I'm done

Well, as of today, I am done with my sophomore year of college.  I had four finals, including one on my birthday and one at 7:30 am this morning, but none of them were too bad.  I guess this means that it's time to start packing for the trip home.  Of course, there is the issue that I still need to use many of the things I would be packing…

Chorus

I'm sorry that I never got around to finishing my posts about my travels.  At this point, it hardly seems worth it to bother, especially because I still have schoolwork to do.  Here is an abbreviated (and picture-free) summary of what happened:

• I met up with my dad in the Netherlands to visit some relatives, and got to see some amazing art at the Rijksmuseum.
• After that my dad explored Dresden and visited Prague, we went to Vienna.  I really liked Vienna.  Also, I went to former houses of Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, and Mozart.
• The next weekend, I went to Cologne to see Christina, a former exchange student my family hosted, as well as some family friends.
• During that weekend, I succeeded in reaching 10,000 pictures since I arrived in Germany.
• I also met up with Anita (a friend from high school) while she was visiting Berlin.
• My group went to see a ballet at the big opera house in Dresden.  It was kind of weird (although that was largely due to the modern style and the lack of clarity of what was happening/if there was supposed to be a plot).
• I also obtained last minute tickets to see Swan Lake.  It was really good.

Okay, so now on to the main purpose of my post: the fact that I just had a chorus concert.  When I was preparing for this semester, I knew that I wouldn't be able to bring my cello, but that I still wanted to do some music.  I found that there was a university chorus, and decided to try to join it.  After some level of pushing off emails, and minor miscommunications, I started going to rehearsals.  There was some minor disappointment when I was informed that I would be singing baritone rather than lower bass, but I have since acknowledged that my low range is not what it used to be.

It has been nice to be in chorus.  One of my main reasons for wanting to join was to have a reason to interact regularly with college-aged Germans.  I guess I've been moderately successful with that, although I have been somewhat limited by my lack of an outgoing personality.

Last evening, we had our concert.  It was without a doubt the longest choral concert I have participated in, at almost 2 hours (although the first ~20-30 minutes were occupied by the women's chorus and the small chorus).  This was made even more interesting by the 95-degree weather (which is less than pleasant when wearing a suit).  Luckily, no one fainted.  The two pieces the main chorus sang were a weird new piece (which, despite mostly being in German, used the opening from A Tale of Two Cities for the lyrics of the third part) and Requiem by Duruflé.  Naturally, I preferred the Duruflé (along with pretty much everyone else).

After the concert, there was a party celebrating the chorus's 75th anniversary.  There were a lot of people who had been in the chorus 30 or 40 years ago.  Highlights included serenading a tram being driven by someone's friend, sight singing a lot of German folk songs, and joining with the older group when they started singing a song I did in Senior Districts (Zigeunerleben by Schumann).  One lowlight was discovering that, by not being here last semester, I had missed the chance to sing Water Night by Eric Whitacre.

Travels with Samuel (Spring Break 2 part 2)

Most of my vacation plans were determined when I was told by Samuel that he was going to Croatia with his family and wanted to stop by Germany on the way back (for those of you who don't know him, I've been friends with Samuel since first grade, and he also took part in my high school exchange in Germany).  Since he just happened to be coming during my vacation, I made plans to go to Berlin and Hamburg with him.  After arriving early afternoon and checking into the hostel, I met up with my former middle school German teacher, Herr Brune, and we wandered around the city for a while.

Obligatory picture in front of Brandenburger Tor

He showed me to some interesting and less well-known sights, like the memorial to the Roma and Sinti killed by the Nazis and the memorial to the Russian soldiers killed in the battle for Berlin.

Note the tanks.  Please don't note the horrible lens flare (J.J. Abrams, why would you ever think that effect looks good?)

After having dinner, I went back to the hostel and waited at the hostel for Samuel.

The next morning, Samuel and I got museum passes and went to the Pergamon Museum, one of the most famous museums in Berlin (it's suggested to get a timed ticket in advance, because the line can be horrendous).  After going to the museum, I can definitely understand why it is so popular.  Features include the Ishtar Gate from Babylon and a marketplace gate from a Roman city, as well as many examples of Islamic art.

After getting lunch, we went to the Jewish Museum.  It served as a reminder that even though Germany has done horrible things to Jews in the past, the country has done a wonderful job of acknowledging and attempting to make up for those actions.  You enter the museum through a lower floor containing three intersecting parts: the Axis of Exile, commemorating the Jews forced to flee to escape Nazi persecution and ending in a memorial garden designed to emulate the disturbance felt by those forced to adapt to a new country; the Axis of the Holocaust, ending in a large, hollow, unheated, and barely lit tower; and the Axis of Continuity, leading to the permanent exhibition.  I thought that the exhibit was really well-done, and wish that there had been enough time to completely go through it.  It was a very difficult museum to leave early, partly because of its IKEA-like design (you had to go through everything in order).

After that, Samuel and I hurried back to our hostel to get some nicer clothes, had a quick dinner, and went to go see the Berliner Philharmoniker.  We had arranged for some tickets when planning the trip, because it is known to be one of the best orchestras in the world.  The concert was amazing, and included a modern piece, a Richard Strauss piece, and a Tchaikovsky symphony.

The next day, we met with Herr Brune, and he took us to some of his favorite places in East Berlin.  One of the main sights he showed us was the East Side Gallery, a section of the Berlin Wall that had been left standing along the river and that had been painted by street artists shortly after the borders opened, then repainted on the 20th anniversary.

After lunch, we went to the Deutsches Technikmuseum.  They have a huge collection of technology, ranging from things related to shipping to planes to trains stored in what used to be a train shed.  It is a very large museum, which caused a problem when the two of us got separated, but we were able to find each other eventually.  I came to the conclusion that I should never try to pilot a 18th-century ship after failing miserably in some interactive simulator that they had.

After leaving the museum, Samuel and I went to the former Tempelhof Airport nearby, which Herr Brune had told us about.  The airport was built in 1923, and was notable for its use during the Berlin Airlift (when the Soviet government tried to block supplies from reaching West Berlin).  When it was closed in 2008, the land was designated as a public park.  It seems like it would be a lovely place to go for a run or bike ride, or just to hang out for a while.

The next morning, Samuel and I left to go to Hamburg, since that was the city we had been spent a little over two weeks in the vicinity of last time.  I was slightly concerned about that leg of the trip because had been a train strike causing some of the trains not to run, but luckily it had been resolved before it affected us.  After getting there and buying the obligatory Franzbrötchen (a pastry with cinnamon that is probably my favorite pastry, and unfortunately is only available in northern Germany), we went to the Brahms museum, which I had discovered a few weeks before.  It is not his real house, because that was destroyed in the 1943 bombing, but it is in the neighborhood of where he grew up.  It was a nice little museum, and had a library with a bunch of books about him and other similar composers, as well as a collection of all of his works.  The highlight was when the docent told me I could play a piano that Brahms had previously used when teaching lessons.  That was a minor challenge due to the fact that pretty much everything that I have memorized is from Les Miserables, and I have never seriously played a Brahms piece, but I was able to fake my way through some of the Moonlight Sonata so that I didn't feel too guilty about my song choice.

After that, we went to the aquarium, since we had already seen most of the major sites last time.  It was somewhat interesting because there was a large selection of non-aquatic animals.  For example, lemurs:

Baby lemur!

Obligatory picture of a trumpetfish

Well, hello, Mr. Porcupinefish

It turns out that, not particularly surprisingly, my camera has difficulty taking good pictures of animals moving through relatively dark water behind a pane of glass.

Unfortunately, when we got back downtown, it was the sort of time where you have too much time to do nothing, but it is too late to actually go to anything like a museum.  As a result we wandered around downtown for a few hours.

Then, we met up with my friend Ava for dinner.  My family had hosted Ava for a semester 5 years ago, and we've remained somewhat in touch since.  It was nice to see her again.

The next morning, Samuel and I were thought about going to one of the art museums, but it didn't open until 10, which didn't work, considering I had a train at about 11:30.  So, we continued wandering.  One interesting thing we found was the remains of a giant gothic church that had been destroyed in the bombing, then had been left in that condition as a memorial rather than being rebuilt.

After a little bit, we went back to the train station and said goodbye, and I picked up 2 more Frantzbrötchen (don't judge, they're really good) and got on the train for the next part of my journey.

Sorry about the last four weeks

So I realize that I haven't posted anything here for a long time.  I admit that the main reason is not that I don't have much to say, but rather that I have spent too little time in Dresden (as well as some level of procrastination).  This weekend is the first one I'm spending entirely in Dresden since April, and only my second since March.  So I suppose I might as well start with a summary of what I have done since my last post.

I had my second weeklong break from May 23-31 (I think it was celebrating the Pentecost holidays).  To start, I went back to Leipzig on the 23rd.  This was mostly motivated by my desire to go to a performance at the Thomaskirche by the boy's chorus Bach used to lead when he was cantor for 25 years (something I knew from a brief comment made by our tour guide when I went with the group).  Originally, I planned to go for the entire day, but as a result of a Skype conversation that lasted until 3 am, I didn't get there until shortly after noon.

After wandering around a bit trying to figure out what to do (and dealing with large crowds of people who looked like they had come for a Goth convention), I saw a sign for the Mendelssohn house, so I decided to check it out.  Apparently he spent the last few years of his life in Leipzig.  They had a decent collection, including stuff like portraits of his family, former pianos and other furniture, and plates representing his many travels.  One thing I found quite amazing is the collection of his watercolor paintings.  It appears that in addition to being one of the most famous composers, he was also a really good artist.

(Note: if that looks familiar, it is because it is the Rheinfalls near Schaffhausen, a place I have been to [see post about Switzerland].)  The visit ended with me going to their virtual conducting room and attempting to conduct the 4th movement of the Reformation Symphony.  It went quite poorly because the system only worked if you kept the baton really close to the display, which is not feasible for my style (see this for an example).

Afterwards, I went to see the Thomanerchor, the boy's chorus that has existed for hundreds of years at the Thomaskirche.  While I was unable to see the chorus, the music was really good, and it was also quite cheap.  Also, it was nice to have a look around the church.

After that, I wandered around trying to figure out what to do for the next few hours, until I saw a sign for the Schumann house and decided to check it out.  Again, they had two pianos, some former possessions, and a lot of copies of manuscripts.  I kind of had to rush through because I got there a half hour before it closed, but it was cool to see his former house.

Budapest

Last weekend, I had a 4-day weekend because Thursday was a holiday (Ascension Day) and I didn't have class on Friday, so I joined a group of 7 others going to Budapest.  I chose the location because I was trying to figure out if there was anyone I could travel with, and one of my friends mentioned that she was going there and that there plans were at an early enough point that I could join.

The trip started with an overnight bus ride.  I was intending to do some reading and a lot of sleeping, but the bus had movies, so I ended up watching them instead (I did eventually get to sleep).

The first thing we did that afternoon was go to the Castle Hill in the Buda part of the city (the hilly part to the west of the Danube).  We went saw the Matthias Church (one of the few white Gothic-style churches).

We then went to the Labyrinth, a collection of tunnels in the hill that had formerly been used as a prison, and currently is a quite cheesy tourist attraction focusing on the fact that the person Dracula was based on had been imprisoned there.  Then, we went to get a good view of the city.

After that, we went to the Gellert baths.  It is a Turkish bath house/spa with a lot of nice hot tubs and pools.  It was fun and relaxing, although there was a mildly terrifying moment when we were in the wave pool and it became really strong, sucking one of my friends who can't swim well into the deeper part of the pool.

After we left, we wandered over to the Pest side of the city (the plains on the eastern side of the river) to go get dinner.

The next morning, we went to visit some caves outside of the city.  The first one, Pál-völgyi, had a bunch of wonderful formations.

The second cave, Szemlő-hegyi, also was cool.  It has many crystal formations, rather than stalactites.  Unfortunately, the tour was not great (the tour guide would speak in Hungarian for a few minutes, then say 1 or 2 sentences in English).

After that, we went to the top of Janos Hill, the highest point in Budapest.  There was an amazing view from the top ( I apologize for the slight blurriness at high zoom/translucent flags that resulted from not taking every picture from the exact same spot).

After descending from the hill, we went to the Széchenyi baths, a bathhouse in more of a Baroque style.  It had several large outdoor heated pools.  I kind of felt that its "cold" pools (for when you leave the sauna) were probably warmer than the water I swim in over the summer.

After that we went to dinner nearby, then had a look around Heroes Square.

The next morning, I went with the part of the group staying in the same house as me to explore the city.  We started off by going to the market, which had a large range of food and souvenir stands.  I ended up getting a cool box that you need to manipulate in a certain way to be able to open.

After that, we walked along the river, then went to the St. Stephen's Basilica.  Supposedly, it has a mummified hand of one of the kings as a holy relic, although I wasn't able to see that (it looked like they were preparing for a wedding).  Needless to say, it was gorgeous inside.

After that, and a brief trip back to Castle Hill, we went to Gellert Hill, generally considered to be one of the best views in Budapest.

The joys of taking pictures of your friends without them realizing

After going back down the hill, most of my friends went back to the house, while I went with one of them to the opera.  I had heard that the building was amazing, and was not disappointed.  However, the opera (The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky) was a little …odd.  Then again, I was expecting that, given that this was the composer who wrote a piece that caused a riot at its premiere.  The opera was in English, but I still felt a need to look at the English supertitles, and to read its description on Wikipedia when I got back.  However, the tickets that I got were only 1500 HUF (about $5.50).

I have to say, the trip was very nice, even though Budapest's public transportation system makes the MBTA look good.  Budapest is one of those cities with lovely old buildings all over the place, and the hills and caves are also very interesting.  It was also the first time in a while that I had spent the majority of my time while traveling with other people.  I definitely enjoyed being social.

München (Munich)

I'm sorry that I forgot to do this earlier.  I was …(mumble mumble)…um, yeah.

On the weekend of May 1-3, I went on a trip to Munich because I had a 3-day weekend and I heard that several other people were going.  It turned out that everyone else decided to go because of Frühlingsfest, a much smaller spring version of Munich's famous Oktoberfest (as in only 2 beer tents instead of 14).  Unfortunately, I joined kind of late, so I had to find a different hostel, but it worked out fine.

We got in at around 3:30, and after checking into the hostels we went to the Theresienwiese, the area where Oktoberfest and Frühlingsfest happen.

However, we decided to to wait until the next day to partake in the rides and various other attractions there, and I went with a subset of the group to the Augustiner Keller, a beer garden associated with the oldest brewery in Munich.  It was an interesting experience, particularly because the default beer size is the Maß, or 1 liter, and because we were surrounded by several tables where people had people had clearly had multiple ones.

The next morning, I went on a free (+tips) walking tour of the city.  It started in the Marienplatz, next to the town hall.  The town hall has a glockenspiel with animatronics that the tour guide referred to as "the second-most overrated tourist attraction in Europe."

I was not surprised to learn that most of the best stories from Munich's history involve beer.  For example, the statue of Mary was added after the people of Munich got the king of Sweden to leave during the 30 Years War by paying him with 600,000 barrels of beer.

One interesting thing I saw was a memorial dedicated to Michael Jackson that had commandeered a statue for some composer.  Apparently he has a loyal fan base there?

At one point, we were shown a memorial dedicated to the people punished by the Gestapo for using an alley to avoid walking past a 

Of course, one of the most important buildings that I saw was the Hofbräuhaus, the restaurant for one of the largest breweries in Munich.  In the fall, it regularly gets 35,000 visitors a day.  I was somewhat amused to hear that while he lived in Munich, Mozart once got so drunk there that he was banned from it, especially in light of how drunk many people were.

In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus:
Eins, zwei, g'suffa . . .

I think one of my favorite stories was related to the St. Peter's Church.  One time, one of the crosses fell down during a storm.  Two drunk men saw it and decided to go climb the tower during the storm to reinstall it.  They did that, but installed it facing the wrong direction, where it has stayed to this day.  Naturally, they decided to celebrate their success with more beer, while still on top of the tower in the rain.  Unsurprisingly, one of them fell, but he was able to grab on and avoid dying.  His dropped beer stein fell to the street below, but did not break.  One of the priests saw this and decided it was a miracle, so the beer stein was on display in the church for 15 years.

Of course, I also learned about Munich's darker history.  It was the place where the Nazi party was founded, and the location where the failed Beer Hall Putsch happened.  The first concentration camp, Dachau, was located nearby.  Munich was heavily bombed during World War II, and still occasionally has disastrous episodes with the thousands of unexploded bombs buried underground.  However, it seems like the city (along with the rest of Germany) has done a lot to try to reconcile with its past.  There are something like 30 memorials around the city, including this one commemorating people who were punished by the Gestapo for avoiding a memorial to the Beer Hall Putsch.

After the tour finished, I wandered around for a little while trying to decide what to do, then went to the Residenz museum (the former royal family's home in Munich).  It is quite a lovely place.

I think something that quite clearly demonstrates the wealth of the Wittelsbach family is that they built an entire new, quite grand, wing when one of them was elected Holy Roman Emperor that even included a bedroom just for show.

After going through the Residenz, I went to the tower of the St. Peter's Church to get a good view of the city.  I would want to attach pictures of the entire view, but my panorama software has started crashing whenever I attempt to load any pictures, and the Google+ auto feature apparently has decided that when I uploaded something like 20 pictures shifted slightly from each other, I really wanted 3 picture series and not a panorama.  So here are some things I saw.

• The Theresienweise.  There's also a ferris wheel behind the church tower.
  
• The Viktualienmarkt, with the Maypole.  Apparently, it was successfully stolen a few years ago by a group that wanted a designated table at Oktoberfest as ransom.  I'm not sure there has ever been an answer to the question of how they got something that large out of the city without being noticed.
  
• The cathedral.  It was one of the few buildings not damaged or destroyed by bombers during World War II, largely because it was a very good way to identify Munich for subsequent bombing runs.
  
• The English Garden, one of the largest urban parks in the world.  In front of it is the theater, which was once saved from a fire using beer because the water was all frozen.
  

After that, I joined the rest of my group at Springfest, and went on a lot of rides.

Sunday morning, I was intending to get up early to go on a bike ride at the English Garden and then go to the Deutsches Museum, but part one of that plan fell through when I woke up 2.5 hours later than planned due to one of my roommates sounding like he had a chainsaw with him, and due to the fact that it was raining.  On my way to the Deutsches Museum, I discovered that Munich residents might laugh if I said, "Ich bin ein Amerikaner," because there is apparently some pastry called an Amerikaner.

The Deutsches Museum is kind of like a combination of Museum of Science in Boston and the Smithsonian Institute (especially the Air and Space Museum).  Its collection includes things like electrical equipment, airplanes, and musical instruments.  The 2-3 hours I spent there was nowhere near enough time, but I had to leave earlier than I liked to get to the bus on time.

Obligatory picture of string instruments