Auf Wiederschauen, München.

Such mixed feelings.  Very sad to be leaving this gorgeous, wonderful, place, but looking forward to being home too.

A sample of the memorabilia from our various travels,
including tours around Munich and Bavaria...
We've done a lot this year!

One last Blick down Ludwigstrasse...

Our bags are packed, ready to go.  This is it for one year of stuff for the four of us -- amazing how simply you can live.

 Now at the airport....

Ten of Julia's friends came to the airport to say goodbye.

Auf Wiedersehen!!

Farewell, Munich Bach Choir

Rehearsal (orchestral part) for the concert
last night in the Theatinerkirche

I've had a very emotional week as we get ready to leave, and last night at my last Münchner Bach-Chor concert, I held the tears back only until I managed to get off stage...

I am going to miss this choir, the people in it, and the director so much. It's hard to believe now that I performed in 18 concerts with them (13 separate programs), as it all has gone by so quickly.  Somehow especially in the last few months I have come to feel very at home here, and to realize how much of a privilege it has been to be part of this group.

This post will be quick and un-refined, but I just want to keep a record for myself, if no one else, of the wonderful choir experiences I've had in the last month.




Saarbrücken trip, July 6-8:

Our final choir trip was like a summer vacation for me.  The weather was great (finally) and the schedule not too grueling, and I had a lot of fun singing and hanging out with choir friends.
Saarbrücken is a beautiful small city near the French border, and we were part of a "world premiere" there of a choreographed (yes, with dancers) production of Beethoven's oratorio Christus am Ölberg (Christ on the Mount of Olives).

A banner for our concert, hanging on the Saarland State
Theater building (which was not where we performed)

The concert took place in a beautifully renovated factory, with a large stage for the dancers placed essentially over our heads. It was a little funny to sing with the sound of dancers clomping (OK, elegantly treading) above us.

Here we are in rehearsal (right off the 5-hour bus ride, no time even for lunch... wow, life of a professional performer must be difficult).

Then we did have some time that evening (Saturday) to enjoy the town...

Anke, me, Tamara, waiting for our beer and Flamkuchen.

(Saarbrücken was having a library day downtown, so there were many portable shelves with books and great pillow chairs lying around in the old city.)

Sunday we had two performances, 11 am and 7:30pm.  We sang both Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and the oratorio.  Normally I would say I didn't like these pieces especially.  (I'd been nearly laughing in rehearsals with parts of the oratorio... some sections, like the soldiers' marching entrance and the quivering of the disciples when Jesus gets caught, remind me strongly of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas... I'm sure they were making fun of Beethoven in much of their work.)   However, in the hands of Herr Albrecht, our director, and a really good orchestra, it was all marvelous -- exciting, dramatic and very moving.

Warming up, outside the theater.

 The audience loved us.  We got a standing ovation for 10 minutes with the audience clapping in unison!  The reviews thought the idea of dancing (with 3 Jesus's, 3 Seraph angels) to an oratorio weird, but they liked the music.  (See a local TV review here, starting at minute 22:15.  It includes footage of the performance!)

Taking bows at the end.  (I'm in the back, kind of under the right foot of the single dancer in black.)
[Photo by Susanne Schneidt]

Good-bye-and-thank-you party, July 15:

I wanted to do something for the choir, as a thank you for my experiences this year, and the best suggestion was to have a small party after a regular rehearsal in the Musik Hochschule.

The Hochschule fur Musik und Theater

[I should say parenthetically here, how weird and at times unsettling it is that most of my best experiences here in Munich took place in the building that Hitler built to be "his building", officially known then as the Führerbau... his offices and workspace, and the place where the infamous Munich Agreement of 1938 took place.  I guess I reconcile my qualms by thinking that we are exorcising the demons of that building with our purifying music...]

The "grand" staircase leads up to the room (just to the right of the stairs)
where we rehearse.

Our rehearsal space is just opposite Hitler's office, the
central wooden door here.  I peeked in there once; it's
now a music studio, with two grand pianos.

For my little party, I brought a dozen bottles of Prosecco and made some chocolate chip cookies.  I actually prepared and delivered a short thank-you speech in German (which, in my sudden case of nerves, I actually had to half-read... I can't quite speak spontaneously, in public, in German).

But the choir had prepared a song to sing to me!!  Without me really realizing what they were doing, they all started singing "München ich muss dich lassen" ("Munich I have to leave you", from the original song with Innsbruck in the title...)
 And then then the Alto section leader, Claudia, presented me with a beautiful picture book of Munich, and a folder of personalized cards with a picture of each of the altos.  I was nearly in tears.

Tamara was one of the first altos to chat
with me, and has become a good friend.

  I snuck my camera out the next week, during a regular rehearsal.

Director Hansjörg Albrecht, with assistant
director Peter Kofler at the piano.

A view down the line of altos:  (Claudia leaned out of sight
at the last minute) Susanne is the closest, Uschi, Cornelia,
Marion, Carolin.  (Veronika is not visible, in back.)

Last concert, (Helmschrott und Bach), July 28:

Not a great picture, but here's my last
concert with MBC.

The concert was not necessarily my favorite, but Claudia (bless her) had suggested to Herr Albrecht a beautiful piece to prepare as an encore, for me:  Abendlied by Rheinberger.  The text starts with "Bleib bei uns" (stay with us...) and the song is simply exquisite.  [Listen to this recording by the Cambridge singers and try not to tear up.]

I managed the recessional down the aisle before the tears really started.  As I found Thomas at the side of the church and cried on his shoulder, Herr Albrecht (who for the first half of this year I would have said was quite distant and formal) was remarkably sweet.  He came up to us and thanked me for being in the choir, and sympathized with my mixed emotions (saying it must be like his feeling graduating from school...).  He really is a good person, even if a bit of a music nerd, and truly a wonderful director.  I will miss him.

Picture taken in Saarbrücken by professional photographer Mats Karlsson (http://merkson.de)
[I'm in the back, fourth from the right.  Smiling.]

The scars of war

I have been meaning to write this post for over half a year, since I am intrigued by the handful of places here in Munich which architecturally mark and remember WWII.  

The Siegestor (Victory Gate), first erected by King Ludwig I in 1852, was partially destroyed in WWII and
purposely reconstructed with a plain facade to memorialize the destruction of war.  The words across the top
translate as: "Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, reminding of peace."

It's not my intention here to recount war history, or dwell on the background and guilt of Munich as "Capital of the [Nazi] Movement".  There are certainly many things to see here if one is interested in Third Reich history, but for a variety of reasons I have tried to minimize my attention to the Nazi period while here:  partly to avoid the stereotype that Americans are interested in Munich only for that reason (and for Oktoberfest), partly because I am married to a German of a generation that fully feels the guilt from a time before they were even born, and partly to keep my year here on the happier side!

[In this context I will mention, however, the best book I read here this year:  the 800 page translation of Erfolg by Lion Feuchtwanger is a roman à clé, and explains as well as I can imagine the psychology and history of the post WWI time in Munich leading to the rise of the Nazis.  The title ("Success") is ironic in view of later history, but the book was published in 1930 and the story itself ends with Hitler's unsuccessful first attempt at a coup in 1923...  This was one of the many books burned by the Nazis after they came to power in 1933.]

At the end of WWII, an unbelievable amount of Munich was destroyed by bombing (see here for example) but over the following decades the city was reconstructed.  A few buildings, however, were rebuilt in such a way to remember the war damage.  I call them "scars of war", and most are on my regular walking rounds here.

Archive picture of the Alte Pinakothk,
after WWII damage.
From the museum site

My favorite is the Alte Pinakothek, which is has always been a fabulous art museum.  It has the most obvious "scar", where a bomb destroyed the entire middle of the building.

The "scar" of bomb damage repaired is quite evident in the brick color.

(The Germans knew the bombs would be coming, so art and valuables in the museums and palaces were evacuated to safe places in the country well before the main bombing campaign.)

Another scarred but beautiful building is the St. Bonifaz Abbey, quite near to Benjamin's school downtown.  It was built in 1835 by King Ludwig I (as part of his effort to revive Bavarian spiritual life) as a long and narrow Byzantine-style cathedral.  The back half of it was destroyed in the war, and it was only partially reconstructed, probably at about half its original length.

From the side, St. Bonifaz looks somewhat shorter than you'd expect.

(From the front, it looks quite regal...)   

I pass every day by the scars of WWII gun-shot "wounds" in the walls of the university building around the corner from our apartment.

"Wounds of memory"

There is a plexiglass plaque over some of the holes, as a remembrance, again, of the destruction of war.  It says "Wunden der Erinnerung" (Wounds of Memory).

The streets of Munich are heavy with history.  While I'm walking around town, I often find myself thinking about kings, composers, artists, Upper Bavarian peasants, Nazis, and ordinary citizens who had to contend with all the upheavals of history.

World war II, of course, looms large over history here.  Events are often stated as being simply before or after "the war."  Munich now is prosperous, cosmopolitan, and altogether enchanting I think.  In current times, you actually have to know what you're looking for to find signs of the war -- except for the handful of building memorials I've shown here.  They're certainly noticeable, but still somewhat subtle.  Quite thoughtfully done.

You can see "wounds of memory"
also in this statue outside the
Alte Pinakothek.

One last weekend trip: the Dolomites

Before our final week of packing and good-byes, we had reserved this past weekend for one last family mini-vacation.  Since Julia loves mountains, and Benjamin had never been to Italy, we decided on Brixen, a beautiful little town in northern Italy, just at the edge of the Dolomite mountain range.

Both the town of Brixen and the surrounding mountains are extraordinary.  

It is funny, if sometimes confusing, to see both Italian and
German names for all the towns in this region.

It was also easy for us to communicate since you hear more German than Italian in this area.  (Südtirol, or the South Tyrol region, was part of Austria for centuries and almost entirely German speaking, until annexed by Italy at the end of WWI.  Despite "Italianization" efforts by Mussolini, the Germanic culture here is still very strong.)

The food options are marvelous here, of course, since you get the best of both German and Italian cuisine.  Especially pizza!!

Saturday morning we took a bus up a very steep, hair-pin curve road, to a gondola station that took us up to 2050 m before we even started hiking!  

We were lucky with the weather, and with the surprising sparsity of people on the trails (although there were a few cows and horses...)

We decided on a trail that took us to the top of Mt. Gabler (2576 m).  It was relatively easy, until the last few minutes of steep climbing, but -- wow-- the view at the top was worth everything.

On the way up...

From the top of Mt. Gabler.  Awesome.  (That's Julia in the foreground)

After the steep climb up the north side, we were pleasantly surprised to find a relatively flat alpine meadow on top of the mountain (with a small hut, with guest book, which Julia signed).

Julia was sooooo happy to be there...

The "hut" we found for a drink on the way down, was quite luxurious, with a playground, lounge chairs with woolskins, and a fabulous view.  (It's called Rossalm, if anyone wants to book room there...)

The weather just kept getting better, and the view on our way down was like a dream.  We must have taken hundreds of pictures.  I'll limit myself to a couple here :-)

*sigh*  

Pizza dinner (again) felt great.   

Although were were exhausted, we walked around the lovely Baroque town before getting kids to bed, simply because it was so... well, European.  

We met the Salditts later that evening (they were also on their way to a more extended vacation in the Dolomites, and we'd arranged to overlap for a day) and we four adults had a perfect glass of Südtyrol wine in a perfectly quaint alley in the old town.  It doesn't feel much more like summer vacation than this...

Sunday with the Salditts, we did a relatively easy hike (repeating the panoramic hike from Plose gondola to the Rossalm) and then enjoyed the hotel pool until it was time to catch the train.

What a wonderful mini-vacation.  

Now on to the somewhat less fun business of packing...

Goodbye, Alps....