Germany - Year Two

Hello my friends. As you may have guessed from the title we are back in Germany. We have been here for a total of 38 hours and, believe it or not, we’re already starting to adapt to the time difference. The weeks leading up to our trip back were action packed so I think I’ll fill you in on a few of the highlights.

Brenda had a really fun and productive trip to New York City. In addition to taking several lessons with her wonderful voice teacher Edith Bers, Brenda had the opportunity to work with the famous soprano Renata Scotto. They worked on the title role in the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, which Brenda will be singing later this season at Oper Frankfurt. Lucia is one of the roles Scotto is famous for so it was an especially great experience for Brenda. When she wasn’t studying, Brenda was spending time with friends and visiting all of her favorite NYC spots. I have to admit, at times I was jealous but whenever those times hit I went golfing.

After Brenda returned to the midwest we spent some time with our families and, as you can imagine, a large chunk of time packing. On one of our marathon driving days we stopped off in Iowa City and had dinner with my voice teacher from undergrad, Stephen Swanson. Of all the voice teachers I’ve had, not to mention all the professors, I can easily say that Steve and I had the best relationship. I’ve wanted Brenda to meet him for years and we finally made it happen. It was especially nice because Steve sang opera in Germany for almost 20 years so we had plenty to talk about.

And now we’re back. The flight wasn’t bad at all, 7 hours and 40 minutes direct from Chicago O’hare (thanks to my folks for driving us there!). We were a little disappointed that the movies they had on the flight were the same as they were almost 3 months ago but we got over it. We landed, got our luggage, hopped on a train and went home. Easy. It was such a stark difference from last year. I guess that’s called progress.

There was one little snag, when we arrived home we didn’t have a working phone or internet connection. It seems that I was supposed to renew our phone contract before we left for vacation but I didn’t and so history is now repeating itself. You may recall me ranting about internet troubles about a year ago or so. I don’t anticipate it being as big of a deal this year but it will leave us without our internet connection for 2 weeks. Ah well, I guess we’ll have to go for walks or read a book or something equally torturous until we get online again.

I am going to try to blog more frequently this year so stay tuned for updates. Also, Brenda and I will be finishing her website in the coming weeks and I will post a link to it once its up and running. We’d love to get feedback on it.

Until next time, have a great week!