Europe II

So I've been back roughly 2 weeks now from the Euro trip. What a departure from reality, in that I had really no responsibilities except to be at practices and performances on time. With my pitch pipe! I'll ignore July 2nd at 10:00 pm dialing into the Verisign site to approve an SSL cert for someone who didn't bother to notify me before it expired and now the site's down and mgmt is in turmoil.

Many places we went to were very "touristy", essentially living life on a stage and going home to real life when the tourists leave. All our tour guides were like that. They were all great, very knowledgeable, good sense of humor. Especially the guy in Rothenberg. Aside from dressing up as the Night Watchman for the guided tours, he had produced a video of the town and it's history. He also owned a shop that he lived above, selling souvenirs and various other items. I bought his DVD and a little shot glass. But he was a very modern guy outside his Night Watchman gig. Two doors down I bought 7 glasses including my Stein and shipped them home. The hotel we stayed at looked very much of the period, but was actually rebuilt in 1945. I learned the meaning of "Baker Dunking", and drank at this bar. Closed it down actually, but that was only midnight.



We did a concert in Baden, a small town in Austria outside Vienna at a Synagogue, in an upper ecumenical room. A small crowd on a small stage with a nice grand and a toy organ. And 45 minutes before the concert it was a torrential downpour. Afterward we walked over to a local restaurant that opened just for us and we had a wonderful authentic dinner buffet with great wine, deserts, and the owner and friends played on the accordion and guitar singing folk songs, polkas and waltzes. As Herr Rolland said, this is what you travel to Europe for.