Friday, July 27, 2018

Travelling to Augsburg

Reminder to self: no more evening flights when travelling alone. After being dumped in JFK at midnight four hours later than scheduled, and it was just me and the cleaners (thank you Norwegian airlines, and for washing your hands of any responsibility), Easyjet landed us at Munich an hour late. This was survivable, apasRt from the train to Pasing for the Augsburg connection terminating a few stops early and being befriended by a mad drunken young Swedish guy who snatched my ticket from me and garbled in several made up languages (he thought I was Polish) at maximum volume, before Facetiming his girlfriend and apparently giving her a running commentary while we changed trains. Then my phone ran down to 1% battery while I was trying to message Kenji to say what was happening.
Too scary. But Kenji and Till very kindly waited up and met me at the station.
Yesterday, Kenji did a guided tour of Augsburg: what a sweet, neat city it is! The first even social housing is here, built in the 16th century and still available for 80 cents a week to people who pray three times a day and who are in need. The old museum parts are straight from a fairytale, with painted wood four posters and that scent of very old wood pervading the building. There is a bomb shelter on the premises, a sad reminder of a war with losses on all sides, and some ghastly gas masks. We walked past Berthold Brecht's house, and through lovely little streets of painted houses next to waterways babbling through the streets.
Then we went to collet the guitar from the rehearsal space, a dramatically draped series of rooms full of interesting instruments and an almost laboratory feel: this is where songs are made!
More tomorrow: sorry for the typos but I'm using an iPad and typing is like being a spider scurrying across the screen.
Oh, and the gig last night was brilliant. I feel like my heart is bursting with happiness! What a great cafe- and Friedrich Sunlight were so good I just wanted to join in every song, even though I didn't know the words or the melodies. I filmed some of the songs on my phone, with a rather embarrassing wail at one point where I did just that, despite myself.

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