drive back to Berlin. A gentle sunset accompanied us as Munich receded in the distance, and then it was entirely dark and rather boring. I was tired but was pretty sure that Papa had probably gotten less sleep than me, and so decided to stay awake in solidarity. Mama and I therefore spent some two hours straight travelling through our song repertory: folksongs, gems from The Sound of Music (alas (c: ) and Mary Poppins, classical pieces including a handful of Schubert Lieder, and Beatles hits. Unfortunately I doubt any of us can sing a Beatles song all the way through, but we muddle through at least the first verse of "Nowhere Man," "Hey Jude," etc. anyway. Ge.'s knowledge is comparatively encyclopaedic but since he didn't sing along that didn't help. Then I was too tired to stay awake or be selfless any longer, and thought that I had helped to stave off a hypnotic silence long enough, and therefore had a nap. I woke up again before we reached Berlin and was immensely grumpy that we weren't there yet. But it was exciting to drive through the deserted city streets when we were at last there, and I was chipper enough to carry a lot of luggage and baggage up from the car into our apartment. Then, having unpacked my stuff in an unusual example of swift action, I went to bed and slept like a dormouse.
Since then the sense of deflation after an adventure, which I had expected to set in and make life difficult for the next few weeks, has not set in. The trip was strenuous and I can't say it was the most fun I've ever had in my life; but I have been feeling surprisingly enterprising and energetic after all, and I am happy that Austria is even nicer than I thought.
Holiday in Austria, Part VII: The Reunion Proper
On Sunday we breakfasted as customary, I after having been awake since around 3:45 a.m. because I couldn't sleep. I had wanted to tackle the Predigstuhl again with Gi., to have a better memory of it and conquer the near-trauma that the sight of it inspired, but my parents and in the end Gi. vetoed it. I decided to respect the veto because proving something to myself wasn't worth causing them to worry, but didn't do it happily, and for this and other reasons I was in a really irritated and depressed state. It was all the more irritating because I dislike being the slave to irrational and passing moods, and behaving disgracefully as a result. But at least I went back to sleep and was therefore better rested.
Anyway, after breakfast we betook ourselves to the house, named the "Dreieck" presumably because of its right-angled floorplan, where my grandfather's family once spent its summers. It is a big but snug house (it would sprawl if it were constructed in a different style and climate, because of the number of rooms), shutters painted a bright darkish green that tends very slightly to the turquoise, and its outer walls are siding that has been painted a wintry brown-black shade. A garden runs on all four sides, a little pool to the right and a little kitchen garden to the left, and behind it a low wall draped in ivy and a plant whose dusty leaves resemble those of the lavender runs on the crest of a slight dip that looks out onto a field. Above the house, to the left, there towers a wooded hill.
When we arrived we were greeted at the front door and guided into the room at the back, which gives out onto the back yard, and then shook hands with the first brace of unknown relatives. It was less of an ordeal than expected. Then we looked at a big album of black-and-white photos of Mendelssohn connections that lay on the table in that room; I recognized my great-grandmother (or, as my father and his siblings called her, Omi) often, and even where the people were unknown the zeitgeistiness of the pictures was amusing. There was also a book of interviews with the sculptor Rodin, published as far as I remember in 1911 but bound in what seems to me to be a mildly anachronistic and elaborate leather binding lined with marbled paper, and full of good photos partly of Rodin's sculptures and partly of the paintings and sculptures of the older artists (e.g. Praxiteles, Michelangelo) who inspire him. It also held a photo of the bearded artist standing in his garden, nearly dwarfed by two swans in the foreground. The book, as far as I could tell, was bought by Omi, who was a devoted sculptor and painter herself.
On the wall there were posters of the family in its different branches, which I didn't peruse much, except to recognize portraits of the distant ancestors from the Mendelssohn archive in the Staatsbibliothek (State Library) and to find it funny which photos of us were chosen. J.'s photo was about fifteen years old, for instance, though it is a lovely one; it would take a keen physiognomist indeed to recognize that the endearing two-year-old and he are one and the same. Either way, it was comforting to see the photos of Opapa and Tante Nora, and to know that they are neither entirely gone, nor forgotten.
Then we ambled out into the garden and so on and so forth, and had photos taken of one generation at a time, until the luncheon was ready. I decided to wait until everyone else had taken their portions and took something to drink first. It was mineral water, which seems like a very diet-y choice, but the truth is that the toothache experience in December has turned me off sugary juices and even inspired a horror of sweet desserts. (Fortunately I often forget the latter and therefore eat as much chocolate, ice cream, etc., as I like.) And I didn't feel like having wine. Then, at any rate, we sat out on the benches and talked.
Normally the whole family sits together, but it is a tribute to the relaxed atmosphere that we were broken up this time and that this didn't make me uncomfortable. Part of it was that nobody addressed duty-conversation to me, or at least it didn't seem like duty-conversation; not that I mind such conversation except that talking about myself, which generally ends up happening, is awkward and uninteresting. When I'm left to myself but have enough going around me to prevent me from being or looking bored it's easier to relax, let go of my inhibitions and forget the insecurity that usually poisons social situations for me. Anyway, my parents discussed squirrels and other wildlife with my father's cousin's husband, and I pitched in from time to time.
As for the food, of which I did partake, it consisted of divers salads of lentils, couscous, tomatoes, etc., and cured salmon and other things I didn't have, as well as Marillenknödel, or apricot dumplings, for dessert. These dumplings are a local specialty, and consist of an apricot at the core, then a glutinous Spaetzle-like dough, and then a loose coating of sugar, breadcrumbs, butter, and maybe cinnamon. Aunt L. made sure I had some, and I especially liked the soft and nearly disintegrating apricot at the centre.
Then, since most people were out in the garden and out of earshot, I played the upright piano in the dining room after asking permission. My mood had improved in any case but the music made everything much better. Then Papa and I were asked to play a little together, since there was an informal concert planned. The original idea was more to provide background music, but most of the guests gathered in the chairs along the wall of the room, and we played Saint-Saëns's "Swan," a largo by Händel, and a folksong by Schumann. At the piano I had my back to the audience, which moreover gave out a friendly and undemanding aura, and I was in an absorbed mood, so there wasn't much room for nerves. The music in general would have gone better if Papa and I had practiced beforehand, and I think that some in the audience had expected a polished and carefully prepared performance instead of the spontaneous performance it was. We didn't announce our pieces in advance, either, as the musicians who came after us did. But to me it was more important that the music would be nice and sincere, and I think it was.
This mini-concert was also a good experience for me because it helped lay the ghost of the last time I played in front of so many people. It was when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and I had been having difficulties with the two pieces I performed even when playing them at home; so at the concert I made so many mistakes that it was already, as Mama said, impressive that I didn't break off before reaching the end. Though I understood even at the time that most of the audience were total strangers, and interested more in how their pupils and children played, it was pretty crushing. After that, whenever we drove past the church where it took place, I would look the other way, and I didn't like playing the pieces any more though I kept at them to try to overcome the bad association. This time I didn't have a melt-down and didn't play too differently from the way I play at home, so I was pleased and proud of myself.
After we were done, another relative played Schumann's Kinderszenen, which she executed extremely well. Then my grandfather's cousin's granddaughter, who is only sixteen, played a Mozart concerto movement on the violin, and I liked it very much — unpretentious, conscientiously worked out, and genuine. Of course there were criticisms to be made, but with house music it feels churlish to remember or mention them. Then the concert ended with the string musicians among us (Uncle Pu being one, of course (c: ) sight-reading Austrian folk dances.
After that some of the relatives took their leave, and others (like us) went for a walk to a waterfall. This waterfall is reached by winding along the road for a while, then turning off to the right and ambling through the forest, where stacks of felled trunks were piled up along the left and right of the road, the bark trodden into the muddy ground and the ensemble giving off a strong scent of resin which I've missed since we left Canada. At length we snaked up a path that finally leads to a wooden bridge over the creek, and above it the waterfall, an impressive series of gouged slides of pale rock over which the water plummets into kettles (also known as potholes) and then threshes out again on toward the flatter gravel-bottomed course of the creek. Rock and forest rise to the left and right, with wild flowers and brush in the sunny areas, and wet leaves and soil and rocks exposed in the shadowy ones. The rest of the path was barred due to recent tree slides, so we paused here before retracing our steps to the Dreieck.
Upon returning we sat down in the garden, where we were gradually joined by the others, and the best part of the day unfolded itself as we drank wine and talked and ate a little as the sun sank past the mountain to (presumably) the east. The conversation was at times amusingly erudite, touching among other things on Elias Canetti and Vladimir Nabokov's posthumously published, unfinished book, literary fame with its pros and cons, and gnosticism. L.'s husband M. also discussed green energy and heat storage with Ge., and I enjoyed listening to it especially since it was animated by a quiet, understated devotion to the subject. Later the general conversation turned to computers and the incompetence or malice of software developers (which of course immediately caught Papa's attention) and I liked that, though in essence the drift was the same, it was a subtler variation on the customary lamentations of the incomprehensibility of computers to the older generation, or of one's own stupidity. In the house the musicians were playing Haydn's trio in G major, a Mozart quartet, and other things, which drifted down to us, and there were also chocolates but I didn't have any.
Then we took our leave after signing the guestbook (I summoned the courage to formulate a message myself, in German, though I fear the result was a little generic; the others decided to sign underneath it). Altogether I was very happy and satisfied, and felt that, even if we hadn't gone to the art exhibition opening, lecture, boat ride, and other events, our portion in the reunion had been well rounded. There were people there whom I know well and care very much to see, and can't see often because they live too far away, and also people whom I'd very much like to know better. So the social side of it was — even considering the unhappy and grumpy mood I had been in and the stressfulness of interacting with relative strangers — rewarding.
Anyway, after breakfast we betook ourselves to the house, named the "Dreieck" presumably because of its right-angled floorplan, where my grandfather's family once spent its summers. It is a big but snug house (it would sprawl if it were constructed in a different style and climate, because of the number of rooms), shutters painted a bright darkish green that tends very slightly to the turquoise, and its outer walls are siding that has been painted a wintry brown-black shade. A garden runs on all four sides, a little pool to the right and a little kitchen garden to the left, and behind it a low wall draped in ivy and a plant whose dusty leaves resemble those of the lavender runs on the crest of a slight dip that looks out onto a field. Above the house, to the left, there towers a wooded hill.
When we arrived we were greeted at the front door and guided into the room at the back, which gives out onto the back yard, and then shook hands with the first brace of unknown relatives. It was less of an ordeal than expected. Then we looked at a big album of black-and-white photos of Mendelssohn connections that lay on the table in that room; I recognized my great-grandmother (or, as my father and his siblings called her, Omi) often, and even where the people were unknown the zeitgeistiness of the pictures was amusing. There was also a book of interviews with the sculptor Rodin, published as far as I remember in 1911 but bound in what seems to me to be a mildly anachronistic and elaborate leather binding lined with marbled paper, and full of good photos partly of Rodin's sculptures and partly of the paintings and sculptures of the older artists (e.g. Praxiteles, Michelangelo) who inspire him. It also held a photo of the bearded artist standing in his garden, nearly dwarfed by two swans in the foreground. The book, as far as I could tell, was bought by Omi, who was a devoted sculptor and painter herself.
On the wall there were posters of the family in its different branches, which I didn't peruse much, except to recognize portraits of the distant ancestors from the Mendelssohn archive in the Staatsbibliothek (State Library) and to find it funny which photos of us were chosen. J.'s photo was about fifteen years old, for instance, though it is a lovely one; it would take a keen physiognomist indeed to recognize that the endearing two-year-old and he are one and the same. Either way, it was comforting to see the photos of Opapa and Tante Nora, and to know that they are neither entirely gone, nor forgotten.
Then we ambled out into the garden and so on and so forth, and had photos taken of one generation at a time, until the luncheon was ready. I decided to wait until everyone else had taken their portions and took something to drink first. It was mineral water, which seems like a very diet-y choice, but the truth is that the toothache experience in December has turned me off sugary juices and even inspired a horror of sweet desserts. (Fortunately I often forget the latter and therefore eat as much chocolate, ice cream, etc., as I like.) And I didn't feel like having wine. Then, at any rate, we sat out on the benches and talked.
Normally the whole family sits together, but it is a tribute to the relaxed atmosphere that we were broken up this time and that this didn't make me uncomfortable. Part of it was that nobody addressed duty-conversation to me, or at least it didn't seem like duty-conversation; not that I mind such conversation except that talking about myself, which generally ends up happening, is awkward and uninteresting. When I'm left to myself but have enough going around me to prevent me from being or looking bored it's easier to relax, let go of my inhibitions and forget the insecurity that usually poisons social situations for me. Anyway, my parents discussed squirrels and other wildlife with my father's cousin's husband, and I pitched in from time to time.
As for the food, of which I did partake, it consisted of divers salads of lentils, couscous, tomatoes, etc., and cured salmon and other things I didn't have, as well as Marillenknödel, or apricot dumplings, for dessert. These dumplings are a local specialty, and consist of an apricot at the core, then a glutinous Spaetzle-like dough, and then a loose coating of sugar, breadcrumbs, butter, and maybe cinnamon. Aunt L. made sure I had some, and I especially liked the soft and nearly disintegrating apricot at the centre.
Then, since most people were out in the garden and out of earshot, I played the upright piano in the dining room after asking permission. My mood had improved in any case but the music made everything much better. Then Papa and I were asked to play a little together, since there was an informal concert planned. The original idea was more to provide background music, but most of the guests gathered in the chairs along the wall of the room, and we played Saint-Saëns's "Swan," a largo by Händel, and a folksong by Schumann. At the piano I had my back to the audience, which moreover gave out a friendly and undemanding aura, and I was in an absorbed mood, so there wasn't much room for nerves. The music in general would have gone better if Papa and I had practiced beforehand, and I think that some in the audience had expected a polished and carefully prepared performance instead of the spontaneous performance it was. We didn't announce our pieces in advance, either, as the musicians who came after us did. But to me it was more important that the music would be nice and sincere, and I think it was.
This mini-concert was also a good experience for me because it helped lay the ghost of the last time I played in front of so many people. It was when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and I had been having difficulties with the two pieces I performed even when playing them at home; so at the concert I made so many mistakes that it was already, as Mama said, impressive that I didn't break off before reaching the end. Though I understood even at the time that most of the audience were total strangers, and interested more in how their pupils and children played, it was pretty crushing. After that, whenever we drove past the church where it took place, I would look the other way, and I didn't like playing the pieces any more though I kept at them to try to overcome the bad association. This time I didn't have a melt-down and didn't play too differently from the way I play at home, so I was pleased and proud of myself.
After we were done, another relative played Schumann's Kinderszenen, which she executed extremely well. Then my grandfather's cousin's granddaughter, who is only sixteen, played a Mozart concerto movement on the violin, and I liked it very much — unpretentious, conscientiously worked out, and genuine. Of course there were criticisms to be made, but with house music it feels churlish to remember or mention them. Then the concert ended with the string musicians among us (Uncle Pu being one, of course (c: ) sight-reading Austrian folk dances.
After that some of the relatives took their leave, and others (like us) went for a walk to a waterfall. This waterfall is reached by winding along the road for a while, then turning off to the right and ambling through the forest, where stacks of felled trunks were piled up along the left and right of the road, the bark trodden into the muddy ground and the ensemble giving off a strong scent of resin which I've missed since we left Canada. At length we snaked up a path that finally leads to a wooden bridge over the creek, and above it the waterfall, an impressive series of gouged slides of pale rock over which the water plummets into kettles (also known as potholes) and then threshes out again on toward the flatter gravel-bottomed course of the creek. Rock and forest rise to the left and right, with wild flowers and brush in the sunny areas, and wet leaves and soil and rocks exposed in the shadowy ones. The rest of the path was barred due to recent tree slides, so we paused here before retracing our steps to the Dreieck.
Upon returning we sat down in the garden, where we were gradually joined by the others, and the best part of the day unfolded itself as we drank wine and talked and ate a little as the sun sank past the mountain to (presumably) the east. The conversation was at times amusingly erudite, touching among other things on Elias Canetti and Vladimir Nabokov's posthumously published, unfinished book, literary fame with its pros and cons, and gnosticism. L.'s husband M. also discussed green energy and heat storage with Ge., and I enjoyed listening to it especially since it was animated by a quiet, understated devotion to the subject. Later the general conversation turned to computers and the incompetence or malice of software developers (which of course immediately caught Papa's attention) and I liked that, though in essence the drift was the same, it was a subtler variation on the customary lamentations of the incomprehensibility of computers to the older generation, or of one's own stupidity. In the house the musicians were playing Haydn's trio in G major, a Mozart quartet, and other things, which drifted down to us, and there were also chocolates but I didn't have any.
Then we took our leave after signing the guestbook (I summoned the courage to formulate a message myself, in German, though I fear the result was a little generic; the others decided to sign underneath it). Altogether I was very happy and satisfied, and felt that, even if we hadn't gone to the art exhibition opening, lecture, boat ride, and other events, our portion in the reunion had been well rounded. There were people there whom I know well and care very much to see, and can't see often because they live too far away, and also people whom I'd very much like to know better. So the social side of it was — even considering the unhappy and grumpy mood I had been in and the stressfulness of interacting with relative strangers — rewarding.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Holiday in Austria, Part VI: "Reminiscensing"
The following morning I woke up at 6 a.m. pretty much on the nose. I went for a walk again, as slowly as an elderly lady due to the exercise of the preceding day, and enjoyed it. Breakfast was nice again, and after it we piled into the car and set off for a long journey around the places where Papa has lived. The first place was a town near Lambach and the farm on the Traun River where Opapa and the children once raised pigs (-> sausages) and cows (-> milk) and sheep. The second place was Salzburg, where the family lived for four months in relative poverty and on rations, if I remember the tale correctly, of sardines and grey bread.
This time the scenery was so immensely idyllic that from time to time it was difficult to grasp that it was real and not imagined. First we meandered around a mountainside to reach the Attersee, and once there saw before us a picture-book view of a vast spreading lake, perfect green hills loosely scattered over with snug farms, and bright villages clustered at the water's edge. Later the land just lazily sloped down at either side in similar perfection, and at the crest of one mountain I was surprised to recognize a scene that I had seen in a dream. In that dream there was also a tall hill overgrown with sunbleached grasses, and a forest of pines or firs reaching over the crest a little to the left and more to the right, but leaving an unbroken gap of blue sky between them. Whether horses or cows grazed on the field in the dream I don't remember; in real life it was cows.
Because of the constantly threatening rain and the fact that the abbey appeared to be closed we didn't linger in Lambach, though said abbey is apparently well worth seeing. Instead we drove off into the countryside straight away, and with a bafflingly precise sense of direction, Papa navigated a series of apparently featureless fields and found the farm. This farm is now embowered in a tall rim of trees, through which the cornfields, Traun, etc., are brokenly visible; the field at the river is overgrown by deep grass; a dusky reddish hollyhock grows at the house; and the house itself is big and, though as far as I could see its floor plan would probably be a classic square, complicated-looking, but not at all luxurious. It is, so Papa and later Aunt L. said, lamentably run down. The car tucked behind the house had a Linz license plate, which would also appear to indicate that the present landlord or -lady is considerably absentee.
Then we went on to Salzburg. As is unsurprising given the fact that I had slept around six hours after a very demanding day, I drifted off to sleep. Upon waking I found that we were essentially at the destination, and Papa curved up the roads to the church of Maria Plain, which had the effect of being a well-kept open secret. We parked there and walked up to the church proper, a summery edifice in a yellow, white-trimmed, and black-roofed colour scheme and in a hilltop setting that reminded me forcibly of the chapel my friend and I visited in Würzburg last summer. At the corner, at the top of the path from the parking lot, there is a white marker to commemorate the 80th birthday of one of the Austrian emperors — Franz Joseph I, perhaps. A lawn runs down toward the city of Salzburg and, off to the right, the abruptly rural villages, forest-steeped, in its orbit.
Salzburg turned out to be a littler city than I had anticipated. Its population, as a certain online encyclopaedia informed me later, is around 150,000. From the vantage-point of Maria Plain we saw the grassy expanse of airport to the right, the swell of Hohensalzburg with its wide crown of pale medieval fortress and immediately underneath and to its side older and elegant buildings, the mountains rising heavily above, a curve of the Salzach River in the centre, and then lots and lots of unappealing modern housing and industrial construction. The Hohensalzburg was luring but the rest of it was a major disappointment, probably because I've been carrying around a mental image or impression of the city for a while, which was perhaps fixed by my trip to Munich, and whatever I expected was certainly not that.
With our feet hastened by the dark grey raincloud that was pouring down from the mountain behind the city, we returned to the car and drove into the city. Papa manoeuvred a little tentatively around the streets at the left, past Brutalist apartment buildings that spoke of impoverished city suburb and past tidier houses with gardens that evoked Berlin-Dahlem a little, and near the tracks of the railway we came across the house in whose ground floor Papa had once lived. We only rolled past, but were pleased to have found it, especially considering the fact that we didn't have a proper map. Then we followed the railway track, and once again there was a scene that I recognized from a dream, not in its details but the general effect, and it was just an odd scene of urban wasteland.
At length we were curving around the streets of the old quarter, which underwhelmed me. There were tour buses, taxis, and everything was a bit chaotic; the apartment house façades were lacklustre and altogether inferior in originality and beauty to many of the ones I could see in Berlin just by walking down the street; the modern architecture looked, or so I thought, flamboyantly and soullessly ambitious; and it just wasn't especially pretty. We passed the entrance to the Mirabell Palace, which did look nice but I only caught a glimpse of the gardens through an archway. At some point we also saw the house where Mozart once lived, which looked more like a gift shop than a residence to me, and which was surrounded by a loose ring of tourists who had to hold back because a foreign dignitary was coming to visit it. There were six security men in navy-blue uniforms and berets at the entrance, and as we drove on a cavalcade of black compact cars and vans, sandwiched between two police vans, passed us. J. saw the flag on one of the cars but we haven't properly identified it yet.
Then we wound up past the Salzburger Festspielhaus, which I didn't see properly because I was on the wrong side of the car, so I only got the impression of an equine mural in pastel colours that didn't really speak to me, and I don't even know if that actually was the Festspielhaus. I did see a poster for a concert with Christine Schäfer, though, which is something . . . I guess. (c: Anyway, what was gripping was the rock face that rises above it and going through the mountain tunnel, which one doesn't precisely expect to find in the heart of a city. Based on my express desire Papa tried to find the parking lot for the Hohensalzburg fortress, so that we could explore it a little, but it was in vain. I think the parking lot is actually tucked away in a recess of the mountain. The others were eager to get something to eat and go home, but I thought that it would be nicer to take a little more time so that the experience wouldn't feel throwaway and rushed and so that the visit to Salzburg would end on a good note. Ironically I think it was the tedious to-ing and fro-ing around that occupied the next half hour or so that did help make the experience feel less rushed. In any case, we were frankly all grumpy and eager to get out of Salzburg.
What did make the trip end on a good note was our crossing of a bridge over the Salzach at a remove from the city centre, where the forest began again and isolated mansions that must have been built in the 18th century or so peeked majestically out from the tree crowns, and where the river itself looked tranquil and beautiful. If I return to the city I will try firstly to explore the old city by foot, which should be much less awkward than by car, and secondly to find the serene spot at the riverbanks again. And I might try it in autumn or winter.
Anyway, we drove back to Bad Goisern, which took an hour or so, and every time a pub or other eatery would come up and then recede into the distance someone would deliver a eulogy to the probable deliciousness of the foregone meal. I was fuming for various reasons, not least because of my eatery-related hang-ups. It's difficult for me to eat at a restaurant unless I know or otherwise trust it, just like when I was little. Secondly, being served makes me extremely uncomfortable, except in the rare cases where the waiter or waitress is naturally hospitable and enjoys his or her job, and where the fact that the customer is paying for services rendered and that there is a nasty element of classism about it slips one's mind.
The other major objection I had was that, if it makes sense, there are some luxuries that feel necessary (e.g. the trip to Austria and the integral gasoline, and car and cottage rental, costs) and others that really don't (e.g. a restaurant meal when we could have eaten delicious and filling and less expensive food at the cottage). I've trained myself not to buy unnecessary luxuries, and I've even trained myself not to want them. (It feels unhealthy, and if it weren't for the years of guilt about not having a job I don't think it would be endurable, but that's the way it is.) So it annoys me, until I reason myself out of the unworthy feeling, when others don't exercise as much self-restraint. Either way, I didn't express these thoughts or talk much at all, except to say that we were certainly not starving so there was no reason to fuss; I was in a glum mood and, though fairly certain that I was being ridiculous, didn't know how to snap out of it.
Back in Bad Goisern we went to a pub where the others (minus Papa, who stayed at home to play the cello and relax, and me, who was fast asleep) had gone on the first evening, and had a hearty meal of beef broth with parsley and shreds of egg frittata; beer or mineral water or sparkling apple juice (in Austria that mostly isn't called Apfelschorle but Prickel-something); the main course; and a tall glass of vanilla ice cream, whipping cream ("Schlagobers" in the local dialect), fudge sauce, and twin wafer pipes; and coffee. The main courses were a "Fitnessteller" of salad (chicory, lettuce, grated carrot, corn, etc.) and fried chicken; a pan of sauerkraut, ham, and fried potatoes with an egg, sunny side up, on top (this is what I had); a Wiener Schnitzel, turkey or pork, with buttery potatoes and what looked like cranberry sauce, as well as the choice of salad from the bar; and semolina dumplings. Altogether the food was hearty and geared toward those who want a solid meal without frills. As for the ambience, it was rather nice. One feature that amused me is the blue-trimmed cloth coverings for the lampshades that hung from the ceiling, which much resembled one leg of a Victorian bloomer.
By the time we went home again I was in a better mood.
This time the scenery was so immensely idyllic that from time to time it was difficult to grasp that it was real and not imagined. First we meandered around a mountainside to reach the Attersee, and once there saw before us a picture-book view of a vast spreading lake, perfect green hills loosely scattered over with snug farms, and bright villages clustered at the water's edge. Later the land just lazily sloped down at either side in similar perfection, and at the crest of one mountain I was surprised to recognize a scene that I had seen in a dream. In that dream there was also a tall hill overgrown with sunbleached grasses, and a forest of pines or firs reaching over the crest a little to the left and more to the right, but leaving an unbroken gap of blue sky between them. Whether horses or cows grazed on the field in the dream I don't remember; in real life it was cows.
Because of the constantly threatening rain and the fact that the abbey appeared to be closed we didn't linger in Lambach, though said abbey is apparently well worth seeing. Instead we drove off into the countryside straight away, and with a bafflingly precise sense of direction, Papa navigated a series of apparently featureless fields and found the farm. This farm is now embowered in a tall rim of trees, through which the cornfields, Traun, etc., are brokenly visible; the field at the river is overgrown by deep grass; a dusky reddish hollyhock grows at the house; and the house itself is big and, though as far as I could see its floor plan would probably be a classic square, complicated-looking, but not at all luxurious. It is, so Papa and later Aunt L. said, lamentably run down. The car tucked behind the house had a Linz license plate, which would also appear to indicate that the present landlord or -lady is considerably absentee.
Then we went on to Salzburg. As is unsurprising given the fact that I had slept around six hours after a very demanding day, I drifted off to sleep. Upon waking I found that we were essentially at the destination, and Papa curved up the roads to the church of Maria Plain, which had the effect of being a well-kept open secret. We parked there and walked up to the church proper, a summery edifice in a yellow, white-trimmed, and black-roofed colour scheme and in a hilltop setting that reminded me forcibly of the chapel my friend and I visited in Würzburg last summer. At the corner, at the top of the path from the parking lot, there is a white marker to commemorate the 80th birthday of one of the Austrian emperors — Franz Joseph I, perhaps. A lawn runs down toward the city of Salzburg and, off to the right, the abruptly rural villages, forest-steeped, in its orbit.
Salzburg turned out to be a littler city than I had anticipated. Its population, as a certain online encyclopaedia informed me later, is around 150,000. From the vantage-point of Maria Plain we saw the grassy expanse of airport to the right, the swell of Hohensalzburg with its wide crown of pale medieval fortress and immediately underneath and to its side older and elegant buildings, the mountains rising heavily above, a curve of the Salzach River in the centre, and then lots and lots of unappealing modern housing and industrial construction. The Hohensalzburg was luring but the rest of it was a major disappointment, probably because I've been carrying around a mental image or impression of the city for a while, which was perhaps fixed by my trip to Munich, and whatever I expected was certainly not that.
With our feet hastened by the dark grey raincloud that was pouring down from the mountain behind the city, we returned to the car and drove into the city. Papa manoeuvred a little tentatively around the streets at the left, past Brutalist apartment buildings that spoke of impoverished city suburb and past tidier houses with gardens that evoked Berlin-Dahlem a little, and near the tracks of the railway we came across the house in whose ground floor Papa had once lived. We only rolled past, but were pleased to have found it, especially considering the fact that we didn't have a proper map. Then we followed the railway track, and once again there was a scene that I recognized from a dream, not in its details but the general effect, and it was just an odd scene of urban wasteland.
At length we were curving around the streets of the old quarter, which underwhelmed me. There were tour buses, taxis, and everything was a bit chaotic; the apartment house façades were lacklustre and altogether inferior in originality and beauty to many of the ones I could see in Berlin just by walking down the street; the modern architecture looked, or so I thought, flamboyantly and soullessly ambitious; and it just wasn't especially pretty. We passed the entrance to the Mirabell Palace, which did look nice but I only caught a glimpse of the gardens through an archway. At some point we also saw the house where Mozart once lived, which looked more like a gift shop than a residence to me, and which was surrounded by a loose ring of tourists who had to hold back because a foreign dignitary was coming to visit it. There were six security men in navy-blue uniforms and berets at the entrance, and as we drove on a cavalcade of black compact cars and vans, sandwiched between two police vans, passed us. J. saw the flag on one of the cars but we haven't properly identified it yet.
Then we wound up past the Salzburger Festspielhaus, which I didn't see properly because I was on the wrong side of the car, so I only got the impression of an equine mural in pastel colours that didn't really speak to me, and I don't even know if that actually was the Festspielhaus. I did see a poster for a concert with Christine Schäfer, though, which is something . . . I guess. (c: Anyway, what was gripping was the rock face that rises above it and going through the mountain tunnel, which one doesn't precisely expect to find in the heart of a city. Based on my express desire Papa tried to find the parking lot for the Hohensalzburg fortress, so that we could explore it a little, but it was in vain. I think the parking lot is actually tucked away in a recess of the mountain. The others were eager to get something to eat and go home, but I thought that it would be nicer to take a little more time so that the experience wouldn't feel throwaway and rushed and so that the visit to Salzburg would end on a good note. Ironically I think it was the tedious to-ing and fro-ing around that occupied the next half hour or so that did help make the experience feel less rushed. In any case, we were frankly all grumpy and eager to get out of Salzburg.
What did make the trip end on a good note was our crossing of a bridge over the Salzach at a remove from the city centre, where the forest began again and isolated mansions that must have been built in the 18th century or so peeked majestically out from the tree crowns, and where the river itself looked tranquil and beautiful. If I return to the city I will try firstly to explore the old city by foot, which should be much less awkward than by car, and secondly to find the serene spot at the riverbanks again. And I might try it in autumn or winter.
Anyway, we drove back to Bad Goisern, which took an hour or so, and every time a pub or other eatery would come up and then recede into the distance someone would deliver a eulogy to the probable deliciousness of the foregone meal. I was fuming for various reasons, not least because of my eatery-related hang-ups. It's difficult for me to eat at a restaurant unless I know or otherwise trust it, just like when I was little. Secondly, being served makes me extremely uncomfortable, except in the rare cases where the waiter or waitress is naturally hospitable and enjoys his or her job, and where the fact that the customer is paying for services rendered and that there is a nasty element of classism about it slips one's mind.
The other major objection I had was that, if it makes sense, there are some luxuries that feel necessary (e.g. the trip to Austria and the integral gasoline, and car and cottage rental, costs) and others that really don't (e.g. a restaurant meal when we could have eaten delicious and filling and less expensive food at the cottage). I've trained myself not to buy unnecessary luxuries, and I've even trained myself not to want them. (It feels unhealthy, and if it weren't for the years of guilt about not having a job I don't think it would be endurable, but that's the way it is.) So it annoys me, until I reason myself out of the unworthy feeling, when others don't exercise as much self-restraint. Either way, I didn't express these thoughts or talk much at all, except to say that we were certainly not starving so there was no reason to fuss; I was in a glum mood and, though fairly certain that I was being ridiculous, didn't know how to snap out of it.
Back in Bad Goisern we went to a pub where the others (minus Papa, who stayed at home to play the cello and relax, and me, who was fast asleep) had gone on the first evening, and had a hearty meal of beef broth with parsley and shreds of egg frittata; beer or mineral water or sparkling apple juice (in Austria that mostly isn't called Apfelschorle but Prickel-something); the main course; and a tall glass of vanilla ice cream, whipping cream ("Schlagobers" in the local dialect), fudge sauce, and twin wafer pipes; and coffee. The main courses were a "Fitnessteller" of salad (chicory, lettuce, grated carrot, corn, etc.) and fried chicken; a pan of sauerkraut, ham, and fried potatoes with an egg, sunny side up, on top (this is what I had); a Wiener Schnitzel, turkey or pork, with buttery potatoes and what looked like cranberry sauce, as well as the choice of salad from the bar; and semolina dumplings. Altogether the food was hearty and geared toward those who want a solid meal without frills. As for the ambience, it was rather nice. One feature that amused me is the blue-trimmed cloth coverings for the lampshades that hung from the ceiling, which much resembled one leg of a Victorian bloomer.
By the time we went home again I was in a better mood.
Holiday in Austria, Part IV: Predigstuhl, cont'd.
Not long afterwards the gravel path petered out into an earth path, and then that earth path sprouted tributary paths by the handful, and whether these were made by overly intrepid hikers, hikers following the right path, wild animals, or some other influence was wholly unclear. We eventually stopped and held a long debate, then decided to advance up the highest of the hills around us. Undergrowth brushed against our shoes, a fallen tree trunk barred our path, our feet sank in rotten wood — cannon to left of us, cannon to right of us, cannon in front of us volleyed and thundered — etc., but stormed at with shot and shell, boldly we rode and well, and we still went half a league, half a league, half a league onward. By dint of this perseverance, we finally reached the top of the hill and had a breather. I emerged out into the sunlight and looked around a little, and there, on an abruptly rising slab of rock, was the cross which undoubtedly marked the summit of the Predigstuhl!
We clambered up the steep rock with the help of a guiding rope and of steps, and when an ant latched onto my hand I at length brushed it off into blueberry bushes, and then we all emerged out onto the rather small platform that was the peak. Toward the Dachstein mountain streamers of white linen with messages written on the fluttered from the thin bushes, and the other sides of the scene were rimmed by mountains in what is retrospectively probably the medieval European's idea of the end of the world, if it were not for the open vista beyond the Hallstätter Lake and the human habitations that liven up the solitude. Mama entered us into the logbook, kept in a little metal box affixed to the cross, and we realized that it was her birthday and sang accordingly. Gi. took photos of us with his digital camera, and we drank and partook of candies and dextrose tablets. It was a triumphant and festive interlude.
What goes up must come down, of course, and so we set off again to find our way down the mountain and return to Bad Goisern by a different path. This time it was well marked, so the chance of getting lost was minimal. But pretty much at the top my foot slipped into a crevice at the side of the path and both my knees were scraped. The left one quickly bled and the right one, though at first it was hidden by dirt, also bled a little. We hadn't brought along the bandaids and iodine salve; our water bottles were pretty much empty so rinsing the scrapes was out of the question. So the only alternative I could think of to prevent infection was to pinch the cuts so that they would bleed more and hopefully wash away the germs a little. When I did catch up to the others I felt rather like a drama queen with the blood trickling down from the knee in lurid contrast to the admittedly pasty hue of the skin, etc. It was only long afterwards, however, that the bruises formed and rounded out the spectacle in an achy rainbow of colours.
Anyway, the path was continually steep and peppered with loose rocks on which it would be easy to slip. All of us were on edge and the sound of someone sliding, though fortunately we would always recover quickly, was particularly unnerving. I was in an impatient mood, so it took a great mental effort to be careful and not to mind lagging behind the others as a result. And frankly the whole hike was as strenuous mentally as physically, perhaps even more so.
Then we reached a broad gravel road that winds, very leisurely, down to the parking lot of the Berghof Predigstuhl. The sun blazed on it and I felt more smug than ever about the sunscreen that I had applied with atypical prudence back at the cottage. What was not so nice is that my feet had slipped in the shoes all the way down the rocky slope, so my foot was a mass of tingling blisters and there were even little separate ones distinguishable on the toes. Then my back ached from time to time and so did the knees, though the scrapes only smarted at times and were otherwise well-behaved.
We reached the parking lot and looked at the map. According to the legend, a green dot denoted our position. Unfortunately there were two green dots on the map. Fortunately two other hikers passed us and informed us which green dot was the right one. So then we continued down along the asphalt road and began the immensely long descent into the valley. The slope of the road is very gentle, which must be a relief to those going up it, but for us it meant a seemingly endless back and forth along its windings. The asphalt was murder for the feet, especially blistery feet, and to be honest I intermittently felt like crying not because the pain was sharp but because it was so emotionally draining. On the positive side, the scenery was perfect — forest, brush, creeks, pastures, houses adorned in gingerbread, sleek cars gliding up the road, cyclists, inquisitive goats, cows whose bells sounded as they grazed, sheep, etc.
At last we wound through Lasern, down a little further to Bad Goisern, and in short order we were back at the cottage. I finally sat down and cried a bit, and that relieved the tension and made me feel better, though not much because even looking up at the Predigstuhl afterwards was dully traumatizing. It turned out that this ordeal had taken six hours. It's one of those experiences where it's hard to tell whether it was more worthwhile or awful.
[N.B.: Part V is next; it has slipped up above Part VIII on the blog.]
We clambered up the steep rock with the help of a guiding rope and of steps, and when an ant latched onto my hand I at length brushed it off into blueberry bushes, and then we all emerged out onto the rather small platform that was the peak. Toward the Dachstein mountain streamers of white linen with messages written on the fluttered from the thin bushes, and the other sides of the scene were rimmed by mountains in what is retrospectively probably the medieval European's idea of the end of the world, if it were not for the open vista beyond the Hallstätter Lake and the human habitations that liven up the solitude. Mama entered us into the logbook, kept in a little metal box affixed to the cross, and we realized that it was her birthday and sang accordingly. Gi. took photos of us with his digital camera, and we drank and partook of candies and dextrose tablets. It was a triumphant and festive interlude.
What goes up must come down, of course, and so we set off again to find our way down the mountain and return to Bad Goisern by a different path. This time it was well marked, so the chance of getting lost was minimal. But pretty much at the top my foot slipped into a crevice at the side of the path and both my knees were scraped. The left one quickly bled and the right one, though at first it was hidden by dirt, also bled a little. We hadn't brought along the bandaids and iodine salve; our water bottles were pretty much empty so rinsing the scrapes was out of the question. So the only alternative I could think of to prevent infection was to pinch the cuts so that they would bleed more and hopefully wash away the germs a little. When I did catch up to the others I felt rather like a drama queen with the blood trickling down from the knee in lurid contrast to the admittedly pasty hue of the skin, etc. It was only long afterwards, however, that the bruises formed and rounded out the spectacle in an achy rainbow of colours.
Anyway, the path was continually steep and peppered with loose rocks on which it would be easy to slip. All of us were on edge and the sound of someone sliding, though fortunately we would always recover quickly, was particularly unnerving. I was in an impatient mood, so it took a great mental effort to be careful and not to mind lagging behind the others as a result. And frankly the whole hike was as strenuous mentally as physically, perhaps even more so.
Then we reached a broad gravel road that winds, very leisurely, down to the parking lot of the Berghof Predigstuhl. The sun blazed on it and I felt more smug than ever about the sunscreen that I had applied with atypical prudence back at the cottage. What was not so nice is that my feet had slipped in the shoes all the way down the rocky slope, so my foot was a mass of tingling blisters and there were even little separate ones distinguishable on the toes. Then my back ached from time to time and so did the knees, though the scrapes only smarted at times and were otherwise well-behaved.
We reached the parking lot and looked at the map. According to the legend, a green dot denoted our position. Unfortunately there were two green dots on the map. Fortunately two other hikers passed us and informed us which green dot was the right one. So then we continued down along the asphalt road and began the immensely long descent into the valley. The slope of the road is very gentle, which must be a relief to those going up it, but for us it meant a seemingly endless back and forth along its windings. The asphalt was murder for the feet, especially blistery feet, and to be honest I intermittently felt like crying not because the pain was sharp but because it was so emotionally draining. On the positive side, the scenery was perfect — forest, brush, creeks, pastures, houses adorned in gingerbread, sleek cars gliding up the road, cyclists, inquisitive goats, cows whose bells sounded as they grazed, sheep, etc.
At last we wound through Lasern, down a little further to Bad Goisern, and in short order we were back at the cottage. I finally sat down and cried a bit, and that relieved the tension and made me feel better, though not much because even looking up at the Predigstuhl afterwards was dully traumatizing. It turned out that this ordeal had taken six hours. It's one of those experiences where it's hard to tell whether it was more worthwhile or awful.
[N.B.: Part V is next; it has slipped up above Part VIII on the blog.]
Holiday in Austria, Part III: The Predigstuhl
Before rejecting it as too long, I had considered entitling this episode as "Tackling the Predigstuhl," but then the thought immediately came to mind that, in truth, it tackled us. T. had spotted this mountain in her guide book and was eager to conquer it, and I was eager for hiking in general and even had my eye on the Traunstein, which is a taller peak that towers over the Traunsee like a great, barren tooth and had been visible from the highway for a long time. (As it turns out, ignorance — even egregious ignorance — was bliss.)
Anyway, on Saturday I woke up before 6 a.m. and spent some time writing and ambling around the town. Every quarter hour the Protestant church struck, once for :15, twice for :30, thrice for :45, and four times for the hour. Mingled with these four times there would come the more melodious and deeper tones of the Catholic church to ring out the hour properly. The light was still an early morning blue, though the sky was visible and the details of the mountains, as well as the fog that rose from beyond the railway tracks, were beautifully clear. A handful of birds twittered or chirped at various distances and the subdued roar and rush of the creek swelled from its hidden course. As the day grew brighter the clouds were tinged with apricot, the bird and ambient noises gathered in number until the creek was no longer audible, and the visibility even worsened a little as the mist began to rise from the trees and pastures and the valley. I could have used more sleep in lieu of it but it was a nice experience.
Mama and I went grocery-shopping and it was great to be in a generous-sized store again instead of the tiny Plus across the street. We bought Julius Meinl coffee, "Marillen" (the Austrian term for apricots, which are otherwise known as "Aprikosen" in German) marmalade, Gmunden milk and butter, buns, etc. Back at the cottage the others gradually woke up and we made a meal of it. I even had coffee (I normally avoid it because it feels too much like reckless tinkering with the nervous system — and yes, I am quite uptight).
Then Papa drove us up the slope of the Predigstuhl as far as a gravel road, which was not such a simple procedure because the Joseph-Putz-Straße which he had wanted to ascend was essentially hiding from us, and we kept seeing cars passing along a road further up the mountain but we couldn't get at it. One thing that set my teeth on edge in Austria is the tightly winding roads that are so narrow that literally only one car can pass at a time, and the road we eventually took was of this order. But we tumbled out of the car and waved goodbye to Papa cheerfully, and then set out on our merry way up the slope.
A little while later, especially once we were ascending a hiking path proper, our way was no longer so merry. I was particularly out of shape; aside from the morning when we started on our trip to Austria, I think I hadn't even set foot outside our apartment for over a week. My legs were sturdy and the will-power (viz. grim endurance and the determination not to lag or whine) was there in spades, nor did I sweat much, but I was almost hyperventilating in the effort to get air into my lungs. Then we strayed onto the wrong path. But our good mood held, and by the time we had stopped plodding along the rich, deep, needle-strewn ground and were passing along the sunny stretch of the Ewige Wand the progress was easier. I was pleased when I looked over the edge of the path and contemplated the forest and rockslides far below us without a hint of vertigo. On the other hand, the same flexible steely ropes that formed the railing of the path also served as climbers' guiding-ropes out onto the sheer rock faces, and though in films like Cliffhanger the thought of such climbing never bothered me, when one actually sees one of those slopes in person the realization strikes that it is truly mad. Still, the views were good, and Bad Goisern and the Hallstätter See, along with the surrounding mountains, were neatly spread out before us. (There was even what looked like wild oregano flowering on the thin strip between the railing and the precipice.) Anyway, the path also led through tunnels which, though a trifle dank, were interesting, too.
A long while later, travelling ever higher through the trees and tiny blueberry bushes, over the white chalky stones and exposed roots, past the anthills and past the sunlit observation points where the wildflowers bloomed among the tall tanned grasses, we found what appeared to be, in the absence of proper signage to the contrary, the peak of the Predigstuhl. It was marked, however, in a lacklustre triangle of the same red and white paint that had been applied to the trees and stones to mark out the route earlier. As Mama remarked, the "peak experience" (or, in her German, "Gipfelerlebnis") was not there. Exhausted though we were, and irritated by the woodpaths which we had followed (the only other proper hiking we've done is in East Sooke Park, back in Canada, and there it was much harder to stray onto spurious paths), we walked on down the slope a little to try to find signs.
There we saw an even higher mound rising before us, of whose identity we were unsure. After a while the certainty dawned on us that this was the proper Predigstuhl. At first we had no intention of continuing, but by now it was a point of pride to reach the true summit. So we descended the lower hill which we had so painfully ascended, then ascended the higher hill. The path was broad and clear, and we cheerily took it through the patch of brush, but then it forked and there was no sign which prong was the proper one. We went to the right.
Anyway, on Saturday I woke up before 6 a.m. and spent some time writing and ambling around the town. Every quarter hour the Protestant church struck, once for :15, twice for :30, thrice for :45, and four times for the hour. Mingled with these four times there would come the more melodious and deeper tones of the Catholic church to ring out the hour properly. The light was still an early morning blue, though the sky was visible and the details of the mountains, as well as the fog that rose from beyond the railway tracks, were beautifully clear. A handful of birds twittered or chirped at various distances and the subdued roar and rush of the creek swelled from its hidden course. As the day grew brighter the clouds were tinged with apricot, the bird and ambient noises gathered in number until the creek was no longer audible, and the visibility even worsened a little as the mist began to rise from the trees and pastures and the valley. I could have used more sleep in lieu of it but it was a nice experience.
Mama and I went grocery-shopping and it was great to be in a generous-sized store again instead of the tiny Plus across the street. We bought Julius Meinl coffee, "Marillen" (the Austrian term for apricots, which are otherwise known as "Aprikosen" in German) marmalade, Gmunden milk and butter, buns, etc. Back at the cottage the others gradually woke up and we made a meal of it. I even had coffee (I normally avoid it because it feels too much like reckless tinkering with the nervous system — and yes, I am quite uptight).
Then Papa drove us up the slope of the Predigstuhl as far as a gravel road, which was not such a simple procedure because the Joseph-Putz-Straße which he had wanted to ascend was essentially hiding from us, and we kept seeing cars passing along a road further up the mountain but we couldn't get at it. One thing that set my teeth on edge in Austria is the tightly winding roads that are so narrow that literally only one car can pass at a time, and the road we eventually took was of this order. But we tumbled out of the car and waved goodbye to Papa cheerfully, and then set out on our merry way up the slope.
A little while later, especially once we were ascending a hiking path proper, our way was no longer so merry. I was particularly out of shape; aside from the morning when we started on our trip to Austria, I think I hadn't even set foot outside our apartment for over a week. My legs were sturdy and the will-power (viz. grim endurance and the determination not to lag or whine) was there in spades, nor did I sweat much, but I was almost hyperventilating in the effort to get air into my lungs. Then we strayed onto the wrong path. But our good mood held, and by the time we had stopped plodding along the rich, deep, needle-strewn ground and were passing along the sunny stretch of the Ewige Wand the progress was easier. I was pleased when I looked over the edge of the path and contemplated the forest and rockslides far below us without a hint of vertigo. On the other hand, the same flexible steely ropes that formed the railing of the path also served as climbers' guiding-ropes out onto the sheer rock faces, and though in films like Cliffhanger the thought of such climbing never bothered me, when one actually sees one of those slopes in person the realization strikes that it is truly mad. Still, the views were good, and Bad Goisern and the Hallstätter See, along with the surrounding mountains, were neatly spread out before us. (There was even what looked like wild oregano flowering on the thin strip between the railing and the precipice.) Anyway, the path also led through tunnels which, though a trifle dank, were interesting, too.
A long while later, travelling ever higher through the trees and tiny blueberry bushes, over the white chalky stones and exposed roots, past the anthills and past the sunlit observation points where the wildflowers bloomed among the tall tanned grasses, we found what appeared to be, in the absence of proper signage to the contrary, the peak of the Predigstuhl. It was marked, however, in a lacklustre triangle of the same red and white paint that had been applied to the trees and stones to mark out the route earlier. As Mama remarked, the "peak experience" (or, in her German, "Gipfelerlebnis") was not there. Exhausted though we were, and irritated by the woodpaths which we had followed (the only other proper hiking we've done is in East Sooke Park, back in Canada, and there it was much harder to stray onto spurious paths), we walked on down the slope a little to try to find signs.
There we saw an even higher mound rising before us, of whose identity we were unsure. After a while the certainty dawned on us that this was the proper Predigstuhl. At first we had no intention of continuing, but by now it was a point of pride to reach the true summit. So we descended the lower hill which we had so painfully ascended, then ascended the higher hill. The path was broad and clear, and we cheerily took it through the patch of brush, but then it forked and there was no sign which prong was the proper one. We went to the right.
Holiday in Austria, Part II: Bad Goisern
Photo by Gi., 24/07/09 A view of Bad Goisern from the Ewige Wand. Right-click on the photo and "view image" to see it in (much) greater detail. The churches I describe below are both near the backwards L-shaped building with the turquoise roof.Bad Goisern is a town at the tip of the Hallstätter Lake, the trim houses flocking along a valley through which an idyllic creek flows, a railroad track leads, and a road runs to Bad Ischl and beyond. A mound of mountains culminating in the Predigstuhl (1278 m) rises to the far side of the road. It is predominantly covered in forest that is a mixture of leafy and needle trees, but there are also beautiful sloped pastures and stately wooden houses in cheerful white and chocolate brown, which look like something straight out of Heidi. Bared at the top in a long, rough bluish-grey facade of rock known as the "Ewige Wand" ("eternal wall"). On the other side there is an even more impressive backdrop of mountains, tall and a little somber, which looked on the first day as if they were drawn in grey pastel and smudged with a shade of pine-green so dark as to be nearly black where the evergreen trees tentatively cloak the steep folds. One peak is grassy and sparsely speckled with loose rocks, and it reminded me forcibly of the Scottish Highlands. Surprisingly enough the height of the mountains is not too oppressive and the valley feels, if anything, brightly snug.
There is a market in Bad Goisern, housed in a large circular white tent on the designated marketplace; at least two schools, one of which was evidently constructed in the 1960s; a little museum with a wooden salt barge in front of it; a recreation centre; a public bath; and two churches that I could see. One is a Catholic church, which was mostly built in the 19th century but has been around in one form or another since the Middle Ages, and which while true in its simple way to the Gothic aesthetic, is surrounded by asphalt and isn't that lovely to begin with, though reasonably or not I found the way the red roof was tiled delightful. The other church is a Protestant one, cheerfully painted in yellow and white trim, and surmounted by a black spire; it also has a graveyard beside it, the surprisingly merry type I also encountered last year in Füssen (Bavaria), where the ground is covered in light gravel and the graves are decked out in vivid live and cut flowers — marigolds, begonias, impatiens, roses, lilies of the valley (the blossoms of these were long gone), etc. As far as I remember it originated in 1791, but the oldest gravestones appear to hail from the 1960s. At the entrance there are plaques, one commemorating the victims of an avalanche, and another the ca. 275 men from Bad Goisern who died or went missing in World War II. Two elaborate plaques listed dates and places as well as names with the photos of World War I veterans, of which there were evidently over fifty.
Altogether most of the buildings are older or at least traditional — gingerbread and shutters and all — though the sprawling grocery stores are decidedly modern. As I noticed in Munich last year, the chimneys are fitted out with tiny (and not infrequently adorable) roofs, though in Bad Goisern a boring tendency was to merely affix an inverted curved piece of metal over them. The roof tiles often have hooks on them, and Mama suggested that this might be meant to let the snow slide off better. The windows are mostly diminutive rectangles and the ceilings are not high, presumably to preserve warmth in the winter, but at least in the summer the effect is not depressing.
We stayed in a trim wooden cottage beside the graveyard and the facilities were quite nice. The bed linen was provided, stacked on a chair beside the door of the upper floor where the beds were; so was a combined kitchen and dining room on the ground floor, which was presumably converted from a stable and has thick fieldstone walls; a round table and two chairs greeted us on the balcony, from which torrents of pink and periwinkle and red petunias hung; and a tennis/volleyball court as well as two miniature soccer goals were at our disposal out of doors. From what I could tell, the architecture of the cottage is remarkably sturdy, livable, and complete, though it is very little.
Photo by Me. This is the cottage in which we stayed, and in particular of the fieldstone-walled ground floor where the kitchen and dining room are located. Note how, due to my pathetic photography, the unimportant things are big and the important things are small. (c:On the first evening we wandered along the creek until we reached the monument to the 19th-century philosopher and one-time village mayor Konrad Deubler. The banks of the watercourse were manicured within an inch of their lives, but I liked it. There were pear trees, a stately house in pale lime green that was overrun by dense vines, ducks, a sloe bush, hostas, etc., and thinking of the bleakness of winter I thought that it was, like the valley as a whole, a welcome oasis in the wilderness.
Altogether the scenery was so harmonious and contented, and so free of disturbing factors at least to me, that I felt entirely at ease. It was good to know that I could go for a walk and there was a chance of not meeting a single other person along the way, and at the same time it was by no means desolate. I liked it, too, that people greet each other in the streets, and it being Austria, "Grüss Gott" was as common as "Guten Morgen," etc. As for the natural environment, it was very much the world of the Romantics, but true and tangible and therefore very much to my taste. It often reminded me of Schubert, especially his Schöne Müllerin ("Ich hört ein Bächlein rauschen," etc.).
At around 8 p.m. I went to sleep, after Uncle Pu (who stayed in the cottage with us) had finally come in his car after being held up by fallen trees near Passau. I woke up again after dark to the sound of rain, as lightning flickered nearly constantly and rolls of thunder resounded now and then through the great bowl of valley and mountain. Even though I am fond of thunderstorms in the abstract, at that altitude the experience toed the line between awe-inspiring and scary. Still, going back to sleep was not difficult.
Holiday in Austria, Part I: On the Road
This account is not as good as I'd like it to be, and if I had much more time I'd try to write it in a more genuine voice, but I've already revised it often and I don't want to wait too long after the event to post it. It should be a thorough overview of what happened; I haven't censored the disagreeable parts and I've only left out things that are too personal and navel-gazing. Hopefully the final result isn't too long.
July 23rd proved a good day to embark on a road trip. The cityscape and landscape were much more cheerful for the sunshine, though when our journey began at 10:10 a.m. the light was peculiarly subdued in a way more befitting the evening than morning hours, and for once the pine woods (relieved by birches, furled oaks, beeches, red-berried ash, and the other leafy trees that flock along the highway) and stark fields of Brandenburg looked relatively lively. At the roadside I spotted what looked like Queen Anne's lace, yellow-flowered mullein stalks, etc. There was even a field plunged in shade by slender lines of dusky, translucent tree and illumined by the sun and the intensely green grass, and scattered over with cows in divers tints of beige and brown, and it could have been a French or English landscape painting.
There were sunflower fields bristling with the heavy golden heads, wheat fields evidently shorn of their grain, pastures as vividly emerald as if it were spring, corn fields where the silk was browning at the tip of the sizable husks, and hay fields. In some of these hay fields the grass still grew tall and golden; others had been shorn and the grass lay in squiggly lines to dry; others had been harvested entirely, so the bales were gathered and lying in their plastic hulls.
The car was jam-packed with the lot of us, but Papa had on the air conditioning all the time, because the brisk coldness keeps the mind alert. Since I am one of the Little People anyway I had no difficulty with the scant leg room either. We had plentiful provisions, purchased by Gi. and covering quite thoroughly what Homer Simpson once termed the "neglected food groups." Mama had also made sandwiches and we had an artillery of water bottles, too, so it wasn't all unhealthy. We paused a couple times at rest stops, which varied from a pleasantly rural lane adorned on the right side with a solitary portable toilet, to commercial complexes with gas station, chain fast food store, etc.
After leaving Brandenburg for Thuringia and Thuringia for Bavaria, we entered Austria, going through Passau and crossing the Inn River. The signs diverted us to a gas station where Papa bought a toll ticket for ca. 7.80 Euros. But thanks to the Schengen Agreement there was no rifling through our luggage or filling out of forms or displaying of passports (we had along our personal ID cards, of course, since that is obligatory even within Germany anyway). Then we drove on and crossed the Danube three or four times, and contrary to expectation its idyllic grace did live up to its elevated cultural role. It was dark and tranquil and spread elegantly between the banks, where deserted pastures and trees held the water at bay, and no sordid traffic or industry was visible either on the river or beside it.
After a pit stop at the Voralpenkreuz, or a big highway crossing in the prealpine region, where we bought a map and the facial traits of the attendant reminded me intriguingly of my great-aunt's, we finally found the town of Gmunden and curved around the Traunsee, or Traun Lake, toward Bad Goisern, the location of our cottage. The roads were lined and busy with a colourful procession of cars, and as we passed along the lakeside the beaches were even more colourful with the sun- and proper bathers. Apparently the water is bone-chillingly cold, but the scene was Mediterranean. As for the lake itself, it is broad and dull, and mountains rise out of it from all sides, giving it a cooler and perhaps more Nordic flair, but then we did see it in the evening and perhaps it can look as lively and blue as a glacier lake at other times. It reminded me of Okanagan Lake, back in Canada, though the shores of that lake are lower and more gentle.
July 23rd proved a good day to embark on a road trip. The cityscape and landscape were much more cheerful for the sunshine, though when our journey began at 10:10 a.m. the light was peculiarly subdued in a way more befitting the evening than morning hours, and for once the pine woods (relieved by birches, furled oaks, beeches, red-berried ash, and the other leafy trees that flock along the highway) and stark fields of Brandenburg looked relatively lively. At the roadside I spotted what looked like Queen Anne's lace, yellow-flowered mullein stalks, etc. There was even a field plunged in shade by slender lines of dusky, translucent tree and illumined by the sun and the intensely green grass, and scattered over with cows in divers tints of beige and brown, and it could have been a French or English landscape painting.
There were sunflower fields bristling with the heavy golden heads, wheat fields evidently shorn of their grain, pastures as vividly emerald as if it were spring, corn fields where the silk was browning at the tip of the sizable husks, and hay fields. In some of these hay fields the grass still grew tall and golden; others had been shorn and the grass lay in squiggly lines to dry; others had been harvested entirely, so the bales were gathered and lying in their plastic hulls.
The car was jam-packed with the lot of us, but Papa had on the air conditioning all the time, because the brisk coldness keeps the mind alert. Since I am one of the Little People anyway I had no difficulty with the scant leg room either. We had plentiful provisions, purchased by Gi. and covering quite thoroughly what Homer Simpson once termed the "neglected food groups." Mama had also made sandwiches and we had an artillery of water bottles, too, so it wasn't all unhealthy. We paused a couple times at rest stops, which varied from a pleasantly rural lane adorned on the right side with a solitary portable toilet, to commercial complexes with gas station, chain fast food store, etc.
After leaving Brandenburg for Thuringia and Thuringia for Bavaria, we entered Austria, going through Passau and crossing the Inn River. The signs diverted us to a gas station where Papa bought a toll ticket for ca. 7.80 Euros. But thanks to the Schengen Agreement there was no rifling through our luggage or filling out of forms or displaying of passports (we had along our personal ID cards, of course, since that is obligatory even within Germany anyway). Then we drove on and crossed the Danube three or four times, and contrary to expectation its idyllic grace did live up to its elevated cultural role. It was dark and tranquil and spread elegantly between the banks, where deserted pastures and trees held the water at bay, and no sordid traffic or industry was visible either on the river or beside it.
After a pit stop at the Voralpenkreuz, or a big highway crossing in the prealpine region, where we bought a map and the facial traits of the attendant reminded me intriguingly of my great-aunt's, we finally found the town of Gmunden and curved around the Traunsee, or Traun Lake, toward Bad Goisern, the location of our cottage. The roads were lined and busy with a colourful procession of cars, and as we passed along the lakeside the beaches were even more colourful with the sun- and proper bathers. Apparently the water is bone-chillingly cold, but the scene was Mediterranean. As for the lake itself, it is broad and dull, and mountains rise out of it from all sides, giving it a cooler and perhaps more Nordic flair, but then we did see it in the evening and perhaps it can look as lively and blue as a glacier lake at other times. It reminded me of Okanagan Lake, back in Canada, though the shores of that lake are lower and more gentle.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
South of the Border
Within one and a half hours, if all goes well, Papa, Mama, T., Gi., Ge. J. and I — in short, the whole family — will be en route to northwestern Austria for a family reunion. Yesterday evening I wrote up a list, which I normally like to do a day or two before the journey starts so that there's enough time to think of and add items that didn't come to mind at once, and began packing, and now all that's missing is the toothpaste and toothbrush. Besides that, I've disposed of the sock collection that has been lurking under my bed for weeks (thanks to my habit of going barefoot in hot weather, there weren't too many of them), changed my bedsheets, and heroically disposed of much of the perishable food in the kitchen.
Normally when a major journey lies before me I'm too excited to go to sleep at a reasonable time, but the heightened nervous state brought on by this excitement means that I can tell myself to wake up at a certain hour, for instance 4:15 a.m., and I will. Last night, however, I wasn't sleepy, and therefore didn't put the body clock to a test. My schedule has been unorthodox anyway, and even though a glass of red wine (we have an open bottle and it seemed wise to finish it before it turns sour) made me lethargic, I promptly developed a toothache which thoroughly counteracted the lethargy. So, after taking an aspirin, then lying in the dark and vainly trying to be sleepy for quarter of an hour or more, I decided to ditch that approach and instead read an online book or two until everyone else woke up. The toothache vanished. Now I'm in the wired mood that usually follows a sleepless night, and grumpy.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the trip a great deal. Most of the people at the reunion will be strangers, though Uncle Pu and Aunt L. will be there, and we're at least acquainted with the two organizers. The North American branch of my father's family is the most familiar, but the States-siders at least are, we gather, staying home because of the financial crisis. Honestly, what makes me most cheerful is, first of all, the opportunity to see something of Austria and especially a corner of it that meant a lot to Opapa, secondly, the opportunity to swim and climb mountains, and thirdly, the road trip itself. Besides, I look forward to taking detailed notes about everything.
Normally when a major journey lies before me I'm too excited to go to sleep at a reasonable time, but the heightened nervous state brought on by this excitement means that I can tell myself to wake up at a certain hour, for instance 4:15 a.m., and I will. Last night, however, I wasn't sleepy, and therefore didn't put the body clock to a test. My schedule has been unorthodox anyway, and even though a glass of red wine (we have an open bottle and it seemed wise to finish it before it turns sour) made me lethargic, I promptly developed a toothache which thoroughly counteracted the lethargy. So, after taking an aspirin, then lying in the dark and vainly trying to be sleepy for quarter of an hour or more, I decided to ditch that approach and instead read an online book or two until everyone else woke up. The toothache vanished. Now I'm in the wired mood that usually follows a sleepless night, and grumpy.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the trip a great deal. Most of the people at the reunion will be strangers, though Uncle Pu and Aunt L. will be there, and we're at least acquainted with the two organizers. The North American branch of my father's family is the most familiar, but the States-siders at least are, we gather, staying home because of the financial crisis. Honestly, what makes me most cheerful is, first of all, the opportunity to see something of Austria and especially a corner of it that meant a lot to Opapa, secondly, the opportunity to swim and climb mountains, and thirdly, the road trip itself. Besides, I look forward to taking detailed notes about everything.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Introspection, Yet Again
Today I had one of the long piano sessions where I go from one composer to another as if it were a journey, feel as if I were living out the music as I play it, and do that for hours until I feel satisfied. Normally my fingers feel stubby and awkward, but lately they've been agile and altogether fine, so that impediment is gone. This time I would have liked to play longer, but it was nearly 8 p.m. and I didn't want to tax the patience of our neighbours. It's been over a year since one of them complained, but it isn't much fun to play with the consciousness that it might really be bothering someone, especially as I know how antagonizing and invasive music can be if one doesn't want to hear it. (Even though I've learned to tune it out or to listen to other music.)
In case it wasn't already evident, I'm extremely insecure about the way I play the piano. When I was little it went well enough, but later it was impossible to play without making lots of errors. I never liked it when others listened to me or when I had to play in public, because I was convinced that it was insufferably mediocre. Then I became nervous easily, which was quite as unpleasant — my fingers and hands and even legs would tremble, my concentration was shot, and it was painful to butcher the music and let everyone down. I still become nervous and trembly but it's become easier to control, and it's nice to have the opportunity to practice controlling it. On the other hand, making mistakes hasn't become easier to bear, though fortunately there are fewer of them. What has always confused me, too, is that at the same time I suspect that I can play remarkably well; so the question is why I don't — I blame myself for it, which naturally doesn't improve matters — and at other times if I'm not stupidly conceited. Compliments unsettle me except if they're understated and, as far as I can tell, justified, because they tend to make me feel even more aware of my shortcomings and to fear that I'm misleading people into having a higher opinion of my playing than they should.
But I don't regret not having practiced more when I was little. I didn't consciously need music as badly as I do now, and I think that any attempts at training precocity would have made my understanding of it shallow and egotistical. Now there is a strong motive to impel me to play as well as I can, and what does console me for falling short now is the consciousness that I like working away at it and that it might very well keep me happily busy for the rest of my life. If the piano repertoire ever seems too limited to me, there are other instruments and composition, besides which I can always mend my ignorance of music history, counterpoint, etc.
Anyway, I've realized that I blame myself for a lot of things, and that perhaps it isn't right to do that. It's just that since I was very little it has seemed to me that I was singlehandedly responsible for all my imperfections and for correcting them. Besides, whenever anyone has been mean to me I've always felt that it was my fault for not being more courageous and strong, or for putting myself in a position that invited it. That's one reason why I've become a hermit. If I keep strictly to myself and don't provoke attention then no one will be tempted to say or do anything tactless or cruel, and I won't take these things too much to heart and suffer in a way that wasn't at all intended.
Sort of à propos, I've decided not to urgently look for work any more. I keep on looking up job listings and working on stories, but most of the time I daydream and do other things, enjoyable and harmless things like playing the piano or experimenting with recipes or reading. The purgatory of guilt I've been putting myself through for the past three years hasn't brought me any job and besides it's really not the way I want to spend my life. Despite appearances, I know that I am not that lazy or self-indulgent, and deep down I've known that for a while, so it's time to stop punishing myself for sins that do not exist. Financially I'm leeching off my parents, but I think that being around for them and my siblings really compensates for it, and that I help make them happy. Usually I'm afraid of accepting favours or kindnesses because I don't think that I can reciprocate them, but in this case it feels profoundly right.
In case it wasn't already evident, I'm extremely insecure about the way I play the piano. When I was little it went well enough, but later it was impossible to play without making lots of errors. I never liked it when others listened to me or when I had to play in public, because I was convinced that it was insufferably mediocre. Then I became nervous easily, which was quite as unpleasant — my fingers and hands and even legs would tremble, my concentration was shot, and it was painful to butcher the music and let everyone down. I still become nervous and trembly but it's become easier to control, and it's nice to have the opportunity to practice controlling it. On the other hand, making mistakes hasn't become easier to bear, though fortunately there are fewer of them. What has always confused me, too, is that at the same time I suspect that I can play remarkably well; so the question is why I don't — I blame myself for it, which naturally doesn't improve matters — and at other times if I'm not stupidly conceited. Compliments unsettle me except if they're understated and, as far as I can tell, justified, because they tend to make me feel even more aware of my shortcomings and to fear that I'm misleading people into having a higher opinion of my playing than they should.
But I don't regret not having practiced more when I was little. I didn't consciously need music as badly as I do now, and I think that any attempts at training precocity would have made my understanding of it shallow and egotistical. Now there is a strong motive to impel me to play as well as I can, and what does console me for falling short now is the consciousness that I like working away at it and that it might very well keep me happily busy for the rest of my life. If the piano repertoire ever seems too limited to me, there are other instruments and composition, besides which I can always mend my ignorance of music history, counterpoint, etc.
Anyway, I've realized that I blame myself for a lot of things, and that perhaps it isn't right to do that. It's just that since I was very little it has seemed to me that I was singlehandedly responsible for all my imperfections and for correcting them. Besides, whenever anyone has been mean to me I've always felt that it was my fault for not being more courageous and strong, or for putting myself in a position that invited it. That's one reason why I've become a hermit. If I keep strictly to myself and don't provoke attention then no one will be tempted to say or do anything tactless or cruel, and I won't take these things too much to heart and suffer in a way that wasn't at all intended.
Sort of à propos, I've decided not to urgently look for work any more. I keep on looking up job listings and working on stories, but most of the time I daydream and do other things, enjoyable and harmless things like playing the piano or experimenting with recipes or reading. The purgatory of guilt I've been putting myself through for the past three years hasn't brought me any job and besides it's really not the way I want to spend my life. Despite appearances, I know that I am not that lazy or self-indulgent, and deep down I've known that for a while, so it's time to stop punishing myself for sins that do not exist. Financially I'm leeching off my parents, but I think that being around for them and my siblings really compensates for it, and that I help make them happy. Usually I'm afraid of accepting favours or kindnesses because I don't think that I can reciprocate them, but in this case it feels profoundly right.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Citius, Altius, Fortius
After my "holiday" ended the question of What to Do Next felt more perplexing than ever, and I was preparing to become depressed and to pick myself out of the depression again, but fortunately we have visitors in the form of a family friend (and our former piano teacher) S., her husband M., and their two children R. and S. Now that I am less shy I like having visitors at our apartment, and find that "the more the merrier" is quite true. They are staying in Gi.'s room, Gi. being off on a bike tour straight across Germany. The last time he checked in was on the morning after the first day and night, at which point he had reached Dessau. Two days have passed since then, but since we aren't the frequent phoning type and he particularly is not wildly addicted to communication, this isn't worrisome. What I want to know when it's over is whether it was more adventurous or more uncomfortable; for one thing he didn't sleep very well the first night.
This morning, at any rate, our guests and I (the guide, as far as limited knowledge and volubility permitted) took the M48 bus straight to the Marienkirche station and then wandered around the Alexanderplatz. I'd never been in the Marienkirche before and thought it worthwhile. The mournful bareness of the whitewashed walls, glimpses of homely brick, and the dampening effect of the low ribbed arches at the entrance were moving, and I liked the Baroque grave plaques and the unframed paintings. Besides I have a fascination for the little preacher loges that have winding staircases leading up to them, and for fluted pillars. The organ was unfortunately under wraps, but from a poster I gathered that it's a gleaming artillery of gilt. As far as I could tell the fault of this church is that it is poorly thought out; the proportions are peculiar, and the windows very high-set and not especially large, even though the structure itself would seem stable enough to sustain apertures of greater width and breadth.
What I also liked at Alexanderplatz, besides the linden and other leafy trees (the roses are too hot pink for my snobby tastes), and the façade of the Rotes Rathaus, was the Neptunbrunnen. The webbed feet of the sea-centaurs are amusingly creepy, but what I especially liked is that elements like the rock and the serpent are so convincingly executed; they are not idealized out of all verisimilitude but have a gritty lifelike texture.
We went on along through the park with the statues of Marx and Engels who somehow looked as much like bearded shoulder-pads as humanoid figures can look, and the shapes of twisty headless male forms hewn out of a block of pale grey stone, then lingered at the Spreeufer. The posterior of the Berliner Dom is actually rather nice, or at least I like that it is retired and shady, and that balustered stairs ran down to a modest walkway along the waters. After crossing the bridge we decided to enter the Dom, which cost 5 Euros per person but was free for the two children. It may not be good taste on my part, but aside from the stained glass (whose colour palette reminds me of strained turnips and carrots for some reason), I like the profusion of ornament inside the cupola: Italianate marble, white statues, balconies, gilt, Corinthian-order pilasters, etc. And what I especially liked are the sarcophagi of Friedrich III, Sophie Charlotte, etc., which were simply very weighty, sombre, and impressive.
Then we wandered along Unter den Linden, and I was quite excited to see the big tent for Fashion Week set up at Bebelplatz. We rested in the courtyard of the Preussische Staatsbibliothek, of which I am very fond, and I can't tell whether the architecture itself is much good or whether it's the vines that give it a mysterious, retired, and aged air. But the fountain basin is wholly bare, presumably because the statuary in it is undergoing repair, and what remains reminds me that fountain rims are often incredibly ugly.
As far as tourists (besides ourselves) went, I generally see them as an indiscriminate herd, but this time I picked up better on the variety. One amusing encounter was with a possibly Italian man, clad in suit and of relatively short stature, who nearly collided with us and made a graceful bowing motion as he hastened on. At any rate, we lunched at a Subway, and then went on to the Brandenburger Tor, where two brave and presumably financially needy souls stood to attention with American flags in a living-statue-esque photo opportunity.
Then we dove into the U-Bahn at Potsdamer Platz (after passing the segments of Berlin Wall; looking at the side of one of them I thought how nice it was to see pebbles in the concrete, only to find upon closer examination that these "pebbles" were wads of chewing gum on the concrete) and took the U2 up to Olympia-Stadion, which had free admission today. Here I may as well confess that I am not at all eager to see historical sites that contain or are surrounded by vast, unshaded fields or concrete surfaces, or are otherwise open to the sun, or are difficult to reach by foot; when I see a photo or an engraving of sites like the Palace of Sanssouci and its terraces, Place de la Concorde, Buckingham Palace, or in this case the Olympia-Stadion, I must admit that this, instead of some elevated aesthetic or historical reflection, is often a foremost consideration. But, though today was a hot and humid day and the half-kilometre walk from the U-Bahn to the stadium is unquestionably exposed, I was glad to have seen it after all.
S. the younger and R. were extremely interested in the stadium, since it reminds them of the Colosseum, and for some reason had enough energy left to roam far and wide and up and down the seats inside, where M. at times joined them. S. the elder and I remained seated and looked around from that vantage point; she was pleased to be where the final of the 2006 World Cup took place, and I was especially absorbed by the attempt to imagine the scene during the 1936 Olympics, which was easy because the "Gesamtkunstwerk" of the facilities has been so thoroughly maintained. Even though I am not fond of the architectural period, modern stadia are not the most beautiful edifices anyway, and in this case I was pleased by its slight appearance — the subdued grey building material instead of blinding white, and its apparent lack of height when seen from the outside. In the inside it is also refreshingly unposh. The seats are dark metal set in smooth and bare concrete steps, the athletes' entrance is an imposing maw at the far end of the field, two gigantic analog clocks in which dashes represent the hours rise on either side of the opening where the Olympic flame presumably burnt, and the canopy today formed a simple but elegant trellised ring around the serene cloud-dotted sky. It is easy to underestimate the seating capacity until one enters the arena and sees how far the seats dip into the ground.
Today there was a modicum of extra excitement because a stadium employee was handing out ca. 4-ft. tall balloons in blue, red, and yellow that were left over from some event. A crowd of teenagers was lolling about at the edge of the field, and whenever a fresh batch of balloons arrived, some of them would trickle up toward the exit with glowing faces. It was funny and touching to see how little it took to make them happy.
Anyway, that was the last stop for the day; we passed out the gates as a blue balloon soared into the clouds over the iconic twin towers between which the Olympic rings are suspended, then took the U-Bahn back to Schöneberg and walked the last bit to the apartment in a stewing atmosphere (N.B.: I was wearing a sweater. *cough*). Fortunately rinsing the face and arms and changing into a fresh T-shirt is an excellent cure for a disconsolate state of perspiration.
After that we had dinner: döner kebap, lahmacun, green beans, potatoes, lettuce salad, and quark with red currants. Then R. played three pieces on the cello for us, and Papa and I played Saint-Saëns's Swan, a piece from Händel, and Beethoven's variations on the theme from Judas Maccabeus. Now there's a thunderstorm going on, the children are (presumably) sleeping, and everyone except me (I'm at the laptop in my room) is in the corner room talking.
This morning, at any rate, our guests and I (the guide, as far as limited knowledge and volubility permitted) took the M48 bus straight to the Marienkirche station and then wandered around the Alexanderplatz. I'd never been in the Marienkirche before and thought it worthwhile. The mournful bareness of the whitewashed walls, glimpses of homely brick, and the dampening effect of the low ribbed arches at the entrance were moving, and I liked the Baroque grave plaques and the unframed paintings. Besides I have a fascination for the little preacher loges that have winding staircases leading up to them, and for fluted pillars. The organ was unfortunately under wraps, but from a poster I gathered that it's a gleaming artillery of gilt. As far as I could tell the fault of this church is that it is poorly thought out; the proportions are peculiar, and the windows very high-set and not especially large, even though the structure itself would seem stable enough to sustain apertures of greater width and breadth.
What I also liked at Alexanderplatz, besides the linden and other leafy trees (the roses are too hot pink for my snobby tastes), and the façade of the Rotes Rathaus, was the Neptunbrunnen. The webbed feet of the sea-centaurs are amusingly creepy, but what I especially liked is that elements like the rock and the serpent are so convincingly executed; they are not idealized out of all verisimilitude but have a gritty lifelike texture.
We went on along through the park with the statues of Marx and Engels who somehow looked as much like bearded shoulder-pads as humanoid figures can look, and the shapes of twisty headless male forms hewn out of a block of pale grey stone, then lingered at the Spreeufer. The posterior of the Berliner Dom is actually rather nice, or at least I like that it is retired and shady, and that balustered stairs ran down to a modest walkway along the waters. After crossing the bridge we decided to enter the Dom, which cost 5 Euros per person but was free for the two children. It may not be good taste on my part, but aside from the stained glass (whose colour palette reminds me of strained turnips and carrots for some reason), I like the profusion of ornament inside the cupola: Italianate marble, white statues, balconies, gilt, Corinthian-order pilasters, etc. And what I especially liked are the sarcophagi of Friedrich III, Sophie Charlotte, etc., which were simply very weighty, sombre, and impressive.
Then we wandered along Unter den Linden, and I was quite excited to see the big tent for Fashion Week set up at Bebelplatz. We rested in the courtyard of the Preussische Staatsbibliothek, of which I am very fond, and I can't tell whether the architecture itself is much good or whether it's the vines that give it a mysterious, retired, and aged air. But the fountain basin is wholly bare, presumably because the statuary in it is undergoing repair, and what remains reminds me that fountain rims are often incredibly ugly.
As far as tourists (besides ourselves) went, I generally see them as an indiscriminate herd, but this time I picked up better on the variety. One amusing encounter was with a possibly Italian man, clad in suit and of relatively short stature, who nearly collided with us and made a graceful bowing motion as he hastened on. At any rate, we lunched at a Subway, and then went on to the Brandenburger Tor, where two brave and presumably financially needy souls stood to attention with American flags in a living-statue-esque photo opportunity.
Then we dove into the U-Bahn at Potsdamer Platz (after passing the segments of Berlin Wall; looking at the side of one of them I thought how nice it was to see pebbles in the concrete, only to find upon closer examination that these "pebbles" were wads of chewing gum on the concrete) and took the U2 up to Olympia-Stadion, which had free admission today. Here I may as well confess that I am not at all eager to see historical sites that contain or are surrounded by vast, unshaded fields or concrete surfaces, or are otherwise open to the sun, or are difficult to reach by foot; when I see a photo or an engraving of sites like the Palace of Sanssouci and its terraces, Place de la Concorde, Buckingham Palace, or in this case the Olympia-Stadion, I must admit that this, instead of some elevated aesthetic or historical reflection, is often a foremost consideration. But, though today was a hot and humid day and the half-kilometre walk from the U-Bahn to the stadium is unquestionably exposed, I was glad to have seen it after all.
S. the younger and R. were extremely interested in the stadium, since it reminds them of the Colosseum, and for some reason had enough energy left to roam far and wide and up and down the seats inside, where M. at times joined them. S. the elder and I remained seated and looked around from that vantage point; she was pleased to be where the final of the 2006 World Cup took place, and I was especially absorbed by the attempt to imagine the scene during the 1936 Olympics, which was easy because the "Gesamtkunstwerk" of the facilities has been so thoroughly maintained. Even though I am not fond of the architectural period, modern stadia are not the most beautiful edifices anyway, and in this case I was pleased by its slight appearance — the subdued grey building material instead of blinding white, and its apparent lack of height when seen from the outside. In the inside it is also refreshingly unposh. The seats are dark metal set in smooth and bare concrete steps, the athletes' entrance is an imposing maw at the far end of the field, two gigantic analog clocks in which dashes represent the hours rise on either side of the opening where the Olympic flame presumably burnt, and the canopy today formed a simple but elegant trellised ring around the serene cloud-dotted sky. It is easy to underestimate the seating capacity until one enters the arena and sees how far the seats dip into the ground.
Today there was a modicum of extra excitement because a stadium employee was handing out ca. 4-ft. tall balloons in blue, red, and yellow that were left over from some event. A crowd of teenagers was lolling about at the edge of the field, and whenever a fresh batch of balloons arrived, some of them would trickle up toward the exit with glowing faces. It was funny and touching to see how little it took to make them happy.
Anyway, that was the last stop for the day; we passed out the gates as a blue balloon soared into the clouds over the iconic twin towers between which the Olympic rings are suspended, then took the U-Bahn back to Schöneberg and walked the last bit to the apartment in a stewing atmosphere (N.B.: I was wearing a sweater. *cough*). Fortunately rinsing the face and arms and changing into a fresh T-shirt is an excellent cure for a disconsolate state of perspiration.
After that we had dinner: döner kebap, lahmacun, green beans, potatoes, lettuce salad, and quark with red currants. Then R. played three pieces on the cello for us, and Papa and I played Saint-Saëns's Swan, a piece from Händel, and Beethoven's variations on the theme from Judas Maccabeus. Now there's a thunderstorm going on, the children are (presumably) sleeping, and everyone except me (I'm at the laptop in my room) is in the corner room talking.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Summer Break
To prevent any fruitless quests for new blog posts when I am unlikely to produce any ones, or any meaningful ones, for a while, I am officially taking a blog-holiday for the next two weeks. An animé marathon has put me in touch with my inner child, to put it unoriginally, and the child tells me to ignore most responsibilities for a while because they eat up too much energy to very little purpose. (Not that I don't still do responsible things, but those are primarily the ones which I've learned to do quickly and painlessly.) Besides, I've been taking things far too seriously. So I want to take time off of my usual pursuits and just enjoy myself. (c:
Saturday, May 30, 2009
A Note on Sri Lanka
In Le Monde I found this article, "Sri Lanka: comment faire taire les témoins d'un massacre," which summarizes the reports of a doctor working in a Sri Lankan hospital, which came under mortar attacks from the government forces and then was swamped with casualties despite the lack of medical equipment and any guarantee of safety. This doctor and two others are (as of the time of the article's publication) in prison on the suspicion of having made rebel-friendly remarks to the press.
Lightning, Soldering, and Native Speaking
Lately we've been having my favourite kind of weather (except for snow that falls in large flakes): wind, impressive grey clouds, thunder, lightning, and big, silvery rain. This evening it has cleared away so that the waxing crescent or gibbous moon (I'm not so well up on the terminology) is shining down on me out of a clear though dusk-tinged, blue southern sky.
Today I woke up after 4 p.m. I've been sleeping twelve to fourteen hours per night(/day) again lately. This schedule doesn't bother me as much as it often does, firstly because it doesn't leave me too groggy, and secondly because it's far better to dream about domes and skyscrapers and being a princess (at times I am like a four-year-old), etc., than to be awake and bored. It's only irritating that my sleeping life is presently much more exciting — thanks to the volcanic eruptions, assassinations, and so on and so forth — than its waking counterpart.
I played the piano for a while, and aside from playing the customary impromptus and Brahms waltzes, explored Beethoven's bagatelles (my piano teacher taught me the first, and Ge. plays one of the later ones) and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, in C major. Then I took up my "singing" again (today it was the first three verses of "Das Wandern" and Händel's Largo from Xerxes), wavering on and off key, but not doing so badly considering the late lack of practice.
Intermittently I went to the corner room to watch Papa constructing a circuit board for a work-related gadget. It involved soldering, which is one of my favourite things to watch, because of the resin's scent, the exciting sense of danger instilled by the heat of the soldering iron, and the gleaming peaks and globes of the melted lead/tin alloy. Papa used to have a shrunken, dry-as-a-bone sponge to wipe the lead on, but he probably threw it out before we moved back to Germany; now he uses a thick folded tissue, which has not caught flame once, much (I'll admit) to my surprise.
Anyway, temporarily I don't have many projects going on. I wrote two poems maybe three days ago, but consider them middling and not particularly unique; on the story front I abandoned one tale after realizing that it was meandering further and further from reality; and though I have vaguely thought of going to the Scilly Islands or Sark or the US there are no travels in prospective. Every now and then I try to learn a modicum of Spanish, with a corresponding modicum of success. Then I think about doing volunteer work in homeless shelters or with immigrants or something of the sort, only to remember that I have no useful experience or expertise.
I haven't applied for new jobs, either, and have (somewhat randomly) wondered if I should write that I speak "some" French so as not to seem overqualified for things. It is, by the way, annoying to know that speaking three languages accent-free is apparently of no use whatsoever, due to the tyrannous ubiquity of the "native speaker" requirement. (It is true, though, that my French is not nearly as good as it could/should be.) But perhaps I could acquire a heavy French-Canadian accent and native-speak that, hehehe!
Today I woke up after 4 p.m. I've been sleeping twelve to fourteen hours per night(/day) again lately. This schedule doesn't bother me as much as it often does, firstly because it doesn't leave me too groggy, and secondly because it's far better to dream about domes and skyscrapers and being a princess (at times I am like a four-year-old), etc., than to be awake and bored. It's only irritating that my sleeping life is presently much more exciting — thanks to the volcanic eruptions, assassinations, and so on and so forth — than its waking counterpart.
I played the piano for a while, and aside from playing the customary impromptus and Brahms waltzes, explored Beethoven's bagatelles (my piano teacher taught me the first, and Ge. plays one of the later ones) and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, in C major. Then I took up my "singing" again (today it was the first three verses of "Das Wandern" and Händel's Largo from Xerxes), wavering on and off key, but not doing so badly considering the late lack of practice.
Intermittently I went to the corner room to watch Papa constructing a circuit board for a work-related gadget. It involved soldering, which is one of my favourite things to watch, because of the resin's scent, the exciting sense of danger instilled by the heat of the soldering iron, and the gleaming peaks and globes of the melted lead/tin alloy. Papa used to have a shrunken, dry-as-a-bone sponge to wipe the lead on, but he probably threw it out before we moved back to Germany; now he uses a thick folded tissue, which has not caught flame once, much (I'll admit) to my surprise.
Anyway, temporarily I don't have many projects going on. I wrote two poems maybe three days ago, but consider them middling and not particularly unique; on the story front I abandoned one tale after realizing that it was meandering further and further from reality; and though I have vaguely thought of going to the Scilly Islands or Sark or the US there are no travels in prospective. Every now and then I try to learn a modicum of Spanish, with a corresponding modicum of success. Then I think about doing volunteer work in homeless shelters or with immigrants or something of the sort, only to remember that I have no useful experience or expertise.
I haven't applied for new jobs, either, and have (somewhat randomly) wondered if I should write that I speak "some" French so as not to seem overqualified for things. It is, by the way, annoying to know that speaking three languages accent-free is apparently of no use whatsoever, due to the tyrannous ubiquity of the "native speaker" requirement. (It is true, though, that my French is not nearly as good as it could/should be.) But perhaps I could acquire a heavy French-Canadian accent and native-speak that, hehehe!
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Battle With the Impromptus
For the past months I've been trying to make sense of Schubert's impromptus Op. 90 No. 2 and 4, and Op. posth. 142 No. 2 and 3. The first two are not as difficult to interpret. The principal problem has been finding meaning in them so that the repetitions aren't boring, and then in wangling a clear and fluid tone despite the necessity of the pedal. I tend to accidentally hold down one note while I play the next, for instance, which of course creates an incoherent soup of sound. Ideally, too, Impromptu No. 2 would not sound precisely like Chopin, but striving toward that aim is a losing, and possibly unwinnable, battle. In March I put up a recording of No. 4 on my YouTube account, and despite the errors and the slow tempo I'm proud of it, so here it is:
As for the second pair of impromptus, these are ones that are very difficult to interpret. One thing I haven't managed yet is to bring in a Viennese lilt when it would be appropriate. I don't much like when one can't tell which composer is being rendered, which is why I believe such idiosyncracies to be necessary elements. Another thing is that I must figure out the rhythm for the right-hand eighth notes in No. 2, and not have lame pauses everywhere because I'm trying not to rush it. Thirdly, my pedalling is off. Ideally it should illumine the notes from within, as it were, but with me it's painfully obvious when I've clamped down my foot and when my foot should have lifted a long time ago. I do know that the trick is to syncopate the pedalling, i.e. press the pedal instantly after the first note is sounded, instead of at the same time, to avoid a sound-soup; in practice, unfortunately, it is difficult to remember it consistently, and my motor coordination is honestly lousy in any case. But I think that, like the B flat major sonata, the most important element in these impromptus is the sincere feeling that should animate it, and evidently when I sit down to "tickle the ivories" I am often neither in a noble, profound, nor sympathetic frame of mind. So it is not modesty but the truth to note that Papa still plays them far better than I do.
As for other music, I'm working on Rachmaninoff's g minor prelude, which is going well. I hope to give it a rather Russian air, because though Rachmaninoff rendered it in an elegant, fluent Frenchy way (or so I think), I find the composition itself distinctly Russian (except perhaps for the lyrical middle part) and prefer to play it a bit gruffly and deeply. Emil Gilels's version is most likely the benchmark, but of course I want to find my own interpretation, too, so I've avoided listening to it lately.
Then there are the Haydn trios which Papa, Pudel and I play (Hob. XV No. 21, 24, and 25). Pudel suggested that I practice them, and though the suggestion frankly annoyed me a bit because I can sightread them perfectly aptly (in theory; in practice I stumble a lot in the fear of stumbling), I've acted on the advice and profited as a result. Playing duets and trios is still a largely foreign concept to me; it's practically impossible to complement the cello or violin parts properly. While I despise ostentatious accompaniments, when I have the melody it does often sound like I am straining to be louder than the other instrument(s), instead of naturally holding the prominent position or blending in with the other instrument(s) as an equal voice. And it was only in the last trio-playing session where I tardily realized the blatantly obvious fact that I should pay attention to the phrasing that Pudel uses and apply that to my own part. So, for instance, if he slurs a pair of triplets in the melody separately, I shouldn't play them as if they were both slurred together. One other deficiency is that whereas the trios are often delightfully lighthearted, I play them like a cynical grump (I think I am wonderfully suited to Beethoven's compositions in this respect) and positively fail to convey a modicum of the untroubled, serene, and nice quality that is a beautiful characteristic in classical-period music.
As for other pieces, I've picked up Schumann's Kinderszenen again; I still don't play them well but progress has been made, since "Glückes genug" is no longer the rambunctious chaos it once was, though my recent renditions of "Der Dichter spricht" have become surpassingly lame and stilted, and "Hasche-Mann" is as rife as ever with wrong notes. "Fürchtenmachen" is especially knotty because it's so hard to tie the heterogeneous parts together into a musical unity. Then I still play a Scarlatti sonata, the first movement of Bach's Concerto in d minor, and Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude" (which is not going famously, though the other two are improving). And altogether I am listening to countless old recordings on YouTube, foraging for interpreters and interpretations that I like, and enjoying the process a great deal.
A propos of interpreters and interpretations that I like, here is Edwin Fischer playing Impromptu Op. 142 No. 3 [the video is sound-only]:
It may be absurd, but the third variation depresses me horribly at times; it's not that I consciously precipitate myself into that state of mind, but the first bars already act as a trigger. So I tend to play it in an angry way that doesn't conduce to sentiments of overwhelming pathos; being mundanely aware that I'm making a consummate hash of the pedalling helps too. But I like the amusing, subtly Tyrolean manner in which Fischer plays the fourth variation; also, of course the final variation is happy again, and it ends in a satisfying, weighty and thoughtful reiteration of the theme.
Last of all, here is a sampling of my YouTube film bookmarks:
1. Marian Anderson, "Erbarme Dich" (Bach)
2. Janet Baker, "Ogni pena più spietata" (Pergolesi)
3. Pau Casals, Kol Nidrei (Bruch)
4. Pau Casals, Nikolai Mednikoff; The Swan (Saint-Saëns)
5. Dinu Lipatti, Piano Concerto No. 21 (Mozart), Part I
6. Francis Planté, Op. 67 No. 4 from Lieder ohne Worte (Mendelssohn)
7. Josef Hofmann, "Grande Valse Brillante" in A flat major (Chopin)
8. Alfred Grünfeld, Mazurka in a minor (Chopin)
As for the second pair of impromptus, these are ones that are very difficult to interpret. One thing I haven't managed yet is to bring in a Viennese lilt when it would be appropriate. I don't much like when one can't tell which composer is being rendered, which is why I believe such idiosyncracies to be necessary elements. Another thing is that I must figure out the rhythm for the right-hand eighth notes in No. 2, and not have lame pauses everywhere because I'm trying not to rush it. Thirdly, my pedalling is off. Ideally it should illumine the notes from within, as it were, but with me it's painfully obvious when I've clamped down my foot and when my foot should have lifted a long time ago. I do know that the trick is to syncopate the pedalling, i.e. press the pedal instantly after the first note is sounded, instead of at the same time, to avoid a sound-soup; in practice, unfortunately, it is difficult to remember it consistently, and my motor coordination is honestly lousy in any case. But I think that, like the B flat major sonata, the most important element in these impromptus is the sincere feeling that should animate it, and evidently when I sit down to "tickle the ivories" I am often neither in a noble, profound, nor sympathetic frame of mind. So it is not modesty but the truth to note that Papa still plays them far better than I do.
As for other music, I'm working on Rachmaninoff's g minor prelude, which is going well. I hope to give it a rather Russian air, because though Rachmaninoff rendered it in an elegant, fluent Frenchy way (or so I think), I find the composition itself distinctly Russian (except perhaps for the lyrical middle part) and prefer to play it a bit gruffly and deeply. Emil Gilels's version is most likely the benchmark, but of course I want to find my own interpretation, too, so I've avoided listening to it lately.
Then there are the Haydn trios which Papa, Pudel and I play (Hob. XV No. 21, 24, and 25). Pudel suggested that I practice them, and though the suggestion frankly annoyed me a bit because I can sightread them perfectly aptly (in theory; in practice I stumble a lot in the fear of stumbling), I've acted on the advice and profited as a result. Playing duets and trios is still a largely foreign concept to me; it's practically impossible to complement the cello or violin parts properly. While I despise ostentatious accompaniments, when I have the melody it does often sound like I am straining to be louder than the other instrument(s), instead of naturally holding the prominent position or blending in with the other instrument(s) as an equal voice. And it was only in the last trio-playing session where I tardily realized the blatantly obvious fact that I should pay attention to the phrasing that Pudel uses and apply that to my own part. So, for instance, if he slurs a pair of triplets in the melody separately, I shouldn't play them as if they were both slurred together. One other deficiency is that whereas the trios are often delightfully lighthearted, I play them like a cynical grump (I think I am wonderfully suited to Beethoven's compositions in this respect) and positively fail to convey a modicum of the untroubled, serene, and nice quality that is a beautiful characteristic in classical-period music.
As for other pieces, I've picked up Schumann's Kinderszenen again; I still don't play them well but progress has been made, since "Glückes genug" is no longer the rambunctious chaos it once was, though my recent renditions of "Der Dichter spricht" have become surpassingly lame and stilted, and "Hasche-Mann" is as rife as ever with wrong notes. "Fürchtenmachen" is especially knotty because it's so hard to tie the heterogeneous parts together into a musical unity. Then I still play a Scarlatti sonata, the first movement of Bach's Concerto in d minor, and Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude" (which is not going famously, though the other two are improving). And altogether I am listening to countless old recordings on YouTube, foraging for interpreters and interpretations that I like, and enjoying the process a great deal.
A propos of interpreters and interpretations that I like, here is Edwin Fischer playing Impromptu Op. 142 No. 3 [the video is sound-only]:
It may be absurd, but the third variation depresses me horribly at times; it's not that I consciously precipitate myself into that state of mind, but the first bars already act as a trigger. So I tend to play it in an angry way that doesn't conduce to sentiments of overwhelming pathos; being mundanely aware that I'm making a consummate hash of the pedalling helps too. But I like the amusing, subtly Tyrolean manner in which Fischer plays the fourth variation; also, of course the final variation is happy again, and it ends in a satisfying, weighty and thoughtful reiteration of the theme.
Last of all, here is a sampling of my YouTube film bookmarks:
1. Marian Anderson, "Erbarme Dich" (Bach)
2. Janet Baker, "Ogni pena più spietata" (Pergolesi)
3. Pau Casals, Kol Nidrei (Bruch)
4. Pau Casals, Nikolai Mednikoff; The Swan (Saint-Saëns)
5. Dinu Lipatti, Piano Concerto No. 21 (Mozart), Part I
6. Francis Planté, Op. 67 No. 4 from Lieder ohne Worte (Mendelssohn)
7. Josef Hofmann, "Grande Valse Brillante" in A flat major (Chopin)
8. Alfred Grünfeld, Mazurka in a minor (Chopin)
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