As the sharp, articulated sounds of Gould come through my headphones (I seem to be obsessed with Well Tempered these days), I write this on the train.
And I must say, what a civilized way to travel. It's a smooth ride. While simultaneously moving at 126km the train is quiet and easy to use… well mostly easy to use, more on that later.
I woke up at 7:30 in Frankfurt after having a mostly full night of sleep. I didn't include a picture of my hotel last night, but it was so very spectacularly green, I figured it deserved one.
Whether it is normal or not, I seem to be dealing with jet lag better the more I travel… Or maybe I’m just used to being tired from school. Which ever it is, the jet lag isn't hitting me particularly hard this trip.
I think it's now come to the point where I would like to talk a bit about my german.
I want to make it clear that I am in no way fluent in German. However, when I decided to spend a few days on my own before we started rehearsals, one of the deciding factors for Germany was that I am confident enough in the language that I figured I, at the very least, wouldn’t starve. Here is was I failed to recognize. Language teachers speak slowly. Very.... Very.... Slowly.
For anyone who has recently told me to stop mumbling or to speak slower, I suddenly feel your pain. I am so sorry, and this may very well reform my mumbling ways.
And, it should be stated that, by no means am I starving over here. I have been able to find a bed and three meals on my own so far. There is no need for emergency care packages of candy to be airdropped. But because I want to improve my German, and my Czech for that matter, I have decided to give myself a little challenge. With the exception of the Police, customs officials, and other governing bodies, I will try, as best I can, to speak in German and in Czech.
All of that being said, while the majority of officials and customer service speak English, it is startling how quickly you can get stuck on some form of menial task. This morning during breakfast I failed to get my toast out before it would burn because I had no idea how to pop it up in time. Later while at the train station looking for a snack, I realized that if I wanted to stick to my plan of speaking only german, then I was only going to be able to order food I knew the name of.
Sometime it’s not even a language barrier, but simply a barrier of presupposed knowledge. After stepping on the train, I began the process of searching for a seat. I quickly noticed that above all the seats were little LCD screens. Some blank, some showing a name, and some just reading Frankfurt-Leipzig.
Okay, I said to myself. Don’t sit in the ones with peoples names on them. That’s easy enough. Maybe the blank ones are for people getting off at one of the stops in-between here and Leipzig. As I was going to be riding the train to the end I chose one of the seats with “Frankfurt-Leipzig” above it. Almost immediately a woman sitting across from me turned to me and seemingly asked me in German if I was going to Leipzig. I answered yes, I was, and quickly forgot about the encounter.
It was soon revealed that that the seat I was sitting in, in fact, already belonged to someone else. A confused man popped up, and told me I was in his seat. I quickly got up, apologized, and without wanting to steal a seat away from anyone else, broke down into english and quickly asked if I could sit next to the women from before. She very graciously took pity on me, and offered me the seat. It turned out that my attempts to switch into English would do me no good as she spoke almost no english, and I was going to be forced to follow my plans after all.
Time and time again, all over the world I have discovered a kind of safety net. A get out of a jail free card if you will. To be used when you are stuck looking for help. Auf Deutsch I've titled it “Musik ist Vereinheitlichung”. In english, music is unifying. As I sat down the woman on the train saw that I was carrying a score with me, and asked if I was a musician. I explained I was an opera singer here to sing The Bartered Bride. She lit up and exclaimed “ah, Smetana is beautiful”. These kinds of interactions are not uncommon. Even if the music isn't opera, music, and to a similar extent, food, are such common factors, that everyone will share in them. In some cases it's what can start great friendships. In this case, it gave me someone to practice my German on while on the train.
After a full day of seeing Dresden, I am now back at my hostel. Once I got in (after a little bit of detouring because I walked in the wrong direction) I found the hostel. The place, like the Neustadt is young and exciting. Think a European version of Portland.
As evidence, here is a picture of the dragon painted on the wall in my room.
I and met up with Courtney, and we hit the pave stones. It turns out that Courtney had a little more trouble with her travels to Dresden than I did. A late train and a language barrier, meant a troublesome walk finding the hostel, but true to her usual form she took it in stride (Courtney, if you’re reading this, I am proud of you. I am even proud of your German). As she got to the hostel a half day before, she got the lay of the land before me. And led us through the old town.
As we walked, we filled each other in on our days. Her best moment is better said in her own words. “I walked into the shower this morning, after a minute one of the girls from the floor pointed out I was in the mens shower. It was at this point I thought to myself “That explains all the men in here””.
We talked, went to a music store, and ate. This city is alive. It’s young and vibrant. I am really excited to explore it more.
Tomorrow I get to see more of Dresden, and then in the evening heading to the Oper.
