Celebrations

A couple of weekends ago I traveled to Hong Kong. It seems like much longer ago and almost dream-like because it was so brief and I've done so much since then.

I was only in HK itself for 3 days, 72 hours almost exactly. It is far enough away and you cross enough time zones that travel took about a whole day one way. I left Thursday afternoon and returned on Tuesday morning about when my family was waking up. Magnus had Thursday and Friday off from work (Germany is great for vacation days, this was Ascension Thursday and oh, just take Friday off as well! It's hardly worth it to come in only one day before the weekend!), so child care was relatively easy to arrange. The boy only had to go to day care the whole day on Monday.

The trip took about 16 hours to HK with a layover in Hannover. Somewhere between Hannover and Frankfurt I got an email from Albert saying he'd just realized another Hong Kong friend of his (Bernard) living in Frankfurt and I were on the same flight. We found each other at the gate and had a nice chat. I'm definitely a spoiled international traveler: The airplane didn't have individual video screens, so I did the most reasonable thing - I read and listened to StarShipSofa until I decided I could fall asleep and slept for the duration.

First impression of Hong Kong: Holy moly, those are some tall apartment buildings! I went straight to the hotel (Hotel Kowloon), which was right next to the Peninsula, where most of the wedding festivities would be held, but much cheaper. Nice comfortable hotel. Breakfast was NOT worth the €16 added to the room price! I took a nap while I waited for friends from my time in Frankfurt who were also in the wedding party to arrive and call.

Friday night was the wedding rehearsal and I was to run through my songs with Albert's sister Sharon and the organist. Both went extremely well. Sharon is an excellent pianist, even if she hasn't played regularly (or was it "at all") in years. She applied herself these past few months and got the Malotte Lord's Prayer up to snuff. The rehearsal dinner was held at the Hong Kong Cricket Club (well, well!) and was an excellent western style meal. Upon arriving I asked for water and it came warm! It was actually the perfect antidote to the torrential rains outside and the glacial air conditioning inside. This dichotomy would turn out to be a recurring theme while I was there! I made sure I had my pashmina or my shrug sweater with me at all times.

Saturday I had a dim-sum lunch with Bernard, Jen and Patrick (the Frankfurt friends) at the Prince restaurant. It was on the top floor of the building and overlooked the bay towards Hong Kong Island (we were in Kowloon) and the food was oh so yummy. Jen and I went shopping in Centre (Hong Kong Island). I was on a mission to find a reasonable pair of concert shoes: black, closed toe, heel but not too high and above all extremely comfortable. Oh, and in my size. I quickly realized that I do not have the small and dainty foot of your average Chinese maiden. I was lucky if they had a size 39 (US 9) let alone the 40 or 41 that I actually needed. I did, however find a perfect pair of dance shoes by Repetto that were unfortunately just that much too small. If they'd had a size larger, they would've been perfect and I would not have hesitated buying them one second. As it was despite more searching that night after "High Tea" I came up empty handed.

We joined Albert, Natalie and families for High Tea at the peninsula. I just had cake. But the tea sandwich/cakes tower looked delectable. After tea, a Hong Kong friend of Albert's who he met in San Francisco (Ken) went shopping with me! Such a gentleman! He also joined me for dinner at a well known restaurant and then refused to let me pay! This was also turning out the be a recurring occurrence, since Bernard bought lunch for all of us too!

The next morning I met Jen and we went to get our hair put up at a nearby salon. They did an excellent job with mine and I'm sure it wouldn't have ever budged a millimeter if I hadn't taken out the gouging bobby pins after I was done singing at the reception!

The wedding!!! ...was at 15:30 (officially) I was to sing "Bist Du Bei Mir" by Bach (Anna Magdalena Songbook) the moment Natalie arrived in the car. But there was no sign of her until almost 16:00 (4:00pm!). The Bach went well and the ceremony was beautiful. It was interesting to hear Amazing grace sung in Cantonese! And I haven't heard a congregation sing like that ( well and loud ) since Christ the King, Frankfurt! Alberta's uncle, who is a minister working in the UK at the moment did the sermon. He printed out an English translation for those of us ignorant of Cantonese. Lovely.

During the signing bit Albert's sister Sharon and I did the Malotte. It went very well except for me almost losing it emotionally at the beginning. I am just so happy for Albert! After the ceremony we performed it again and recorded it. There is a video I'll have to embed another time. I've been writing about this weekend way too long already!

The reception was in the Spring Room backs at the Peninsula. Albert asked me to sing a few songs with the jzz combo he'd hired. I prepared Summertime, At Last and Skylark, which was Albert's request. I was a little early to rehearse with them and they were still sitting around eating we talk about tempo and keys. And when I asked later if we shouldn't go rehearse the leader said, "honey, we just did!" gotta love jazz musicians. I was terrified at first but aside crime the keys actually not being right for At Last and Skylark, it went very well! I was even able to jazz it up a little. We did The Nearness of you as a bonus too. The food at the reception more traditionally Chinese and wonderful!! I stayed until the very end when it was just Patrick, Jen, Ken and Bernard and I plus a few other young folk I didn't know. Joy.

I took a walk the next morning intending to go up to Victoria Peak, but by the time I found the tram t goes up there it was time to return to the hotel. Had a nice walk around Centre though and happened past the old Episcopal Church.

I took a taxi to the airport with Jen and Patrick because our flights were relatively close together. We ate lunch together and parted ways. I miss them! Friends like that are rare.

The trip home was long but uneventful. A 3 hour flight to Singapore on which I started but couldn't finish the American version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and a few hours layover there made it interminable. I arrived home in Hannover at about 8am and spent the morning playing with Dante. He missed me! But had lots of good boy time with his Papi.

Concerts - report

When it rains, it pours! At least, that's what they say, and I have to admit it often seems true! This year when Easter rolled around I didn't have a whole lot planned for the next few months. But that changed drastically.

In the throes of one of the most horrible colds I've had in a while, my dear colleague Joachim Dreher in Dillenburg called and asked if I could jump in and sing in a concert in May. He'd had a soprano soloist all lined up (most likely a year in advance as is his wont), but she had called and said she was no longer able to do the gig. He remembered my offer in October that if he should ever find himself needing a soloist at short notice that he should turn to me. Not having a whole lot lined up for 2012 and being a quick study means that I could be what saves a concert if someone gets sick. Well, at least I had a few weeks notice for this concert. But more on that later.

But first the performance at the Herrenhäuser Chortage 2012 in Hannover by Raggio-di-Sol. That's the small vocal ensemble (10 singers), that I sing with. As per usual, we sang a few pieces during this choir festival. A whole weekend featuring  choirs from Hannover. We performed on Saturday afternoon. We did "Pastime with Good Company" by Henry VIII, "Pedro y bien te quiero" (anon.) "When David Heard" by Thomas Weelkes, "Luci seren e chiare" by Claudio Monteverdi and "Magnificat anima mea", by Alfredo Ihl (our director). We did adequately. I say adequately because Alfredo made everyone nervous about the Weelkes by harping on one small section way past the point of no return. A pity, because it would've been just fine. As it was, there was no complete breakdown, but at least one person lost their way. Oh well. The rest of the pieces went quite well! That took place at the end of April.

This past weekend, May 12-13, took me back to my old haunt Dillenburg again. This time to sing Bach cantatas. Joachim had stitched together a wonderful pastiche of pieces of various cantatas and organ pieces to create a program he called "Bach and in Honor of Bach" ("Bach und Bach zu Ehren"). The church choir, a small baroque orchestra (with a few members I know from previous performances), a bass soloist and me performed from 9 different cantatas and an organ soloist performed works by Liszt, Rinck and Karg-Elert on themes from Bach pieces. It was a wonderful program and the orchestra and choir were in fine form. I'm quite satisfied with my performance, although it wasn't perfect, when is it ever? And I don't think there was anything that anyone but a professional musician might have noticed. Maybe not even then...

17 May 2012 I flit off to Hong Kong! My dear friend Albert is (finally) getting married! I know Albert from choir at the Episcopal Church of Christ the King in Frankfurt. After he left Frankfurt he spent several years in the US and then returned to his home town Hong Kong where he met Natalie. I am so pleased for him (and her!). And he asked me to sing at his wedding, offering to pay for my flight! How could I say no?!? The wedding date being 20 May 2012 meant that it fit just perfectly between the concert in Dillenburg and Magnus' grandmother's 90th birthday celebration in Bussolengo on 27 May 2012! I'm flying to HK by myself. The boys will be alone for 5 days! Unfortunately, because travel time is so long to HK I'll only be there from midday Friday to midday Monday. But I'm sure it will be an amazing experience. One set of friends from Frankfurt (Jen and Patrick) will also be there participating, so I'll be able to hang out with them. Unfortunately, the one other person I know in HK (Solveig, from Voices Found) will be in Paris that weekend! Figures!

I will be singing The Lord's Prayer by Mallotte and Bist Du Bei Mir by Anna Magdalena Bach during the ceremony. At the reception Albert has hired a jazz band and requested I sing a few numbers. I've chosen At Last and Summertime and he requested Skylark. Oh, this will be so fun!

So that's what's been going on and what's in the works. 


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Report: Pop/Rock Concert

OK, I've been so busy lately that I completely forgot to blog about a recent concert I did. I mentioned it before - Me and two others covering pop and rock music.

Anyone who knows me, knows that this isn't really my thing. However, since meeting Janusz, who takes singing lessons from me and is an avid midi-file/keyboard player, I've been playing around with singing pop music. I find it awkward to sing (I'm a soprano after all), it sits all wrong in my voice, and if I sing it comfortably, it sounds all wrong. That's changed a little lately, since I started working with Carol Baggott Forte, actually. And our choice of repertoire and the keys we do it in have helped too. Here's the list of songs I sang:

Carole King, You've Got a Friend
ABBA, Mamma Mia and Money, Money, Money
Morris Albert, Feelings (yes...)
Mike Oldfield, Moonlight Shadow
Those Were the Days
Moody Blues, Nights in White Satin
BeeGees/Barbara Streisand, Woman in Love
Madonna, La Isla Bonita


The other two sang mostly Polish (they both are) and German pop. Renata and I sang back-up for each other on a few songs.

This was a sort of open rehearsal, since we've never performed this stuff outside of Janusz's living room. Oh, wait. Actually, Janusz and I did a gig for a Christmas party for a friend of his. But we only did 5 songs - 3 Christmas, Woman In Love and Hey, Jude. Anyway, Janusz has mountains of equipment to transport and set up and he wanted a chance to go through the motions, as it were. Ideally, we'd like to get gigs playing at weddings or receptions/parties, that sort of thing.

Well regardless, it went off quite well. I was rather pleased. I didn't manage to memorize anything though, which is not so great, but I didn't flub anything! W00t! I have issues with memorization. I grew up and went through college never realizing I had problems with texts and memorization. But that's worthy of another post!

There were quite a few people there - around 80 or so. Most were friends and clients of Janusz's but 8 or so were friends and pupils of mine. I've gotten feedback and except for the occassional "you can tell you're a trained singer", which in this case is not necessarily a compliment, all positive.

This coming weekend I have a wedding to sing, in which I'm to sing Schubert's Ave Maria (in Latin) and a pop song - Das Beste by Silbermond. I sure hope I have to sing the pop song first. I'm sure I can switch into classical singer mode easily, but it's my pop-singer mode I'm insecure about.

Also this "weekend" (it's "Pentecost Monday" which is a holiday here in Germany) the little 8-person choir I sing with ("Raggio di Sol") is giving a concert of Renaissance and Baroque music. Now THAT's my thing.

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The Home Stretch

Long time no see! Yes, I apologize for going radio silent just as I've entered the Home Stretch of pregnancy. No, Dante hasn't been born yet. He's much too comfortable in there! My Mac Mini decided it had had enough (force feeding, I guess) and refused to start up. I took it to the Apple Hospital and they got it to work again. Unfortunately, there are random bits of software which are missing, so random programs don't work properly. I'm clueless about these things, so I think it'll probably be about 18 years before I stop getting random error messages. My friend, Meredith, formerly of the CtK choir in Frankfurt suggested a Big Mac might help. Maybe it's worth a try? ANYWAY...

I have a couple of things to report on:

The Final Wedding Performance

My friends Isabel and Jens asked me to sing for their wedding on 5 September. They chose Laudate Dominum from Mozart's Vespers. We had agreed that if I really wasn't up to it, I could cancel. I felt fine, and my voice was fine, but breath management was weird. I was concerned, because I needed more oxygen than I needed air to sing this piece and my body would get all stressed out by the end of it. Luckily the church was big and the balance with the organ was such that I could sing louder. Strangely, that seemed to help. I "wasted" the air I needed for oxygen's sake and the whole process was more efficient. There wasn't quite the dynamic variation that Mozart suggests, but you know what? I sang well, the bridal couple and several guests were moved, and that's what counts, no?

StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1

The first official Anthology of StarShipSofa's Aural Delights Audio Magazine is available for purchase at Lulu, a print on demand publishing house. You can also download a free ebook version of this fantastic collection of stories. Have a look at the book, which is styled after those wonderfully campy 50's pulp Science Fiction paperbacks, complete with advertisements from 50's magazines interspersed between the stories and original artwork for select stories. Click here. From there you can decide whether you'd like to purchase the book from Lulu or download. In any case, you can also donate to the StarShipSofa. As I've mentioned before, I've narrated countless stories and poetry for the SSS and Tony Smith has become a friend. Three of the stories I narrated for the podcast are appearing in the Anthology. If you listened and liked those stories or narrations you might like to have them in print and you can help out by purchasing the book. All proceeds will go toward production costs of the podcast.

Pregnancy

Officially the due date is 13 October. My doctor has gone back and forth a couple of times whether it should be the 6th or the 13th. She's now convinced it should be earlier than the 13th anyway. She declared that from 22 September she'd no longer consider it a premature birth and Dante is welcome to make his appearance. Being pregnant is definitely getting tedious and I'm so curious to meet my little boy. I've been remarkably free of problems worse than elephant feet and cankles due to water retention. I've started with acupuncture to ease the birth and next week the doc will set some needles to help with the swollen legs and feet. I wouldn't have thought, but these needles are much more uncomfortable than the ones they stick in your face for hayfever! I'm trying to rest a lot, and not over-do it. Not sleeping too well these days. Tomorrow we'll have another consultation and ultrasound at the hospital and perhaps set a last date when they'll induce if he's gotten too comfortable in there. Magnus and I will have birthing class on Saturday. Next week some friends have organized a baby shower for me. I think we are pretty much organized and anything we don't have yet won't be tragic.

That's it for now. I'm planning on reviewing a wonderful Dance production I went to recently, but I'll do that in a separate post.

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More weddings - and singing for them too

I apologize for not having posted in a while. To be honest, I've entered the nesting stage, I think, and don't have a ton to post about. I really must figure out what I can post about when I take my baby break from teaching and singing, which will likely be from October through the end of the year.

Anyway, what I have been doing lately is singing at weddings. A couple of friends here in Hanover got married recently and asked me to sing at their weddings.

The first was in a beautiful church in a convent outside of Hanover. I was worried about this one, honestly, because the organist didn't arrive back from her vacation until 2 days prior to the event and hadn't received the music. We were doing Schubert's Ave Maria, which is no big deal for anyone worth their salt. But the other song was a German pop song made famous by Yvonne Catterfeld: Für Dich, written by Dieter Bohlen (who else?!?) of the German Pop Idol series "Deutschland sucht den Superstar". I believe there is even an English version of it. The music the couple provided us with was sparse and when playing what was written gave no indication of what the song should actually sound like. The rehearsal with the organist was a disaster. It sounded strange on an organ and she'd never actually heard Catterfeld's recording. I suggested we might actually use a Karaoke version I'd found on iTunes (for rehearsal purposes), if we could get a decent sound system. We organized that contingency plan, just in case the organist didn't manage to arrange the accompaniment well. As luck would have it, she had listened to the recording I gave her and practiced the shit out of it, so it sounded decent enough. The difference between everything being played on the organ and the one song a recording was actually worse than doing this pop song on the organ. The bride and groom were over the moon with how it turned out, so a win in the end. The organist was actually good and a nice person, so that if anyone hires me to sing and needs an organist I have someone I can recommend.

The next wedding is Saturday, Sept. 5 for a good friend of mine. They were initially reluctant to ask me to sing considering my state (9 months pregnant), but in the end we decided we'd choose a song and if I don't feel up to it, then I just won't sing. Luckily, I've been spared much difficulty with singing this pregnant. I have a VERY long waist, which means there is lots of room, UNDER my diaphragm for baby. I just don't have an abdominal muscles for emergency support at the end of phrases. All that means is that I have to breathe a bit deeper or more often and make sure I'm not tempted to have to eek out that last drop of air in my lungs, 'cause it just ain't happening. So far, I feel fine and my voice is shaping up after the long bout with a throat I had in August. I will sing Mozart's Laudate Dominum from the Vespers, which is just a lovely piece. The organist knows the version with choir, but I have a version with violin obligato, so he will work out a hybrid of the two. We'll rehearse the day of and so we'll just have to assume it will go well. :-)


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Catching up - UK trip

Wow, I'm a bad blogger. I have fun and perhaps interesting things to blog about and I don't manage to get around to it...

2 weekends ago Magnus and I attended some friends' wedding in Sheffield, England. We took the opportunity to visit some other friends in N. England and had a bit of a whirlwind trip because of it. We stupidly flew to Manchester instead of Newcastle, which would have been wiser, because we then jumped into a rental car and drove the 3 hours to visit Tony Smith of the StarShipSofa.

This was our first face-to-face meeting, in the flesh, as it were and it was quite exciting! Tony records the new weekly Sofanauts show on Friday afternoons and so I appear on episode No. 5 as a live studio guest! What a gas! You can listen to all or a bit of it here: Sofanauts No. 5 In case you don't know, the Sofanauts is a new panel-type podcast in which Tony invites 2 or 3 guests and there is much talk and discussion on current events or issues in the Science Fiction community. It's fun, but perhaps only if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Tony and Mrs. StarShipSofa are gracious hosts and the kids are great! Their house is beautiful, full of bright colors and quirky art and character. Tony's daughter vacated her room for the night so Magnus and I had a bed to sleep on - thank you E! Tony receives complimentary copies of several new books each week and they are starting to pile up. He practically begged us to take a few off his hands. So we did. Titles by Hal Duncan, Cory Doctorow, Anne and Todd McCaffrey, Patricia Biggs and Alison Goodman. We had a lovely evening just gabbing about various and sundry over dinner and into the evening. Unfortunately, we had to leave relatively early the next morning to drive to Sheffield for the wedding, which started at 1pm.

The wedding and the reception were beautiful and we knew a couple of other people at the wedding. The couple being married were Jane and Anthony and Jane and I sang in the CtK Choir together in Frankfurt and Jane took singing lessons from me for about a year. I suppose I met Anthony at the same time as Jane, because he came to Frankfurt to visit our choir director, Stephen Hartley, and sang with the choir when he was there. It was lovely to see Stephen and Joyce, whom I haven't seen since he left Frankfurt. We never managed to travel to York to visit them while we were living in London. For shame! I fizzled pretty early and we skipped the Ceilidh in the evening, which I would have loved, but I think fast energetic dancing is out for the time being... (more on that later).

On Sunday we drove up to Lancaster to visit our friends Andy and Lizzy and their 8 month old Phoebe. We had a great time just catching up. We visited the Butterfly House in Williamson Park near the Ashton Memorial and I took some photos with my new Nokia, but they're not so great. Let see:

Upcoming events

A flurry of activity is marking my days lately. Well, relatively speaking anyway. Aside from teaching and recording for the StarShipSofa (and not much of that actually), I haven't done much the past few months. That has changed to a certain extent (I'm still not what a lot of people would call busy, and stress isn't really a part of my life at the moment, but, you know, it's all relative).

I will be singing for a wedding on March 21st. Weddings are small, low-key affairs for me. I usually sing 2 or 3 songs (in this case it's 2) and they are usually songs that are familiar to me and not too difficult technically. I'll be singing Amazing Grace and Climb Ev'ry Mountain (from Sound of Music) for this one. Had a bit of a hiccup when 2 days ago the organist called and said she is bowing out of playing these songs for the wedding. Huh? She said, the arrangements were not suited for the organ (well, I told her *that*) and she didn't want to play them. I think she thought that I had chosen the music I was to sing. I said to her, I have a hymn accompaniment for Amazing Grace which is certainly more suited to the organ, if that would help, but as for Climb Ev'ry Mountain, there is simply no other arrangement that I could find and I had hoped she would be able to cope. I was wrong. She simply flatly refused (2 weeks before the wedding I might add) and said she'd already spoken to another accompanist, one that had an electric piano that he could use. Fine with me, but is it fine with the Bride, I asked. Well, she hadn't spoken with her yet, but she would. So I called the new accompanist to arrange a rehearsal and discuss things with him. He asked me about his payment. What do I know? That's something he and the Bride and possibly the organist are going to have to work out. He told me the organist said I'd arrange that! Sheesh! She seems to live in la-la-land, this one! So, to make a short story even longer - it's all worked out now and I'm sure I'll prefer working with the pianist more than I would have the organist!

A couple of weeks ago I got a call, out of the blue, from a church musician in Wiesbaden, Germany for whom I've sung before. He wanted to know if I was free on April 4 to sing Bach's St. John Passion? I tried to remain calm, but in my mind I was saying, "Duh! I would be over-joyed, I would kiss your feet for giving me this opportunity, Thank God I'll get to sing a real concert again!" I told him, "Yes, I'm free and I'll be glad to sing for you again." Yippee! It's been about 2 years since I sang solo in an oratorio, and I tell ya, I've missed it.

So now, I've got my work cut out for me. I'll keep you posted.

I've recently finished recording a couple of stories for the StarShipSofa, which will be airing eventually. One was a story I've been working on for months. The Green Calling, by Storm Constantine. It's not that long, about 45 minutes total, but for some reason, I was have a really hard time with this one. I recorded most of it, got distracted and when I came back to it, I realized that it sucked. The accents were horrible and my narration was flat. I realized also that just recording the rest would not cut it either, because there'd be no way I could match the beginning to the end. So, I just re-recorded the whole thing. Then came the editing. Because I'd played with accents on this one (and the still suck, but not as much as before) I had a lot of flubbers to edit out. I can't say how many hours I spent on this one, but it was far and away the most of any story I've done so far.

Another story is Vinegar Peace - or the Wrong-Way, Used-Adult Orphanage by Michael Bishop. This is a great story. Mr. Bishop was motivated to write this story as a way of processing the grief over the death of his son in the shooting incident at Virginia Tech a few years ago. This is an event that was actually covered on the news here and I remember it distinctly. I corresponded with Mike a few times to work out some of the details and clear some things with him. He's a very gracious man and I enjoyed our exchanges. I had two songs to sing in this one and it's a powerful story. He also wrote a short commentary, which will follow the story when it airs on StarShipSofa.

Upcoming recordings are: 26 Monkeys by Kij Johnson - a Nebula Nominee! I'm really looking forward to this one; Poetry by Bruce Boston; Daughter of Botu by Eugie Foster - this one will be fun too, it's for PodCastle; Silence in Florence by Ian Creasey; and Project Mastodon a novel by Clifford Simak that I'm doing for SFAudio.


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Wedding #2

This was Magnus' friend Francesco's wedding in near Arezzo, Italy. That's in Tuscany. It's beautiful. And if you've ever been there, you know what an understatement that is! It's also the home of famous medieval music theorist the monk Guido of Arezzo, famous for the "Guidonian Hand" a method to teach the Hexachords or "scales" in use back then. Don't ask me how it works, I don't remember!

Anyway, this blog is turning into more of a travel blog than a music blog, so those of you more interested in music than travel will have to bear with me, I promise I'll be posting more on music soon.

M & I traveled to Florence on Friday night. On my brother's recommendation we stayed at the Hotel "Il Bargellino" in central Florence. It's a lovely little hotel with a gorgeous roof courtyard which is open to guests.
On Magnus' sister Manon's recommendation we went to a great restaurant very close to the hotel called "da Mimmo" where they have the real Fiorentina steaks. We met our friends Pierpaolo and Yaki and we all ate these huge, yummy steaks. Tom, I'm sorry I didn't know about them when you and Barb were there!

Saturday, we met Manon and Francesco who were on their way to visit Francesco's parents. They went with us to pick up the rental car and then led us a ways towards Arezzo. We went on our way, visited the Pieve di Romena and the castle nearby, met Francesco who showed us his home town of Poppi, and then wandered around Arezzo a bit before having dinner. Francesco's father had graciously and generously bought us tickets to the famous jousting games . We watch a bit of the parade. The participants of the Joust paraded through town in costumes, with horses, horns and drums, and flags. We had a great time at this ancient competition. And I think it's worthy of its own post. Stay tuned!

The wedding was pretty early on Sunday - 11:45am. By that time it was already around 33°C/91°F and unfortunately the wedding was a bit long and boring, but it was in a beautiful little abbey church in the hills and I enjoyed Alessandra's (the bride) sister's singing. She has a sweet, clear soprano voice and has just started taking lessons (at 30). I hope the lessons don't ruin her voice! :-) I know, I'm terrible!

After the wedding we drove to a Villa where we stood in the HOT sun (or crowded under the few umbrellas) for an hour drinking champagne and eating trifles, then we repaired to a large tent where we had "lunch" (or dinner?!?) at about 3pm. After dinner, we went inside, where it was blessedly air conditioned for desserts. Mmmmmh. The food was glorious.

It was still early after the reception and so we decided to go with Danilo and Manuela (D is a friend from Karlsruhe) to the celebrations of the winning jousting team (Quartiere di Porta Crucifera) and watch the European Cup (soccer/football) semi-final between Spain and Italy. We had good food (which we were basically still too full to eat) and good company. Unfortunately, Italy lost.

Next day, we took it easy, packed, went shopping for Italian food staples and drove back to Florence and flew home. A lovely weekend.