Spending time with Thomas Albrecht again has been fun. I’m staying at his place in Wõrsdorf around Oratorio rehearsal time in Wiesbaden. We act much more subdued, grown-up I guess, than we were when we were 19 and 21. Probably a good thing. That was a great crazy time when the Idstein band did an exchange with the Birchmount Band way back then. We’ve been reminiscing quite a bit. And catching each other up on the news over the past 9 probably years since we’ve seen each other last.
He’s been great in lending me his car. So I can drive around the German countryside, through the villages, to places I need to get to while he’s working. I love the roundabouts! And driving on the autobahn is crazy! I was going 140 and was part of the slow crowd. The left hand lane was out of my league. Driving makes me more in tune with the area. Makes me feel more like I might live here. It’s been an experience figuring out where I have to be and how I have to get there. It’s worked out well even if I’ve been on a few detours.
On Thursday I went in to work with Thomas. First to the Musikschule Hünstetten of which he’s the director. It’s part of a regular school in the village. I got a tour and had a lovely chat with the principal who was interested in knowing how administration and school politics works in Toronto.
In the afternoon he teaches at a school in another village, a grade 5 band, a grade 7 band and also private students. I sat in on the band classes and was provided with a flute to play along. The kids in the grade 5 class were very cute and interested in playing and welcomed me nicely. There were about 15 of them. The grade 7 group only has 5 players and one was away. They were not any different than any of our grade 7 students. They had that constant need to talk and that, at times obnoxious, bantering back and forth thing, especially with the opposite sex was so the same. The only difference was that they were speaking German. Thomas’s strategy is to try to keep them playing as much as possible since it’s hard to talk with an instrument in your mouth. Still it made me thankful again that I’m taking this rest from school at the moment. In the evening we went to the Nassauer Hof for dinner. It’s right around the corner from his place, that old stomping ground. The salads are great! And sitting by the wood stove was very cozy.
When I came back from Dortmund and Köln we got to spend a little more time together, in between working, rehearsing, and organizing children. Thursday evening we went out for dinner to a Mexican place in the old town in Idstein. It’s very nice. All beautiful old Fachwerk. If I lived in Germany I think it might be in one of those old Fachwerk houses. One of Thomas’s friends lives in one of them. It took them 3 years to renovate it. It was a lot more work than they’d expected. It’s from 1710 originally. They had to replace most of the wooden beams. Not much of it is original anymore but they did a very good job with it. It was lovely, warm and rustic in their main room with the wood stove burning. We sat at the table drinking fresh apple cider while the kids bounced around on their exercise ball type horse, the boy dressed as a medieval knight and the girl as a princess. It was very cute and peaceful at the same time. It was so cute, when we knocked on the door, the little boy opened it and exclaimed with great hope, “It’s St Nikolaus”.
On Friday after I got back from my dress rehearsal Thomas and I sat at the kitchen table for a while. We ended up being able to track Courtney down, thanks to Canada 411 and his sister’s listing and his mom being there. It was especially fun for Thomas and Courtney to get caught up. I spent a little bit of time with his kids. Saturday morning I babysat for a while. We coloured paper and made those paper ring garlands. They too are very excited about the Christmas season and are into decorating. They were up very early in the morning to open the first window in their Advent calendar. They’re very cute. Cosima is 8 and Janosch is 5. Simon is 14 and older already. He slept in and missed out on the decorating. Game boy and computer are more his activities today.
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