June 12

Oh my! I forgot entirely to tell you about my trip to Tubingen!

On the 12th of June, my choir packed its bags, hopped in a bus, and drove up to Tubingen in Germany. The choir there had visited us in Geneva last year, so we figured it was time to return the favour.

The trip took some hours so of course we took the chance to have a proper rehearsal in the bus. Nonsense! Bottles of red wine were opened and passed around, and later in the journey some rather silly songs were sung, in all sorts of random languages. What happens on a choir trip stays on the choir trip if you know what I mean... but here are a few slightly blurred photos to give you a small idea (I always forget that my cheapy camera takes a while to get its focus together).

In the bus and on our way	a snapshot from the window of the bus	Singing on the bus
Singing over lunch	getting up to mischief	a choir member takes over the bus!

Tubingen is a very pretty town. Apparently during the war, when troops came towards the town to destroy it, the people of the town came out and said to them "you can go destroy over there... that is where all the bad guys are" and pointed across town to a bit that they didn't mind so much being destroyed, and managed to save the old town. Well worth saving it was too, I must say... here are a few highlights, including some views from our excursion ponting down the river:

The ponting expedition was particularly fun, as we ended up singing bits of our repertoire as we floated along, inspiring cheers and applause from onlookers as we drifted by. (with especially interesting acoustics as we passed under the bridges) One of our lovely hosts had packed a bit of a picnic of fresh bretzel, cider and exquisitely sweet strawberries.

In the evening we joined the choir for their annual get together - a sort of mini concert followed by a meal and party. Those guys really know how to party, and we laughed and sang and danced till late in the night (including a very silly moment where everyone was waltzing around the room and I decided to do my best imitation of a ballerina doing swan lake through the middle of it. Oddly enough one of the choir member's wives, who used to be a dancer, asked me if I had ever trained because apparently I did some absolutely perfect ballet moves).

The next day we headed out to Bebenhausen to sing for mass, and I got to sing my first solo in a 13th century church. Coooooool.

We had a brief time to look around the Bebenhausen monastery before we had to hop back on the bus. It was founded in 1183, but most of it seems to have been completed in the 13th century, with the amazing dormitory in the eastern wing in the 16th century. There isn't much more to say about the place, that isn't best said in photographs. WOW. A spectacular end to the weekend.

June 09

In early June I had the pleasure of a visitor... one of the most talented people I know (among other things he has a glorious counter tenor voice) - as well as being a general honey. David was visiting for work but we managed to steal away an afternoon to visit the medieval fair in Andilly, France.

The weather had been miserable for the few days leading up to our visit, and we were a bit concerned that it was going to pour on is, but the weather held off, and we got to have a lovely wander around. David played the horn, we saw the birds of prey and some very impressive looking fighting demos. Quite inspirational for the Crossroads project I think.

On the 20th, Robert persuaded me to fly up to Sweden for the SCA midsummer event. Midsummer it may have been, and light all day and all night, but believe me it was not very warm, and I had to rug up in a cloak at night!

Robert told me that the event had a Viking theme. I realised that I had NO costumes that fit me, so for the first (and most likely last) time in my life, I made and wore a <gulp> Viking dress. Take a look at the photo for you are never likely to see it again! Still, all in all I looked less like a cushion than I expected.

Those who are old time SCAers might recognise someone from Lochac's past in these photos... actually there are two people of Lochac's past.. one hidden in the background.

The man in the blue top with Elfinn, is Robert. The event was lots of fun, with much silliness, good simple food, and really lovely people. I did have a rather amusing experience that I must relate though...

In Sweden they are big fans of the sauna. At the site there was, of course, a sauna, and a large proportion of the people at the event disappeared into it after dinner, where they spent the night drinking and chatting and occasionally throwing themselves in the lake. Now although I have lost quite a bit of weight, I am still a bit too shy to get naked with strangers (all of whom have far better figures than I), so I didn't go in the sauna, but Robert and I had plenty to do, popping in and out of discussions, keeping the kitchen staff company (I sang to them while they washed; a small contribution to the night, but it seemed appreciated) and wandering about.

Anyway, at about 4am, we wandered over toward the sauna. We were standing outside, when "monkeyboy" (centre photo on the bottom row above) staggered out of the sauna. No problems... it's not like I haven't seen naked men wandering about before. He was pretty merry, and stuck around to chat to us for a while. It was pretty cool outside (I was wearing a cloak over my long sleeved dress), but he didn't seem to notice. After half an hour or so, I started to worry a little that he was actually going to be getting very very cold, and was not really in a state to notice it. So I tucked him in under my cloak and we continued to chat. It was just a kind of surreal experience standing there talking to my would-be-boyfriend Robert, with a naked man under my cloak with me.