I slept with two redheads, one was my musicstand buddy, the other my sister's and two other second violins plus an aunt. They were really nice and enjoyable roommates but two of them a bit young. One of them was not only young, 12 years, but behaved like a naive 8 year old, I have never experienced something more annoying. I think that spending time together in Hamburg made us grown together as an ensemble and will probably help with getting better since we now know each other better.
It all began this Tuesday morning, we got on a train to schiphol and then caught a train to Osnabrück and then a train to Hamburg, in total 5 hours of training before we got to where we had to go. The fun is that I now realise how we went to Hamburg and how we got back. The way there everybody just kept to themselves and friends kept with friends and everybody only communicated with the one they were sitting next to. In Hamburg we went to the hostel, unfortunately, me and the roomies got the worst room of all, small, warm and next to a busy 6 lane road, we did little sleeping too because of that. We went out to spend the extra money we had from playing a concert a while back on pizza and watched a huge water orchan, it even played the Tchaikovsky waltz.
The next day, we practised, had lunch and had to play our first concert. It was in a nursery home, with wobbly seats and a very small stage. It was fun to do and I noticed how my playing had improved over the last few weeks, I now just played instead of being scared, though I made so much mistakes I could fill a book about it and still not have enough pages. We head back to the hostel to lose your instruments and went out again to grab dinner and a concert played by students of the Highschool for Music.
On Friday we did a lot of rehearsing, despite the heat, with a German lunch not far away in between. After having buns for dinner we headed to a church and played there another concert, more official than the previous one. It was closed off with a barbecue, which was very lovely and it ended with the organiser teaching us two African songs to sing. We ended hitting our beds very late that night, while the heat was still boiling our brains and the cars rushed by.
That Saturday we had a day off, which we spend shopping, in the heat. Ending that with a ferry ride over the Elbe, where we found a corpse floating by, followed by helicopters and the Polizei. Our stop was at the beach along the Elbe, where almost everyone just sat on a terrace and enjoyed a cold glass of something and the shade. We took another bus and watched the game Germany - Uruguay in a lovely Vietnamese restaurant where we were having dinner. We couldn't watch the whole game, but the tube in Germany has this nifty thing that where you can see which tube and when the tube is going they will show you the game score. So we got down to the tube station and saw that Germany had one, we then proceeded to cheer for Holland in a tube full of celebrating Germans.
Sunday was an early day as we had to play during a mass, well we did and it took long. Like one and a half hour of religious bullshit and a woman wearing a 14th century ruffle. But the ensemble kicked ass, we never played this good, despite the sweating, heat and tiredness we were all suffering from. We did nothing the rest of the day, just went back to the hostel, put all the bags in one room, went for lunch at the Haupt Bahn Hof and went back to pick everything up again and go home with the train.
Talking about the way home, it was an epic mix of delays and heat. It started in Hamburg where the train had a delay of 40 minutes, so we had to wait at the train station, trying to uncomfortably sit on your bag with a violin next to you trying to not knock over others. In Osnabrück the train had 25 minutes delay, so we could catch it and only had to wait 5 minutes tops. Then we got the shock of our lives, the compartment we had had no air-conditioning. We were literally sitting in a sauna, the sweat was dripping down my back and into my cleavage and from my face. When people went to buy icepops they got told they had sold out and they had also sold out of water. Not even halfway most people had ran out of things to drink, but the football game had started. Yes it was the football finals with Dutchieland playing again Spain. Somebody had pulled out some speakers and somebody else had an iPod with radio on it so we desperately tried getting some reception. All sitting together on 6 train seats we started listening to the game. For the first time we were a real group, we knew everybody's name and freely talking, even though it was quietly, we sat together, we changed seats, shared drinks others bought and food. It was all so different.
Sadly the train had to divert to Zwolle to drive around Apeldoorn since the day before there had been a storm and there were branches on the tracks and our rail roads sucks when it comes to stormy weather. But finally, two hours off schedule we arrive in Schiphol and quickly got a train to Leiden Central. Where me and my sister had to rush to the bus stop, sad from losing the football match. Yes we actually got out of the train a few minutes after Spain scored their first and last goal. We were shortly joined by drunk and angry football fans, of which one kicked the litter bin and tried throwing a chair through a glass wall, which didn't work. Thank god that the bus me and my sister had to take was almost empty, we live in such a proper village. Then we got home, sweaty, tired and satisfied.
If I find pics I will surely post them here.
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