Reece's Travels

It's 7 am and i'm up, awake and checking my emails...

The flight was long and exhausting but we all arrived safe and sound in Dusseldorf about 20 hours after departure!

I'm staying with a lovely couple in their early 60's who are friends of people in a choir over here that we have a relationship with... The woman (Margaret) is an artist and art teacher and her husband (Jo) is an engineer. They live in Neurkirchen Vluyn which is just North of Dusseldorf. Here we're about 25 minutes drive from The Netherlands...

Travelling down the autobahn at 160km's per hour was pretty scary, but it doesn't seem to phase the Germans.

Yesterday morning we had a 2 hour long breakfast! It was one of the most amazing meals i've ever had... fresh bread rolls with cold meats, cheese, spreads and soft-boiled eggs. Coffee with cream, orange and carrot juice, home-made kiwi-fruit jam, chocolate sprinkle-spread and sweet breads.. Then for the second course, wedding soup, pancake and omlette strips with beef. It was excellent. We're surrounded by Margaret's paintings, wood-carved furniture, little paintings of the German country side and Vienese classical music playing on the stereo..

Vluyn's city hall 'Culturehalle' is an old building with a tricking modern facade. There we participated in a very colourful annual carnival where most of the people were wearing ridiculous jester-like hats with bells on them... There was dancing, singing, beer-drinking and much indoor smoking (right next to the no-smoking signs.. ha ha). We had to get up and sing 2 songs in German to this hall-full of enthusiastic Germans and apparently we did a pretty good job... We got lots of applause, shouts of Alla, Allo! and a medal presented to our choir director.

Then it was back home for Hot waffles with walnut ice-cream with sweet, hot plums... (sounds pretty iddylic huh?)

Last night we performed a concert in a very old church in the adjoining town. It's hard to describe how beautiful this place was. An old sand-stone church with beautiful frescoed walls, gold gilt everywhere and a huge organ.

The place was completely full and the audience loved us. They gave us two standing ovations, there were people crying in the audience (hopefully because they liked us, not because they thought we were terrible!) and we had to do two encores to keep them happy. European concert-goers truly appreciate classical music, and it makes it a joy to sing.

Then, home for dinner (more food, it never stops!). A majorcan fish bake with tuna, salad and plenty of german beer.

Today we're off to see the local mayor and perform a few songs for him, then to a chinese restaurant 'Peking Gardens' for lunch ha ha... then another concert and then we're meeting another choir and having a rehearshal with them..

So, It's my second day in Germany and I've already eaten about 3 days worth of food, sang at an annual carnival with crazy, festive beer-swilling, smoking, hat-wearing germans, travelled at light speeds on an autobahn, performed to a packed house and walked around the city centre...

If this is an indication of the rest of my trip i'm sure i'm going to come back a changed person..

:)