Triumph!

We've been having trouble with internet access--still do.

The recital went very well "Ausgezeichnet" ("Outstanding"), said the newspaper reviewer. I'll try to find more access for a better report.

Rocking in the Mud and a Football Cake

Tonight (Saturday, June 19th) is Mary Joy's recital. While she and Bernard went to church to finish her preparation, Marika and I went to the Benedictine abbey at Beuron, about 25 km. (15 miles) away. Because one of the highways is under repair, we took an indirect route, through Neuhausen ob Eck. It happens that Neuhausen is the site of the Southside Festival, a three-day rock music extravaganza. There wasn't much traffic, but just before Neuhausen we came to the festival grounds, with hundreds of cars parked in two or three inches of mud. Late yesterday, the rain had ended and the sun had come out, but now the rain had come back. We went on to Beuron, a baroque monastery set in a picturesque valley. It was built by Augustinians in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but shut down by the government (secularization) in 1802. It was revived by Benedictines in the 1860s and decorated by the "Beuron School" in the early twentieth century. The church is an uneasy mix of typical south-German baroque (in the nave) and a sort of simplified, non-decadent Art Nouveau (in a large transept chapel).

We went from there to lunch with Mary Joy, Bernard, his daughters and a friend named Ute. Ute was a refugee from an offshoot of the Southside Festival: five rock bands in the Marktplatz in Tuttlingen, blasting her apartment so that the radiators rattled. She said that she had been swimming earlier at the public pool and outside there were fifty pairs of boots so muddy that all you could see was the mud, not the boots. Festival-goers had discovered that the on-site shower facilities were inadequate, so they had gone into Tuttlingen to wash off at the pool, filling it with mud.

After lunch, Mary Joy needed some exercise, so she, Marika and I went for a walk in the rain on a forest trail starting at the Lippach Mill cafe, then had a coffee and cake there. The only cake they had was a "football cake"--one in the shape of a soccer ball--so we had a couple of slices of that, then went back to Tuttlingen so Mary Joy could rest before the recital.

Serbia Beats Germany!

Today was a day of more practice and organ registration for Mary Joy, while I spent the morning reading. Around one o'clock our good friend Marika arrived in town from Berlin, after an overnight train ride and picking up a car in nearby Geisingen. Marika visited us last year in Minnesota and went with us on our trip to Utah, Arizona and California.

Mary Joy, Marika and I had a good lunch--local Schwäbische (Swabian) cuisine--at the Engel restaurant just off the main square, then Mary Joy went back to her practice. After a rest, Marika and I went for a walk along the Danube, then had cappuccinos at a bakery by the square. Then, at 6:10, we got the car, picked up Mary Joy and went to the nearby town of Stetten, to have dinner with Bernard and his daughters.

Mary Joy and Bernard went back to church to finish deciding registrations, Marika went back to her hotel, and here I am, blogging.

But the big news of the day here in Tuttlingen is the World Cup match between Germany and Serbia. Surprisingly, the Serbs won, 1-0. Tuttlingen has major populations of Italians, Croats and, apparently, Serbs. The last group went wild, and rather than showing pity on their poor hosts, drove around town honking their horns and waving Serbian flags, for more than an hour.

Tuttlingen

Tuttlingen, Germany, is a nice, middle-sized town on the eastern edge of the Black Forest. It has a reputation for manufacturing shoes and surgical instruments and has a semi-pedestrianized center and more Italian restaurants than any town I remember in Italy. The river that runs through town happens to be the Danube, but it is about half as wide (if that) as the Mississippi at St. Paul. I wouldn't be surprised if you could wade it. When I can, I'll post a photo. The source of the Danube at Donaueschingen is not far from here.

I spent the most of the afternoon wandering the town and reading my book (Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything"--the ideal science book for a non-scientist), broken up by an hour's walk in the Danube Park with Mary Joy. At 7:15 I met her at the church and we walked in the rain to the center of town to have dinner at a Greek restaurant--not great, but things were slow, so they gave us a free ouzo as a before-dinner drink, and some sweet cocktail as a free after-dinner drink, along with the glasses of wine--which turned out to be carafes of wine!--that we had ordered with dinner. Needless to say, we felt a little tipsy walking back to Bernard's.

The quiz answers (don't peek if you haven't taken the quiz yet):

1. Good Friday.
2. John Lennon (this is the one I got a point for).
3. Wilde, 6' 3" and hefty, was a heavyweight boxer.
4. "Jack and Jill" and "Hickory, Dickory Dock."
5. Shaw, for the screenplay for the film version of "Pygmalion."

Travel Day

Wednesday (June 16th) was a travel day: from Dublin by Ryanair to Memmingen, Germany, then by train to Tuttlingen, changing trains in Ulm. We caught the bus to Dublin Airport a little before 8 a.m. and arrived in Tuttlingen a little more than nine hours later. In contrast to sunny, warmish Dublin, in southern Germany it was cold and rainy. A young American woman, living and looking for work in Munich, and with whom we shared the taxi from Memmingen Airport to the train station, said that just recently it had been in the 80s there. Not now.

We are staying with Mary Joy's friend and colleague Bernard, a native of De Pere, Wisconsin, who has spent decades now as a church music director in Germany. Her recital is at one of his two churches, which is where she went immediately after dinner for an hour and a half of practice, worried about not having played since 11:30 mass on Sunday.

Today (Thursday, June 17th), she has been practicing again, with a break for lunch (I made spaghetti). She will have to take a break again at 3:45--because of rosary at the church--when I'll meet her after walking there (1.8 kilometers, or a little over a mile, according to Google Maps).

The Literary Pub Crawl

Later in the evening, we walked down across the Liffey again to take the Literary Pub Crawl (only in Ireland!). Sometimes the nexus between the pubs and the literature was a little tenuous, but it was fun. An actor (our guide) started with a song, where the audience answered the call "What'll you have?" with "I'll have a pint." Then another actor joined him for the opening few minutes of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." He talked about Joyce's "Ulysses," part of which takes place in the neighborhood, and recited the last lines of Molly Bloom's soliloquy ("Yes, yes . . .") ending that novel, in which she mentions Duke Street, where we were. We finished our drinks and went a few blocks to the main quad of Trinity college (our guide said that we would get one literary stop without a pub, but that would be compensated for by one pub stop without any literature). There we were told about Trinity's famous students, such as Beckett, Jonathan Swift. Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Oscar Wilde. He talked about Wilde's American lecture tour and recited a letter where Wilde talked about his lecture (on Art and Aesthetics) in Leadville, Colorado, to a bunch of whiskey-drinking miners.

Then we went to O'Neil's Pub, where the other actor showed up and they did part of a scene from a play by James Plunkett, involving a pair of street beggars. Then we went to the Old Standard for our promised non-literary pub stop (instead, watching Brazil against North Korea in World Cup soccer). Finally, we went back to Duke Street, where we heard stories about Brendan Behan, the famous pub-crawling writer. Our guide then gave us a quiz. I (Mike) managed to shout out one answer, but my Jeopardy reflexes were dulled by having been up for 33 1/2 hours, so the winner (of a Literary Pub Crawl tee-shirt) was a woman from Chicago. Second place (a tiny bottle of what our guide called Bushmills "mouthwash") required a run-off question between a young man from Yorkshire and a middle-aged woman from Florida. Then we ended the evening at Davy Byrne's pub, where one of the scenes in "Ulysses" takes place.

Some of the quiz questions were interesting. See if you can answer:

1. Beckett was born on what day near Easter?
2. Unknown to many, Beckett was one of the original writers involved in the musical "Oh, Calcutta!," but withdrew his name from the credits when he learned it would have naked women onstage. Another of the writers, one of the Beatles, also withdrew. Which Beatle?
3. Oliver Goldsmith was hired to compile a collection of Mother Goose rhymes. Needing to fill space, he wrote two new ones himself, passing them off as common children's rhymes. Now they are. Which two?
4. Oscar Wilde, as an undergraduate, was proficient in a sport (one that's in the Olympics and practiced professionally). Which one?
5. Of Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature (William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney), which one also won an Academy Award?

Answers later.

1916 and So On

We're now in Dublin, in a hotel just off O'Connell Street, near St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral. The room has wi-fi, so while Mary Joy is resting (it's 6 p.m. here, noon back in Minnesota, on Tuesday the 15th of June), I'll make our first trip posting.

There were no problems with flights or connections, except one minor one, which I'll go into later. As we were about to take off on our Southwest flight from MSP, we were suddenly serenaded over the intercom by a harmonica rendition of the racetrack call to the post, followed by "Red River Valley!" The pilot stood at the front of the cabin, playing his harmonica, then cracked jokes about how bad his playing was (though it was really pretty good). So that's how our trip started!

Chicago Transit veterans that we are, we had no trouble buying a transit card when we got to Midway Airport, and taking the Orange train to the Loop, then going downstairs at the Clark-Lake station and transferring to the Blue Line out to O'Hare airport. This took us a little longer than shuttle bus or a taxi between airports, but cost about a tenth as much.

No problems at O'Hare, or going from there to Philadelphia, except that when I had checked in online the night before, I had noticed that our seats had been changed for the Philadelphia-Dublin flight and were no longer together, but in fact were far apart. I tried calling USAirways, but couldn't get an answer. In Chicago, I asked at the gate, but the best they could do was two aisle seats, one behind the other, one on an exit row (normally, Mary Joy gets a window seat and I get the center seat next to her). When we got to Philadelphia, it became clear that a lot of other people were in the same boat. USAirways had changed to a smaller plane. People in the eliminated seats were moved elsewhere in the new plane without any attempt to keep them together with family and friends. I found myself next to a newlywed couple that had to trade seats with someone in order to get back together.

As usual, Mary Joy slept a lot on the transatlantic flight and I didn't. We got into Dublin on an extaordinarily (for Dublin) beautiful day: sunny, in the low 60's. We took the Airlink 747 bus (6 euros apiece) downtown and ended up two blocks from our hotel, which gave us a room immediately.

We hurried up to join the 11:30 "1916 Rebellion Walking Tour". The guide (picture above) had a History Ph.D from Trinity College, and had spent a school year as a researcher at Notre Dame (apparently not a good experience). We started with a short lecture in a pub basement, walked to Trinity College, then to the General Post Office (where the rebel chiefs had held out), then to City Hall, then to Dublin Castle. We learned a lot about the causes, happenings and results of the Easter Rising. There was a college group from Alabama with us, and a guy who said he was doing a travel article for "The (San Francisco?) Chronicle."

Then time for lunch (savory tarts-tomato and goat cheese for Mary Joy; red onion and potato for me) at the Queen of Tarts, which was just across the street from where we ended up. Very good.

Though beginning to flag, we went to the Irish National Museum, where we saw a lot of Bronze-Age gold jewelry. Then we returned to our hotel.