love paris by night

ain't it pretty?

dreaming

flying over bolzano

i was quite surprised to find myself over this familiar territory :)

one night and one day of real holiday

today i had one of the most wonderful days in a long time at the former place of my grandparents. the setting was as follows:

no mobile phone





no internet or computer






thanks to these uncommon surroundings i've been experiencing a whole set of things which not usually come my way:


sleeping on a bag full of hay, which was quite strange at first, but had a really nice odour, which made me sleep soo well :)


with a very nice sight when waking up (and having breakfast outside ;)


i went strolling round the village,


playing with some calves


and then heated the oven - yes, with a proper fire!


on which we were baking our own bread, some even with fresh herbs.








apart from all these things, i've been re-exploring all the things which i knew as a kid - the whole place is so much smaller now! but it was perfect to be there, enjoy the beauty of it as well as a lot of nice memories of long gone times.

munich

here's a short movie presenting the city. i'm not so happy about the music, but some of the places are well worth visiting and as nice as on the video ;)

surprisingly easy

More and more one hypothesis is growing in my mind, namely that no matter how crazy, prestigious, or ambitious a matter might be it's roots are simple and trivial.
Probably in the beginning there is some informal email, where someone you knows invites you to join a project, like a concert somewhere (in this case Florence). You think to yourself 'alright, sounds cool', accept and start preparing yourself; something that you have done thousands of times before. Of course, on the way you will find out how difficult it can be to coordinate people for rehearsals etc, but still when you arrive there things go as usual. Just maybe that you don't really know when and where you go or where you will stay, but someone will tell you in time so no reason to bother. Quite suddenly you find yourself in a hotel, putting down your things and some strange thought crosses your mind 'actually, how come that I am here in this foreign place for playing a concert? i did everything as always but things somehow changed to a different track'. And only from there you realise that the whole thing was planned that way, that you doing something you would not have thought possible but that you are still the same and actually quite capable of living up to the expectations. From that point, everything continues as before - it's the same ritual every time, everywhere. Tune, adjust yourself, rehearse, relax, tune again, and there we go.
Just around this routine there are millions of details, things that simply happen when one meets new people, and some of them are nearly hilariously funny :) For example the guides of the church in which we played told us: 'no, it's closed for the public now, you are not allowed to enter! but if you want, there is a concert this evening, you can come back then.' When we explained that we actually were the musicians, they first gave us a quite puzzled look but then showed a lot of understanding and let us pass. However, things continued like that when we had a look at the instruments or were depositing our stuff as at first there was noone to show us around :) Also the coordination during the concert was a bit spontaneous, but luckily only the formalities were affected by this. In the end it turned out that exactly one link had been missing: the lady coordinating between San Lorenzo and the external music institutes had not appeared this evening.
In the end all that chaos did not matter: it was a real pleasure to play in this beautiful and huge church, whose dimensions gave great possibilities to experiment with sound whilst still providing a somehow homely atmosphere.
In the evening all this seemed so different already, somehow unreal. But still I could fall asleep with the happy and grateful feeling that on my first solo trip everything had gone well.

Nachtrag..

it's been a while ago, but still i would like to share some impressions of my trip to the baltic countries with you.
on the map below you see the places we travelled to in these three weeks. i really enjoyed going with the flow and in my curiosity soaking up as many details as possible. however, i came to realise that i was bound to miss out on many things.. maybe some other time i will be able to complete the picture a bit more.



these pictures are a truly random selection from the journey (truly random as i must have exceeded picasa's limit for selected pictures so it dumped more than half of my selection :)
in this place i want to thank everyone for this great journey: Diana, Andrej, Valdemaras, Olga, Andreis, Martins, Marijn, and all their friends and families which i could meet and which were so friendly and caring. I hope to see you before long :)

wishful thinking

it would be so nice to travel to a place in europe where germans didnt make all that terrible mess during WW2... but i guess it's impossible, so i will have to get used to the knot in my stomach which is bound to form each time i read through a travel guide.

the wedding

The original reason for my trip to the Baltics was the invitation to attend Diana's and Andrej's wedding in Vilnius. It was a very big and happy celebration with a lot of surprises (including a thunderstorm which nearly washed us away into the river and a lot of tasks to challenge the newlyweds, they however managed everything very bravely! ;)
I felt very touched when witnessing their union in the beautiful church Peter and Paul. Here is a picture of the really 'just married' couple with all their fancy assistants ;)



we celebrated till late in the night (or early in the morning, as you define it) and of course we had a lot of fun, food, dance, and play, meeting friend or just making new ones :)



the morning after brought a few tired faces, however the mood was good and everybody appreaciated to spend a relaxed day in sun and nature.
Concluding, I just really wish all the best for Andrej and Diana and hopefully we will all meet again soon ;)

Estonian joke

taxi directions for riga

Taxi Directions

Taxi from the airport to our office will cost about 10 Ls (about 15 Euros)
Taxi from bus station to our office will cost about 2.0 Ls (about 3 Euros)

CAUTION: All taxis at the bus station will OVERCHARGE you. Tell them you will NOT pay more than 2.0 Ls for the trip to our office. If they hassle you write down their license number, taxi company name, driver's name and color of taxi. We will file a complaint.

Red colored taxis at the airport are honest. We offer prepaid taxi coupons to/from the airport to our office, hotels and city center. http://www.rigataxi.info/


Print this email and show it to the taxi driver.

finnish humor

Linda Lines, a Finnish ferry company excels with a particular kind of humor.
After the scene is set already by fog, rain, storm, and some waves, only the matching soundtrack is missing. Something relaxing, calming, maybe?
Like - the soundtrack of TITANIC?!?!?!

packing again

after recovering from the wedding by spending some relaxed days in and around vilnius (with typical lithuanian weather) we're getting ready for the next destination of this journey: tallinn. hopefully joining for this part are olga and andrejs which hopefully will bring the eeepc so we can test the gratis wireless theyre supposed to have there ;)
will go now, to prepare for the 9 1/2 hours bus trip which i guess will leave me rather tired. (btw, i noticed some strange thing: there are all this stickers in busses here, with prints like 'united airlines berlin' or 'freistaat bayern'.. i wonder if this is where all the used german vehicles end up.. sometimes it actually nearly feels historical which is great fun!)

arrived

after a wonderful flight Lithuania greeted very nicely with a lot of sun, but luckily less boiling temperatures than Bolzano :) Vilnius was the first place to be visited and I really like the old town, which is so varied and quite spacious, which I found surprising.
On the next day, we travelled to Visaginas and a house in the countryside where I attended the first 'hen night' of my life. Good fun, and also very multicultural :) In the end everybody scraped together some English and also some of my Russian reappeared, which caused amusement.
One thing is also quite interesting: I'm now meeting the families of my friends ;)
ok, wedding preparations need to go on ;)
have a good time

Trient

Market impressions: Somehow this view seems typical Italian to me..


Also the people on the market have new strategies to motivate their buyers. This time it's 'Chucky and his bride'..

Funnily enough, there was a whole stand with these hoovers... it filled me with a lot of nostalgy, seeing my grandparents had one (which never worked..) when they were still living in this beautiful house in the countryside..


A light at the end of the tunnel... the only non-windy place on the trip, somehow the weather was at the brink of a thunderstorm most of the day.


Last, but not least: some of the beautiful, old houses (which were nearly completely concealed by the huge market going on in town). I surely have to return some day, when I can have a look at them all..

Venetian Luxury

Venetian Laundry

Wiesn :)

for all who missed my bavarian dress that day :) you have to excuse though that the picture is already a bit older...