A month in review

It is strange. I swear it was just a week or two ago that I posted my last blog entry but I see now that it has been almost a month. As I think back over the past 4 weeks, however, it doesn't take long for me to discover why they went so fast.

My parents came to visit in the first part of May and stayed for two weeks. We had a great time and squeezed in quite a bit. Within the first few days of their arrival they saw us perform in the last performance of Gianni Schicchi at Oper Frankfurt. After that we traveled to several different German locales.

Our first trip took us to Heidelberg where we got to enjoy a beautiful old city with a gorgeous historic city center equipped with period bridge and castle. Our next stop was Rüdesheim which is about 45 minutes west of Frankfurt. There is gigantic German monument there standing at the top of a big hill (small mountain perhaps?) which we got to by riding up the hill in a small ski lift type cart. After wandering around at the top of the hill we came down on the other side, also by ski lift, and ended up in a beautiful town called Assmannshausen. Its true, we have pictures. The castle Rheinstein is there which we toured and thought was very beautiful. Interestingly enough it was bought and preserved by an opera singer in recent decades.

In subsequent days we went to Wittenberg, Rothenburg, Füssen, the castle Neuschwanstein, Dinkelsbühl and the Schwarzwald. It was my first time really getting out of Frankfurt since we moved here in August and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

After my parents headed back home we had just enough time to change the sheets on their bed and welcome Brenda's sister and her girlfriend Lacey. They have been here coming up on a week now and will be here for a total of around a month. We love having them here and look forward to exploring more sights with them.

We took over 500 pictures while my parents were here and we have already begun taking pictures with Lacey and Laura. I will post some of the highlight photos in a subsequent entry. Until then, I hope you have been well. Have a great week!

Milestones

Hello one and all! I just reviewed my last post and realized how much I have to tell you. It has been an action packed month so let's get to it.

First of all, today marks the 5 year anniversary of when Brenda and I started dating. That's right, we've been together for 5 wonderful years and if you had told us then where we'd be now we might not believe you. Nevertheless, here we are and we're having a great time.

In my last post I was complaining about the weather. A few days after I wrote that Spring erupted in Frankfurt. We had sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s and 70s everyday for over two and a half weeks. In turn, nature exploded. Flowers, trees, grass, everything started to blossom overnight. Frankfurt looked and continues to look like a totally new (and beautiful) city.

Now I wasn't very good in high school physics but I seem to recall something about every action having an opposite and equal reaction. In the case of Frankfurt in Spring the action was nature doing what nature does at an alarming rate. As if all the plants in Frankfurt knew they only had a short window to pollinate and so they had to get to it fast. This caused an alarming reaction in me, my allergies went crazy.

Our first beautiful day was a Saturday and by the end of the day I was having trouble breathing. It felt like I couldn't get a deep breath and was struggling for every bit of air I took into my lungs. Over the next few days the symptoms continued and with them came wheezing and coughing. This was especially problematic because Brenda and I had a performance of Gianni Schicchi a few days after my symptoms began. I made it through the performance, albeit with a lot of coughing, and continued to take anti-histamines with the hope that my body would eventually adjust to its new environment. I had dealt with allergies in the US but those symptoms were limited to congestion, runny nose, etc, the typical mild allergic reactions to the changing of the seasons. This difficulty breathing thing was a whole new ball of wax.

On Friday night, Good Friday as it turns out, Brenda and I decided to go to the emergency room down the street. I had been having difficulty breathing for 6 days and I had another performance coming up so it was time to get a doctor's opinion. After waiting in the ER for 3 hours we were seen by a very nice physician who gave me two puffs off of an inhaler right then and there. My lungs immediately opened up, it was wonderful. The doctor also wrote me a prescription for an inhaler of my very own.

The inhaler was amazing. I took it every six hours like clockwork and it would immediately relieve my breathing problems. I couldn't sleep for more than six hours without my body waking me up because I was having difficulty breathing but that was a small price to pay to be able to take a deep breath.

Another 4 or 5 days passed and we realized that the inhaler was really just a quick fix. It got me through the days but my symptoms weren't relenting. Upon the recommendation of several of my friends and family (including my brilliant pharmacist sister-in-law) I made an appointment to see an ear, nose and throat doctor (ENT).

I called the ENT's office and told them my situation and mentioned that I was singing at Oper Frankfurt. They told me they were all booked for the rest of the week but that they could see me the next afternoon. Apparently mentioning that I had upcoming performances got me in the door. The doctor guessed the exact day that my symptoms began (apparently I wasn't the only one having allergy issues) and prescribed some steroids. Since then as long as I take my daily steroid I'm right as rain. The magic of modern medicine.

Brenda and I had a few different visitors over the past couple of weeks and are looking forward to a couple more. My parents will be arriving on Monday and will be spending two weeks running around with us in Germany. We haven't finalized our itinerary yet but I will give y'all a full report on what we see and do.

One last thing, a couple of weeks ago marked my first anniversary of taking up jogging. For the past year I have gone jogging on average 3-4 times a week and I can honestly say that I love it. It really has become an addiction. It has also been very nice that Brenda has been joining me on occasion. Yesterday she went for a 30 minute jog with me which is amazing considering how much she hates running. I'm very proud of her.

I hope you have all been well. Have a great weekend!

So we got this letter...

Hello one and all!  Things here are moving right along.  Brenda and I have had rehearsals for Gianni Schicchi almost every day for about a week now.  It has been a lot of fun going to work together and since we are playing husband and wife in the opera we have a good excuse for our excessive PDA.

The weather here has been crap.  Rainy, a little snowy and all around gloomy.  We had high hopes that Spring was right around the corner when Brenda's parents were here but that has proven not to be the case.  We keep hearing about this beautiful Spring that Frankfurt usually has but I'll believe it when I see it.

In keeping with the grey skies we received a grey letter on Saturday.  Its actually not all that uncommon considering the opera house uses grey envelopes and we get pay stubs and other such information from them on a regular basis.  However, this letter was grey in many respects.  Allow me to paraphrase its message.

Dear Ms. Klinkert,

We won't be paying you this month.

Sincerely,

Frau So-and-so

Frankfurt Opera

Ok, so the letter said a little more than that.  It also explained why Brenda wouldn't be getting paid for a month's work.  In order for me to explain it, though, I'm going to have to give you some info on the tax system in Germany.  Here goes...

All working people in Germany are in a given tax class numbered 1-6 depending on their situation.  As I understand it, if you are single with no dependents then you are in tax class 1 and are taxed at around 50%.  If you are married and both people work then one person (generally the higher income earner) is in tax class 3 and is taxed at around 40%.  The other person is in tax class 5 and is taxed at around 60%.  People are mailed their number on a tax card at the end of the current year for the following year.  They are then supposed to give the tax card to their employer in the new year. That's all I know about the German tax system and I wouldn't take any of that as law if I were you.

So our little we-can't-pay-any-of-our-bills-this-month problem fits in like this.  Our tax class numbers had been reversed on our tax cards which means that Brenda was in the higher taxed group (5) and I was in the lower (3) when it was supposed to be the opposite.  We noticed this and got the problem corrected before we turned the tax cards in to the opera house a couple of weeks ago.  What we didn't realize, however, was that our recently corrected tax cards would not take affect retroactively.  

Thus far in 2009 the opera house had been operating under the assumption that Brenda's tax class was the same as 2008, tax class 3.  When they got our tax cards last week they realized that according to the cards they should have been taxing Brenda at tax class 5 for the first 3 months of 2009.  To fix this mistake they would have to take her entire next paycheck to make up for the unpaid taxes for the first quarter of 2009.

Does that make sense?  Well even if it doesn't I applaud you for reading all of that.  My main question all along was why did the city change our tax classes from 2008.  Brenda was a 3 then and I was a 5 so why would it all of a sudden switch?  We talked to several different people and the best theory we could come up with is that someone assumed that since I'm a man I must have been the primary income earner.  Nice, huh?

We went to the opera house on Monday and spoke with a woman in finance.  We explained our situation and she was very kind and empathetic but said that basically we were screwed.  Legally the opera house couldn't do anything to help us and we could try our luck at the city office but she doubted anything would come of that.

We have been doing pretty well communicating in German lately but the idea of explaining this in German seemed overwhelming so we enlisted the help of our friend Michael.  He agreed to be our spokesman at the city office and so on Tuesday we all went down there.  Michael explained our problem to the guy at the information desk and he said that it was unfortunate but doubted that anything could be done.  He gave us a number, though, and we went up to meet with some other person.

Michael explained our situation to this new person who went to talk to someone else who in turn went to talk to a 3rd person.  The 2nd person came back and said that we should have fixed this when we got the tax cards at the end of last year.  Michael explained that we were new in Frankfurt, we didn't have any idea how the system worked and reminded them that someone in their office had made the mistake of switching our tax classes from the previous year.  To my great surprise they said all they needed was a fax from the opera house saying they were ok with the change and then they'd issue us new tax cards that covered all of 2009.  Problem solved.

So that was our week.  We laughed, we cried, we entertained the idea of living on the street but in the end it all worked out.  Gianni Schicchi opens next week and I'm really excited to get it up and running.  Until then we'll be in rehearsals and searching for sunshine and warm weather.  I hope you have a great weekend!

An interesting discovery

This past weekend quickly came and went and with it went my penultimate Caligula and Brenda's final Un Ballo in Maschera. We are both ready to move onto something new which is good because we start staging rehearsals for Il Trittico on Wednesday. (Warning: The rest of this paragraph is filled with opera talk.) Il Trittico isn't actually an opera itself but rather the title of a set of 3 one-act opera's by Giacomo Puccini. They are Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. Brenda and I play husband and wife in Gianni Schicchi and Brenda is a nun in Suor Angelica. Oddly this won't be the first time she's played a nun in an opera.

We've been in Frankfurt coming up on 7 months now and I've noticed lately how much more comfortable we've become in our new city. We've got places where we do our shopping, favorite restaurants, a gym and most importantly some great new friends. We're even more confident in our interactions with German speaking people. No doubt our German has gotten better since we arrived in August but more than that I think we've just become more courageous. When it comes to speaking German we get an A for effort. Let's not discuss our German grammar grade...

At the very least we know that we'll get to practice our German once every two weeks. As it turns out a pound of coffee wont last longer than two weeks in our apartment and so a trip to the wonderful Wacker's Kaffee is regularly required. This past week after a beautiful early-evening walk to Wacker's we decided to go to Saturn, the closest thing Frankfurt has to a Best Buy. As we wandered around the store we came across their amazing classical music section. A recording sitting at the end of one of the rows caught my eye. The name of the opera was Lear. Upon further inspection of the CD I realized that it was Frankfurt Opera's recording of Lear in which I sang a part. I flipped the case over and looked at the cast list and sure enough there was my name. Now I knew they were making a recording of Lear. I had a mic strapped to my body for 4 or 5 of the performances. I also signed something saying that I'd do the recording for the fee of 3 copies of said recording. What I didn't know is when the recording would be finished and where they'd be available.

It was a surreal experience. I have scoured classical music sections for about 10 years now and to actually pick up a CD in a store that had my name on it was definitely a first. I reminded myself that it wasn't a big deal because I only sang one line and it isn't exactly a famous opera but still, it was a pretty great find.

Things here have been moving more and more in the direction of Spring. I am really looking forward to the day that I can take a nice long walk without my coat. Brenda is chomping at the bit to test out her new bike. She may even take it to work tomorrow. I hope things are looking more Spring-like in your neck of the woods, too. Have a great week!

Hey! Remember us?

Hello all!  Please forgive my extended hiatus from the blog.  As you can imagine quite a few blog-worthy things have happened over the past month but I've been distracted by this and that and have neglected my blog duties.  The good news is I have many new stories to tell and things to get you caught up on.

First things first, Brenda and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary yesterday!  After a morning trip to the airport we did a little shopping and then spent the rest of the day in-doors avoiding the rain.  It may be too early to tell but I think we are developing an anniversary pattern.  We ate Mexican food for lunch yesterday and afterwards we realized that we had eaten Mexican food on our first anniversary as well.  Next year we'll know for sure if its going to become a tradition.  Considering how much we like Mexican food it may be on the menu for our next anniversary whether we plan it or not.

The reason we went to the airport yesterday was to see Brenda's parents off.  We had the pleasure of their company for an action packed week that involved two operas, some sight-seeing and a lot of great food.  We always love spending time with them which is probably why the week flew by so fast.

In other news, Brenda and I are both involved in productions at the opera house at the moment.  I'm in an opera called Caligula which is a really cheery story about the crazy, murderous Roman emperor by the same name.  Brenda and her parents said they really enjoyed the opera and even though the opera house isn't filling up the people that do come seem to love it.  Brenda is in Un Ballo in Maschera at the moment and has her final performance this weekend.  I've been hearing a lot of great things about her performance from other people and I, of course, think she's fantastic.

Well, I've filled you in on most of our recent highlights.  I have some entertaining stories to share but my eyes don't seem to want to stay open so the stories will have to wait.  I hope you have all been well and enjoy the rest of your week!

Brenda's Birthday!

Our apartment is for sale.  That's right, now is the time for you to buy a little place in Europe.  I don't know how much it is but I'm sure its a deal at twice the price.  So instead of buying that condo in Florida or Arizona I suggest you pick up a Winter home in Frankfurt.  You wont be getting away from the cold but you will be getting a lot closer to all the piping hot mulled wine you can drink!

We have known for some time that our apartment was on the market.  In fact, our landlady first approached us about buying the place but we let her know that unless we could pay her in pretty songs we couldn't afford it.  On Friday a realtor came through with three different groups of prospective buyers.  It gave us a good excuse to tidy up our apartment a bit and we got to work on our German with a very nice lady from Hanau.  We're happy that our landlady has put the apartment on the market.  It sounds like she is going to move to America or Canada to be closer to her mother and I think the sooner she sells this place the sooner she can head over.  On top of that we have gotten to know Frankfurt much better and have found a few areas of town that we'd love to live in.  We are very interested in living in Sachsenhausen (an area in the southern part of the city) because we really like the area and we'd love to see the Main river everyday.

Yesterday was Brenda's birthday!  We started out the day by making french toast from scratch.  In the afternoon our neighbors the McCowns brought over a big plate of chocolate chip cookies of which we ate WAY too many.  Finally we went to the dodgy English movie theater and saw Twilight.  You may have heard of it, its a romantic vampire movie set in a high school in Washington State.  The female lead is new in town and is immediately drawn to the incredibly handsome, pale, lip-stick wearing guy that looks kind of like a vampire and, surprisingly enough, turns out to be one.  Brenda enjoyed it so much I think she'll be picking up the book the movie was based on.

I hope you're having a great week!

Jet lag

And we're back in Deutschland.  We had a great time in the U.S.  We opened presents, did some cross-country skiing, spent a lot of wonderful time with our families and we ate.  A lot.  Our plane left Des Moines at 10:30 am and we got to our apartment in Frankfurt by 7:00 am the next morning.  As we were schlepping our 4 bags (each weighing precisely 49.9 lbs) down the sidewalk I had two thoughts: first, I was amazed by how warm 31 degrees fahrenheit feels after having experienced -20 degrees and second, our bags were making an enormous amount of noise on the cobblestone sidewalks for 7:00 am on a Sunday.  It was a good way to let our neighbors know we were back.

We were tired when we got to our apartment so we went to sleep right as the sun was starting to rise.  We slept well and woke up as the sun was setting.  As one might imagine we stayed up until about 6 or 7 the next morning and again slept through most of the the daylight hours.  This pattern went on for several days and it was very unsettling to only see a few minutes of daylight each day.  Over the past couple of days we have made some progress and are seeing at least two hours of sunlight each day.

Brenda went right back into coaching for her upcoming role of Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera.  They begin staging rehearsals on Monday.  I have started looking more seriously at my upcoming roles including the one in which Brenda and I play husband and wife on stage.  All told things are pretty much back to normal.

Have a great week!