Journal Entries
2005 meet revisited. And a murder
Posted Feb 14, 2008
Last weekend I took my husband to a little place near Coblence. It was his birthday last Thursday, so a weekend away was in order. We stayed in a really posh castle which is now used for concerts and music workshops.
http://www.schloss-engers.de/
It's directly on the Rhine and we could watch the barges from our window. The view in the picture is from the water - our window was one of the ones on the second floor on the right side of the building. The steps and ground floor entrance lead to the (very posh) restaurant.
The main event was a Murder Mystery Dinner on the Saturday night.
We arrived on the Friday and spent the Saturday going round Coblence (I remembered it all so well from the meet there in March 2005 - my husband didn't remember it so well as it had changed considerably since he did his military service there in 1970). It was a gorgeous sunny February day and we did loads of walking.
Although we were booked for a huge dinner, we had lunch at a lovely little restaurant - the perfect light lunch. The morning we had spent in Schloss Stolzenfels (The Proud Rock) which was quite impressive, and in the afternoon we went to the Deutsches Eck (where we had spent a long time during the meet in 2005.) This is the little strip of land between the Moselle and the Rhine, just before the Moselle flows into the Rhine.
We took the bus back to "our" castle to change for dinner and went down to the bar early - as requested. The whole party (must have been about 80-90 "guests") gathered in the foyer and were served sherry and "Sekt". Then the "Baroness" opened the door to the Garden Room - which was laid for dinner beautifully with white linen and huge candelabras on each table - and the fun began. The evening programme alternated between scenes of the play and courses of the meal.
The play took place with the hostess (The Baroness and her daughter) and their more important guests seated at the centre table - sometimes they walked around the room, between the tables etc., and occasionally they spoke to the other guests/members of the audience. Four men were picked to remove the corpse when one member of the company had duly dropped dead.
Between the last two scenes, the audience were asked to write the name of their most likely suspect on a piece of paper which was later drawn out of a hat - the prize was a 50 Euro voucher for the hotel restaurant - really worth seeing as it was in the basement of the castle - catacomb-like but elegant. We only got to have breakfast there, but the menu looked awesome. My husband and I both came to the wrong conclusion and accused the wrong person, but never mind - "A good time was had by all"!
The menu served between the scenes was delicious. Although the dishes had been given names like "Bloody slices of beef" and "Arsenic soup", it was all good edible stuff!
On the Sunday we took the train back home - it was still a lovely sunny day all over Germany and everybody was in a good mood. Unfortanately I don't think we took many pictures at the dinner, but got plenty during the day in Coblence.
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Latest reply: Feb 14, 2008
This year's music projects
Posted Jan 11, 2008
Oh yes - lots going on.
1. My usual little church choir. We sing occasionally in Church and probably the next commitment will be at Easter - we usually accompany the long service on Maundy Thursday. We may be asked to sing for the kids at the First Communion service which in Germany is always on the first Sunday after Easter. We also get asked to sing at Weddings, and now the clique is getting older, there's even been one funeral we were asked to do.
2. The local choir which performs the final concert of the Summer Festival. There was no concert last year, but this year we're doing Mendelssohn's Elijah. Because it is such a mammouth work, we have already started rehearsing and the concert will take place not at the last weekend of the school term, as it usually does, but in August. Schools break up in June here this year. The holidays are staggered from State to State to relieve traffic congestion on the holiday weekends but it doesn't really work.
3. The Sternsinger choir - which was just a short stint. Another project choir which was formed for the sole purpose of accompanying the service to start the national Sternsinger event. That takes some explaining which I won't both you with here. We rehearsed for one weekend last November and the service was in the Cathedral on 2 Jan. This is our Cathedral: It's over 1000 years old.
http://www.welterbe-speyer.de/fileadmin/speyer/media/splash-dom-1002.jpg
4. The "Queen" Project Choir. We are now nearly through with the proposed 15 songs. There are three concerts in March and two in April. I hope we'll be good enough on time! It's a very different type of singing, and lots of fun.
5. On a private level, I've got together with some girlfriends and we're doing a few songs for a 50th birthday. I'm a bit nervous as most of the things we're singing are Irish folk songs and I'm the only non-Irish one in it. That's this Sunday - the day after tomorrow.
6. I'm in another choir in the next village to the one I live in and they are a typical "Männergesangsverein" (male voice choral society) and have their 100 years anniversary next year, so things will be hotting up this year. This is the choir we sang that wonderful Robert Ray "Gospel Mass" with. This year we are specialising in Musical songs. The average age of the choir is about 75, and they take ages to learn songs. But they're a nice crowd.
My Wednesdays are still free. I wonder if there's a choir that meets then?
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Latest reply: Jan 11, 2008
Dirty Water
Posted Sep 11, 2007
For the last couple of days - well, all weekend, actually, we have had E.Coli bacteria in our water. They finally announced the all clear today. Strangely enough, bottled water was available in adequate amounts in the shops on Saturday and we noticed practically no difference in everyday life.
Hardly really worth writing a journal about, but hey ho.
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Latest reply: Sep 11, 2007
Hello Dublin
Posted Sep 5, 2007
My middle son will be in Dublin as from next week. He will be with a friend who's been there for a while. Is there anything a 23-year-old shouldn't miss - anything that his friend perhaps hasn't found out about yet?
Discuss this Journal entry [33]
Latest reply: Sep 5, 2007
Quote of the Day
Posted Sep 3, 2007
I never thought I ever had a chance of being Quote of the Day! Today they've picked me. There can't have been much else going on that day!
Somewhere there's an archive of QotD - I'll have to find it and put a link to it somewhere on my PS.
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Latest reply: Sep 3, 2007
You can call me TC
Researcher U154942
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