Amsterdam with Julie

Amsterdam with Julie
Saturday morning Julie and I got up comfortably late and eventually
headed out to find that bakery we had seen the day before. Our b&b
(bed, but no breakfast) was only a few doors from the Neuemarkt, but
we were hungry and the market was still setting up, so we bypassed it
and headed down what we thought might be the right side street.

Hmmm...maybe not: the street ended in the red light district. Which
was quiet, but not quite closed. Few people were on the street, but
there were still girls sitting in their red-lit windows, smiling at
passersby. After a few blocks, we took a narrow side street over
towards Little China and found the street we'd missed. After that it
was just a matter of following our noses to Brod, the bakery we had
spotted.

We took our bread and coffee downstairs to a room with a single table
and a set of French doors that opened right onto the canal. As we ate,
we made a plan: first Anne Franke House, then the Van Gogh museum and
if we had time, maybe the Museum of Handbags and Purses. Oh, and
Julie, being a seasoned city dweller, was ready to walk the whole way
- everything on the map looked "not too far" to her.

So we set out on foot, map in hand, drizzle misting down on us from
time to time. We didn't hurry, stopping at shops along the way,
sometimes browsing intensively. I bought a pair of gloves fairly early
on - it was around 50F and with the wet seemed colder. Julie bought a
few things too, and the helped me pick out a warm hat that didn't look
too silly. Well, at least she assured me that it looked ok, but maybe
that was "looked ok for a 50 year old American tourist."

Unfortunately when we got to Anne Franke House, there was a LONG line,
and we reluctantly agreed that we had no desire to wait that long. So
we cheerfully set off in the direction of the Van Gogh, browsing shop
windows and snapping interesting photos along the way. The old part of
Amsterdam that we were walking through is beautiful - a canal every
few blocks, narrow three story houses crammed shoulder to shoulder all
with ornate fronts with interesting windows often surrounding hidden
courtyards. The house we were staying in was like this, and I realized
quickly that the houses were probably designed to maximize the light
inside - days can have as little as 4 or 5 hours of light in winter.
Julie was amazed that as we walked by we could see right into most of
the street-level windows. In Germany, she told me, they would all have
been closed off.

We could see that life is difficult for cars in Amsterdam - there is
little parking and many of the streets are almost too narrow for a
car. And bicycles own the city. Everyone yields for bikes, even
pedestrians. And that's an ACTIVE yield I'm talking about - I learned
very quickly that if a bell rings behind you you'd best pick a
direction and jump. Standing still to allow the bike to pass only
resulted in the biker stopping dead behind you...hopefully without
running into you.

The line for the Van Gogh museum was not long. But when we got inside,
it busy, about as crowded as any museum I have visited. It was also
one of the best curated museums I have seen, starting with artists who
were early influences on Van Gogh and moving chronologically through
his life and work, entwining the story of his life, his work, and the
works and commentary of the other artists who were gathered around
him, influencing him as he influenced them. The exhibit ends with a
collection of works by artists who were influenced by Van Gogh,
continuing right up to Picasso and even Mondrian and others who were
painting well into the 20th century. All very interesting to me, and
for Julie the young art student even more so.

Ah, but perhaps it wasn't just the art? About halfway through the
museum, I caught up with Julie deep in artistic conversation with a
handsome young man. It turned out that he was an American college
student from California, born of Indian immigrant parents who was on
exchange for a year in Italy and visiting Amsterdam for the weekend.
(You KNOW I couldn't possibly have invented a story like that!). So I
smiled and continued at my own pace and they at theirs. By the time we
were finished, it was time for coffee, and before I could open my
mouth to ask if the nice young man would like to join us, Julie asked
if it would be ok for us all to go together. So we did, wandering
through the drizzly streets until we found a cafe with room enough. I
drank coffee and chatted a bit but mostly just enjoyed watching the
two of them flirt. As we finished, they concluded the process with
Julie smiling and handing the young man her cell phone so he could
enter his number and him handing it back to her with a smile I wish
I'd caught with my camera.

Julie and I continued on our loosely planned itinerary, wandering
through the streets to Rembrandt square, where the tourists were busy
taking photos of themselves in front of the sculpture there and local
artists were out in force exhibiting their paintings of the city in
the tradition of Van Gogh and others who were always interested in
painting what would sell. There is definitely a "school" of this sort
of painting. The artists were mostly selling watercolors of city
scenes, but the palettes the used and their interpretations of the
scenes varied considerably. Rebecca had asked me to bring back
something for her walls, so I chose a watercolor from an artist who
clearly saw something quite different from what I saw when I looked at
those street scenes.

By the time we got back to our room, we were tired but not yet hungry,
so we took a nap. Around 7 we walked next door to the almost invisible
Italian restaurant that Godwin had assured us was one of the best in
the city. It was a tiny place with perhaps a dozen or 15 tables as
well as a resident cat. The maitre d' who greeted us (and who I think
was also the owner and perhaps at least the inspiration for the menu
if not a chef himself) was almost a cariacature of an Italian who
loves food and feeding people: think Pavarotti without the opratic
voice but with the soft Italian accent, an appreciation for beautiful
women, and a heart of gold. Julie's stomach was bothering her, so when
she ordered only an appetizer and salad, he was immediately concerned,
especially when she even refused pasta. But as we ate and chatted at a
leisurely pace, he saw that all was well, and merely checked from time
to time to make sure that everything was to our liking. It certainly
was - the food was fabulous. And as we got to coffee, he insisted that
we must finish the meal with a lemon liqueur, that it would certainly
fix whatever was wrong with Julie's stomach. So we did, and by the
time we had finished, it was after 10, and we were tired.

Well, I THOUGHT we were tired, and that Julie's stomach was still not
so good. I started getting ready to go to bed when we got back to the
room, but all of a sudden, Julie was putting on her jacket so she
could go outside and make a phone call. She returned a little before
11, looked at the clock and told me she was going to meet the nice
young man for coffee in half an hour. But first she had to wash her
hair of course :-) She ran out to meet him at the train station just
shy of that 11:30 appointment promising to be in around 3. At least
she left me his phone number....just in case, of course. Clearly it
was not for me to worry - so I went to sleep, and was vaguely aware of
her coming in for a bit to use the bathroom and then going out again
before coming in for good. Apparently they walked and talked and sat
and drank coffee somewhere nearby. I will certainly be interested to
see if they manage to get together again sometime.

Sunday morning we got up a bit more slowly than the day before, had
breakfast at our favorite bread place, then spent some time wandering
through the market. It's the kind of place where it's hard to resist
buying stuff, so...we did. Actually mostly Julie did - I was a lot
more disciplined because of my awareness of the weight allowance with
4 more flights ahead of me before heading home. Fun just to walk
through, though.

Afterwards, we headed for one of the photography museums (will insert
name here when I get a chance to unpack and look it up). Some
interesting current work, but the exhibit of photos by (insert artist
here) of photos she made on the streets of New York City from the
1940's thru the 1970's was fascinating. We spent a long time there,
and afterwards had no inclination to visit another museum, so once
again we wandered through more of Amsterdam on foot, eventually
arriving at our room in time for a cup of tea and for Julie to pack
her things. I walked her down to the train station and we were truly
sorry that the weekend was over. Both of us had admitted that we were
not sure what it was going to be like to spend so much time together
after not having more than e-mail contact for more than a year, but we
agreed that we had loved having the chance to just hang out and talk a
lot and explore together a place that was new to us. I'm sure we will
do something similar again, and I hope I get the chance to do the same
with my other exchange daughters too.

After I saw Julie onto the train, I called Alex, who had texted me
earlier. I hsd the impression from his texting that he wanted to meet
for coffee, but it turned out that he had an idea that he, Monique,
Rudo and I should meet at a place he knew where the food was great and
there would be live music and dancing afterwards. Rudo, Monique and I
had previously agreed that we would meet at Rudo's in the evening and
Alex had also been invited. I was pretty sure that Rudo would not be
interested in going out again, and Monique had already texted me to
say that she had driven out to her parents so would not be back until
later than we had originally planned. But Alex was pretty insistent,
so I suggested he call Rudo and see what could be arranged and that if
the others were interested, I would go too. Nearly an hour later he
called me back to say that Rudo didn't want to go out, so I told him
that I was just going to follow my original plan and head out to
Zaandam. By that time it was too late for coffee if I was going to
catch a bus, so he agreed to meet us at Rudo's later.

Somehow finding a schedule for the bus I needed to get to Zaandam was
not very easy, but fortunately Wimmo stopped in at the B&B and he
managed to navigate the Dutch-only portion of the public transit web
site to answer my question. So off I went again. On the bus, I called
Rudo to let him know I was on my way. Had I spoken to Alex, he
wondered? Yes, I said, I had spoken to Alex. Oh! he said. We can talk
when you get here. I just smiled.

So Rudo and I ordered takeout Chinese food, and Alex eventually joined
us, bringing a bottle of ouzo. We chatted and ate for a while, and
Monique was still not back. Alex really wanted to get out to dance and
play and offered to take me along, but I really was too tired and
wanted a chance to say goodbye to Monique. So Alex left, and of course
Monique arrived only a few minutes later. We fed her and chatted and
drank homemade rakia until not too late. Nice to have such comfortable
friends after such a short time together and in a place so far from
home.

Eventually Monique dropped me off at my room on her way home. And
early the next morning, I headed for Ribe.

Cindy
==========

The Jam in Zaandam

Since we knew we were going to run late, Rudo had offered to drop me at the train station to meet Juliane. So we drove in and when it wasn't easy to find a place to park, he stopped at a convenient curb to drop me and my stuff (I had my luggage with me)...right across a tram track. Whoops!! Fortunately the tram driver wasn't in too much of a hurry so Rudo and the car and me and my luggage both came away unscathed.

Juliane and I had arranged to meet at the meeting point....but I couldn't find it and I'm not sure if she ever did. I finally found an info desk and the nice man there suggested the taxi stand at the end of the station. Thank goodness for phone texting! I texted Julie and she appeared out of the crowd. It was good to see her after a year and a half. Next task: find our bed and breakfast place and check in. Fortunately our hosts, Wimmo and Godwin had emailed me excellent instructions so we oriented ourselves and set out to cross the broad plain of tram tracks, brave the bike parks with maybe a thousand bicycles waiting for their owners to return, and cross the canal. We found ourselves in a quiet street in front of one of those pretty Amsterdam houses that looked like all the others.

From Europe 2008

The reason I always look for a bed and breakfast rather than an ordinary hotel when I'm traveling is that it's always a pretty good bet that the people you meet will be interesting. Wimmo and Godwin certainly did not disappoint us in this respect -- they were completely charming, ushering us into the living room and sitting us down to chat as we had coffee. We got a complete orientation to the city (including a map marked with XXXXX over the tourist areas where we shouldn't bother wasting our time and highlighted in orange in the places that the locals go instead) and then a ride over to a second house they owned which was where we were actually staying. This one sat right on the canal, with a tiny Italian restaurant on one side and a fish market on the other. Julie doesn't eat fish so wasn't fond of the fish market, but Wimmo had mentioned when we asked about good places to eat that the Italian restaurant was probably the best in the city, so we filed that information for later use.

Inside the Double Dutch lived up to its name -- it was decorated in a very Holland motif that included tulips, wooden shoes...you get the idea. But cute, and our room was very comfortable. The biggest trick was hauling my rolling luggage up the winding staircase, but we managed and settled ourselves in. Then since neither of us had had time for lunch, we set out to walk around for a bit with a vague idea of stopping for coffee or food when we saw something good.

As I already knew, Julie is a city kid -- she grew up in Berlin and now lives in Frankfurt. So her idea of getting to know a city is to take a map and start walking. So that's what we did, crossing the Nieuwmarkt and wandering down a twisty little street through "Little Chinatown." About halfway down the street we encountered a bakery window from which the most amazing aroma of baking bread was emanating. We weren't quite ready to stop for just bread (we wanted real food) but we marked the place as a prime opportunity for breakfast the next morning (our "bed and breakfast" was actually just "bed" this time).

Through Little China, down along the canal, up another street or two....after a while we found ourselves in front of a Thai restaurant that looked pretty good, so we stopped for food. And talk. I think neither of us was really sure how it would be to spend so much time together after not seeing each other for nearly two years, but we needn't have worried. We both had lots to talk about so we ate and talked and ate and talked...it was very good. And we still hadn't planned what we were actually going to SEE by the time we were ready to leave :-)

After dinner, another adventure: we had to take the bus out to Rudo's place in Zaandam. Fortunately I had an idea of where to go to find out about this, so we headed for the information booth at the central station, managed to figure out what line to get in for information, bought some "strippen"(multi-zone tickets used on busses and trams) and ran to find the 91 bus. Easier said than done....once again we had been definitely pointed towards a vague location and had to bumble around a bit crossing all those tram tracks into the bus pickup area and eventually down to the last bus stand to catch our bus. The friendly bus driver was a welcome bonus, explained with mock seriousness how to properly pronounce the name of our stop ("Fife-hook"and don't ask me how to spell it!), and promised that "she"(the electronic announcer) would tell us when we had arrived. Of course when we got there, I realized that when Rudo had pointed out the bus stop to me as we were going into Amsterdam that it had been light outside, and now it was dark, and we were on the opposite side of the street facing in a different direction. But not to worry: I managed to get myself oriented, turned down the right street, and we found Rudo's place with no trouble.

From Europe 2008

Alex was already waiting for us, and Monique arrived soon after with Hans and Sevgin and we started setting up to play. Monique and I had talked several times about putting together a set list, but somehow that never happened. So there we were, Bulgarian accordian player, Romanian clarinetist, American autoharper, bass player and fiddler playing Irish, American and old-time, klezmer/Balkan fiddler and bass player, Greek guitarist -- five fairly distinct repertoires and really no time playing together ready to play a live concert.

From Europe 2008

And Rudo, who acted as our engineer and announcer, madly setting up mics, twiddling dials, and operating three computers to stream us out onto the internet and into Second Life. By 8pm there were 20 or so people...um, avatars....literally from all over the world gathered in the Old Bowl, an outdoor amphitheater in Alpine Meadow. I chatted with the group as Rudo continued to check connections and twiddle dials...and then we were ready. Because Monique and I had already played some of my Israeli repertoire together, we started with that, and the others joined in. And magic happened: these were musicans who could hear a tune once or twice through and just pick it up by ear and play along. So they did, and we did. There was some Balkan stuff in there that didn't fit on my autoharp, so I picked up the bass. Then Alex played some Greek songs. Then someone in the Old Bowl asked if we could play an Irish jig, so I started one on autoharp and it turned out that Hans knew it on accordian and Monique played it on fiddle. After a couple of times through, Hans took the lead and started another jig that I knew and I think we went from there to a reel....anyway it went on for a while. We played some American tunes and I called a square dance while playing along on bass, then switched to fiddle and started Cluck Old Hen, which I'd taught Monique earlier. That one threw Hans a curve -- he didn't realize right away that it was modal, so we had some really interesting backup for a while. But it didn't really matter...whatever we were playing it was fun for us (we literally steamed up the windows) and interesting enough to listen to that the audience stuck around and kept growing. The funniest moment was when Monique was improvising something with a kind of klezmer sound and the rest of us were just following along and someone who was listening asked whether we were still live or whether it was a recording. I wish we had recorded it...it must have been something. Fortunately Juliane and others took pictures, so hopefully I'll have some up here sooner or later.

From Europe 2008

So that was our live jam in Zaandam, streamed onto the internet and into Second Life. I said to Monique later that I was jealous that she and the others could get together to do this whenever they wanted. Monique just laughed and told me that they'd never done anything like this and probably wouldn't again -- I had been the catalyst, and without me there they wouldn't have bothered. That was an astounding idea to me -- I had thought that I was just an outsider joining in with something that already existed before I showed up. But in reality, without me that group process didn't really exist. I'm not sure what to make of that, but it certainly was a satisfying musical experience for both those of us who made the music and those who heard the music. So I think I'll just leave it at that.

I'm writing this from Zaandam again (Saturday evening, 11/8), having spent most of the week in Denmark and being on my way to Tel Aviv tomorrow morning. More soon, I hope -- I imagine it shouldn't be difficult to find internet access in Israel :-)

Adventures in Good Music

I honestly don't remember exactly what we did during the day on Wednesday except that I do know we slept late and spent a lot of time talking and some time playing. Actually I gave Monique a fiddle lesson -- she was interested in learning how to make "that sound" that comes out of my fiddle when I play so I showed her a bit about making the rhythm and we messed with it for a bit. Then she played some eastern European stuff and taught me to play rhythm on my fiddle to back her up. More very good fun.

Later in the afternoon we headed out to Zaandam again. Our purpose was to see if it was feasible to stream music from Rudo's place onto the internet and into Second Life. Now that Monique and I knew that we could play together, we wanted to fulfill a promise to friends from our Second Life community to play a live concert together and stream it into a space in the Confederation of Democratic Simulators where they could hear it. Monique's taverna in Alpine Meadow was the logical location, so we logged in and started setting up equipment. Alex showed up at some point, we all ate good Chinese food together (after I teased Alex mercilessly about the trouble he'd caused me the previous evening) and then we sent out messages to some of our friends to tell them that we were going to test this concept and needed listeners in the taverna to tell us if it was working. After that it was just a matter of playing together in front of the mics, so we did. It was just a jam session -- the three of us had never played together, we had three different repertoires, and we really were just messing around. I played some O'Carolan and waltzes and Irish tunes on autoharp with Monique playing along on fiddle and Alex finding the guitar chords. Alex sang Greek songs with me playing autoharp and Monique on bass or sometimes Monique on fiddle and me on bass. Monique played klezmer tunes with me backing her up on bass and Alex on guitar. And so on...we chatted and played with each other and with the handful of Second Life friends who were listening. The concept definitely worked: it was fun enough to listen to that our friends stuck around the whole time we were playing. So we committed to doing more of a concert on Friday evening.

After we got back to Monique's place, we had tea and talked until much later than we really should have. After we said goodnight and I got into bed, I wasn't sleepy so decided to pick up my email. When I turned on my iPod, I noticed that one of our Second Life friends was online, and realized that she was running a regular community meeting that I ordinarily attend, so I asked her to bring me to the meeting location since the minimal client on my iPod didn't allow me to transport myself. I was cheerfully greeting the others who were there when I noticed that Monique was also online. And the next thing I knew, she came flying down the stairs in real life, laughing hysterically as she realized that I was also "in world" and unable to believe that I could do that through my iPod -- she thought someone else was borrowing my login. But there I was, sitting in bed with iPod in hand :-) Ah, well, when you're crazy, I guess you may as well be completely crazy, eh? It was definitely a funny moment, and just as funny to our friends at the meeting going on in Second Life when they realized what had happened.

Thursday Monique and I had intended to go out and do the museum thing, but it didn't quite work out -- turned out that she got tied up with some work she had promised to do, so I amused myself for most of the day, helped her out a bit, and we worked out an arrangement of a piece of music I can only describe as monumental. More on that later. We went out for a quiet dinner together, then managed to get to sleep at a reasonable hour for a change.

Friday morning we got up relatively early because we had a date with two of Monique's band mates and Rudo to make a recording of an anthem that had been composed for the Confederation of Democratic Simulators. I had already worked on it a bit before I came to Utrecht, and on Thursday Monique and I had worked it over again so that we could play it together. But it was still almost a parody of an anthem, so what we had in mind was to make it as anthem-like and over-blown as possible. And we had just the gang to make that happen. Hans, Monique's Bulgarian/eastern European/gypsy accordian playing partner in musical crime was up to the task of putting an overblown support under her fiddle and my autoharp. So the three of us and Sevgin, a Romanian clarinet playing friend, headed over to Zaandam to make that recording.

It took a bit of doing, but with Rudo doing the engineering for us, by 1300 or so we had a recording we could live with. That was fortunate since I was due to meet my exchange daughter, Juliane, at the central train station at 1330. So I'll stop here for now and save that part of the story and the story of our live concert in Second Life until my next posting.

Second Life becomes Real Life

Sunday evening, Heather dropped me off at my hotel near the airport. Of course we had to fight with her GPS to get there: somehow it thought the hotel was in the middle of the airfield somewhere. But we didn't believe that and kept driving along the perimeter road until we spotted it. Much as I am not a fan of hotels especially when I am on my own, I was glad to get a quiet meal, a really good shower and a comfortable bed in a quiet room.

Monday morning, I caught the HotelHopper over to Heathrow. One of the most interesting (and sometimes most infuriating) things about international travel is the airports. Each has its own unique character. That can be nice sometimes, but other times it's just annoying. Landing at Dublin, for example, I was overwhelmed by the crowd -- even at 0630 it was shoulder-to-shoulder people, so noisy and crowded that I had a difficult time finding the announcement board to determine what gate I should head for and what direction that gate might be in. Then I had to run the gauntlet of literally hundreds of tiny shops crammed into every nook and cranny as I walked nearly a kilometer to reach the long line for security and (eventually) my gate. Heathrow is a similarly crazy and distracting airport -- too many shops, not so easy to determine where one is going, long distances to walk. Fortunately at 7am it was not very busy, so I had no trouble getting to my gate.

Monique met me at the airport, and this was not a small feat. The real question was whether we'd recognize each other since we had never met in person. She and I had become friends in the virtual world of Second Life when we both discovered the Confederation of Democratic Simulators at about the same time and ended up settling next door to each other. What made us friends was the same thing that is often at the root of my friendship these days: music. Monique is a professional musician, a fiddler who plays in a number of band that perform largely eastern European gypsy/klezmer music. And of course I play mostly western European and American music. But listening to each other's CD's and performances in Second life and talking about what we were up to musically we discovered a lot of common repertoire. So early last summer when it looked like I was really going to be traveling in Europe, I mentioned that to her and we decided to try to get together in real life with Monique inviting me to stay with her in Utrecht.

As it turned out, we had no trouble finding each other, and it didn't take long for us to agree that the other was much as we had expected. I wasn't at all surprised: my experience meeting musicians has always been that the music forms a point of contact that makes it very easy to get to know someone. This is why I've long been comfortable hosting house concert performers overnight even when I don't know them well.

As we walked to the car, Monique told me that what she had in mind was to head out to Zaandam, up to the northwest of Amsterdam, where one of her best friends lives. Monique had talked Rudo into joining Second Life last spring when he had some serious medical problems. Second Life allowed them to visit and do projects together in Second Life even when Rudo was stuck at home and it wasn't possible for Monique to get out to see him. And they did some really fun things together: Rudo was largely responsible for constructing Monique's taverna in Second Life, and it really is a thing of beauty.

I had also met Rudo in Second Life although we had had little contact, but again I needn't have worried -- he turned out to be intelligent and interesting with a fun sense of humor. So we had coffee, which I discovered is a very different thing in Holland than in England. In England tea is always good, while coffee is something that you make by mixing boiling water with granules from a jar. In Holland "coffee" is always a shot of espresso with an equal amount of hot water -- quite a different thing!

After we had chatted a while, Rudo proposed that we go out to give me a look at his part of the world. So we headed for a nearby museum/park where the old Holland is preserved: windmills, the making of wooden shoes, a cheese shop, and eventually a stop for pancakes with a variety of toppings eaten with good Dutch beer. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon :-)

We headed back toward's Rudo's place, stopping along the way at the public radio station he helps to run. After more coffee (or was it more beer?) we headed into Amsterdam to meet another mutual Second Life friend. Alex is a Greek expatriate who has lived for many years in Amsterdam and seems to know everyone in the Greek community there. We met him at a tiny Greek restaurant in what looked like a mostly residential neighborhood, one of those place that you'd probably never find unless someone brought you there. The owner came out to greet us, ensured that we were settled with menus and rakia, and then headed back to the kitchen -- he was also the chef. And a great chef at that: the food was fabulous, probably the best Greek food I've ever eaten.

As we finished dinner, Alex took out what I think I would call a tzouras (one of many types of lute-like Greek instruments) and started playing along with the Greek music that had been playing in the background. It didn't take long before the owner came out of the kitchen, turned down the background music, and joined us at the table. So we drank beer and ouzo and Monique and I played drum and took a stab at playing tzouras along with Alex and his friend as they sang their way through some of the Greek folk repertoire. Very good fun -- as I said earlier, a common interest in music never seems to fail to provide a bond that makes for good friendships.

Rudo, Monique and I eventually left Alex still singing and playing and headed back to Rudo's where we picked up Monique's car and went over to her place in Utrecht, talking most of the way. After getting settled, we had to have tea of course, and that kept us up until later than I'd like to admit. Fortunately we had no particular agenda for the next morning, so we slept late and then got up and went out shopping. As always, I was interested in the supermarket, which actually wasn't a supermarket: it was a Turkish grocery store. This time the cost of living was much closer to what I was used to, perhaps twenty percent higher than prices in Pittsburgh. The store was great -- not just the usual stuff on the shelves, of course, but all sorts of interesting fruits and vegetables, Middle Eastern and Indian packaged goods, really good yogurt of the sort that you have to search out in the US. Next door we stopped at a little cheese shop where rounds of cheese ran literally from floor to ceiling. But when it came to picking cheese, the man behind the counter had only one question: did we want old cheese or new cheese? We tasted both, and ended up with a chunk of each. One of us thought to ask how old the cheese was and I discovered that this man (the owner of the cheese shop and the son of the former owner Monique told me later) probably knew everything about every round of cheese on his shelves when he told us that the new cheese was six weeks old and the old cheese was 10 months old. I loved seeing someone who was clearly so in love with what he was doing. And we stopped next to pick up some fresh-baked breads at a bakery where we saw the same phenomenon: people who were involved in creating and selling a product that they knew intimately and enjoyed sharing with their customers.

So we had breakfast (or maybe it was lunch by this time) and then took some time to play together. OK, it was really fun -- I knew enough of Monique's repertoire and she knew enough of mine that we found lots of ways to combine forces. So we did that for quite a while before Monique had to reluctantly quit to do some real work.

When we saw Alex the previous evening, he had invited us to come into Amsterdam to hear a performance he was involved with that he rather vaguely described as "avant garde classical music" in which he had a small part, having created a machinima (a video filmed in Second Life) to serve as a backdrop for a newly composed piece that was to have its premier. Monique had a Balkan choir rehearsal to run, but I was free so I cheerfully agreed to meet Alex around six so we could grab a bite to eat before the 8pm performance. So Monique walked me down to the nearby train station and I took the train into Amsterdam.

Like many European central stations, Amsterdam Centraal is big, noisy, and confusing to those who don't know it. So I arrived on some track or another, and had to find my way to tram line 4. Everyone speaks English in Amsterdam, so language was no barrier, but asking was no help -- the first two or three I asked where to find the trams hadn't a clue. I finally found someone who pointed me out the right door, but figuring out where the #4 came still wasn't so easy -- all of the tram lines terminate at Centraal, and as it turned out the one I wanted was kind of around the bend where I couldn't see it until I was on top of it. Oh, and it also took a while before someone was able to tell me that I did not need a ticket and could pay as I boarded.

So I found the tram, got on, paid....and then had to figure out where to get off. Alex had mentioned two stops to Monique, but hadn't given further instructions from there to Amstelkirk, the location of the concert. "Everyone knows where it is, just ask" he'd told me. After consulting with several of my fellow riders, none of whom seemed to have more than a vague idea of where this Amstelkirk might be, I chose the second stop, got off, and looked around. Hmm, nothing like Amstelkirk was obviously visible. The first person I asked didn't know where it was, nor could he tell me how to find Amstelgrad, the square where Amstelkirk was supposed to be located. Fortunately the second person was able to point out a narrow cobbled street where he said that about a 250 meter walk would bring me to the square. Which it did...but I saw nothing that looked like a church. I texted Alex, knowing that he was probably rehearsing. "Hi, I think I'm close, but where exactly is Amstelkirk? No one seems to know." He texted back "OK, we're rehearsing so I can't talk now. Text me when you get to the door." Grrr....I asked another passerby for help, no luck. There was a big white building on the corner of the square that appeared to have a restaurant in it, so I walked over there and asked inside. They told me I was in the right building, wrong entrance -- the entrance was around the side. I walked around the side, but the only entrance I saw looked like the entrance to a youth hostel, and the door was dark and locked. Hmmm....I texted Alex again: "Alex, I THINK I'm outside the door now." And he appeared smiling.

The rehearsal was still going on, so I watched for a bit, and then realized that it was unlikely that they were going to break anytime soon. So I suggested to Alex that if he could point me in the right direction, I'd go out and grab something to eat and bring him something back if he liked. No, he couldn't possibly eat now, he said, he was too nervous. As for where to go....hmmm, all I got was a very Greek shrug. He had no idea. Ah, but afterwards, he assured me, we'd all go out together. OK, no problem.

The performance was amazing. (Note: I'll add in the details on the name of the group and the performers when I get a chance to dig it out of my luggage). It turned out that this was another one of Alex's Greek connections. Two of the pieces to be performed had been composed by a woman who is a fellow Greek expatriate and one of the leaders of the avant garde music community in Amsterdam. A trio of three women performed, two on a variety of recorders ranging from soprano to contrabass, and one singer with a clear, beautiful voice. They juxtaposed baroque repertoire that one would expect from such a trio with modern pieces that utilized the same three musicians but with very different harmonies, rhythms and even ways of using the instruments. They moved effortlessly through the space as they played and sang, and in that beautiful acoustic space the sound moved with them and around the audience. For one of the modern pieces, the singer was blindfolded, singing as the two instrumentalists used their sound to beckon her and following one or the other with her ears. It was beautiful to watch and beautiful to hear. And Alex's machinima was an intriguing backdrop to one of the other avant garde pieces, playing off the music very effectively.

Afterwards the audience and performers milled around and chatted for a while, and when I looked at the time, it was well after 10 and I realized that there was no way they were going to be ready to go find food in time for me to be able to still catch a train back to Utrecht. So I asked Alex to walk me back to the tram. "Oh, but it's still early, we haven't had a chance to go out, the trains run all night." Well...not true, there was a last train that stopped at the station near Monique's place and I didn't want her to have to come rescue me in the middle of the night. So I explained to Alex that it would be best if I went back now since I had to navigate myself through a tram system and train system and streets that I wasn't entirely familiar with and needed to do that before I got too tired. So he walked me back to the tram station, thinking to ask me if I wanted to stop for a cup of coffee and a little smoke along the way (we were in Amsterdam, after all), but never thinking to suggest that we grab something to eat. I just laughed to myself -- he was SO much like what I expected him to be that I couldn't have imagined him behaving any other way.

I made it back to Monique's station without further adventures, but then couldn't remember exactly how to get from the station to her door, so exercised my option to phone a friend and she came out and rescued me. And then laughed when I told her about the adventure and sat me down and fed me while we laughed together about the crazy Greek.

All right, enough for one evening. I'm actually writing this while watching the election returns, and NPR just called Ohio for Obama, so I think we're about done for the night and I'm going to sleep. More sooner or later...

Surviving Sore Fingers

So Saturday morning, we got up and joined the crowd for 8am breakfast in the cafeteria. Now the Kingham School where we were gathered is one of those very typical British boarding schools. Founded in the mid-19th century, it's now co-ed but aside from that I expect that it is very much the same as such schools have been for many years, and I also expected rather uninspiring food. As it turned out, this was not the case: these kids eat very well, and although the menu for the weekend was stereotypically British, everything was well-prepared, tasty and attractive. Can't ask for much more when you've got musical friends and students surrounding you, eh?

Heather, Nadine and I were splitting the tutoring duties for the weekend, and since we had about 25 students they were split into two groups, one of beginners and one of ïmprovers"who were mostly intermediate and advanced-intermediate students, many of them quite good musicians. I was off for the first session while Nadine warmed up the improvers so I visited with old friend Mike Fenton, the Autoharp Hall of Fame member who has long been at the heart of the autoharp community in the UK. Mike taught the early UK Autoharp events, and over the years, folks like Sue, Heather and Nadine have continued to drive them, teaching many of the workshops as well as administering them, and bringing in people like myself for some variety and also to give themselves a chance to learn from others. (I should comment that both Nadine and Heather have in past years competed in the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering and each has placed in the top three at least once as I did this past summer).

Once we'd had our tea break (yep, in England it's tea -- coffee is something that is created from hot water and powder from a jar :-)), I spent an intensive hour with the improvers working on Irish polkas. Very good fun -- as always, we started with rhythm, and gradually progressed from playing the rhythm to playing the melody line to integrating the rhythm into the melody. Pretty intensive work, but my intent was not only to teach them some nice music, but to lay the groundwork for the other workshop sessions I'd be teaching that weekend. So after lunch, we did a workshop on "Singing With The Autoharp"and once again I started by talking about and demonstrating layers of rhythm. We messed with one of my old favorites for an hour, Stephen Foster's "The Glendy Burke," a nice accessible song that makes a great addition to one's jam repertoire.

So we had another tea break, and afterwards Nadine hosted kind of an open-mic sort of sharing session. Nadine, Heather and I each played a short set for the group, demonstrating our very different styles and giving the group a chance to see what could be done with the instrument. I was free to leave after that to prepare for the concert, but I decided to stay and was very glad I did. This was a chance for students to get up and perform something for the class. Three or four did, and I'd be hard-pressed to say what was the best: each one got up and sang a song or played a tune that they'd been working on. Some really beautiful singing with extremely tasteful accompaniment came out from these oh-so-shy-and-self-deprecating students. I knew that UK Autoharps had been hosting workshops for years, but this was the first chance I'd had to see the impact of all that great teaching that attendees have clearly been avidly absorbing. Really a lovely experience, and I was privileged to see those beautiful, intimate performances.

After supper, it was time for the big concert -- all the tutors were expected to get up on stage and strut their stuff. John, the organizer, had in mind that Nadine, Heather and I ought to do something together, but given the fact that our styles are so different, this would have been difficult even if we had played together like that often. So we decided to use the designated 20-minute Äutoharp Extravaganza" time to each play two songs or tunes of our own choosing. That worked out great. Since Sore Fingers is primarily a bluegrass-oriented event with a bit of American old-time thrown in for good measure, we all tried to choose things that would resonate with the audience. Mike Fenton is well-known and much loved in this community, so Nadine played his "Polly Swallow"and followed that by singing John McCutcheon's "The Red Corvette"-- if you haven't heard it, look it up on the web and at least read the words. Definitely a "guy song"and a good choice for this audience. Heather came up and played a spirited and delicate version of Arkansas Traveler, a fiddle tune familiar to this audience, followed by Star of the County Down, a well-known waltz played with great beauty. Then I got up and did my eclectic contest arrangement of the spooky modal fiddle tune Cold Frosty Morning to tickle the old-time crowd and followed that by singing Kate Long's "Who'll Watch The Home Place?"a song written by an autoharper, but made famous by bluegrass artist Laurie Lewis when she recorded it and it was the IBMA Song of the Year in 1994. I'm definitely no Laurie Lewis, but I figured if Kate liked my singing of her song then it ought to be good enough for this group :-)

Anyway it was all very well received, and the rest of the concert was good fun. The two old-time tutors did a nice 20 minute set, demonstrating that it's possible to make interesting music even with someone you've only had an hour or so to rehearse with and never met before if you've got good rhythm. And then the bluegrass tutors, 10 or so of them, took the stage and for an hour regaled the audience in various pickup band combinations with one or the other taking the lead and his/her bandmates playing backup and breaks. And afterwards we did what all crazy musicians do: we got together in the bar and jammed until the wee hours.

That night the jam where I was sitting was a little crazy -- there were other jams within earshot so it was hard to hear and difficult to keep the rhythm steady. And we had mad mandolinist Chris playing with us -- I teasingly nominated him for the Sore Fingers Weekend Speed King because he had a tendency to encourage everything to go much too fast. We did have a bass player with us, but when he took a break, all chaos broke loose, so I put down my autoharp (it was too hard to be heard anyway) and picked up the bass. Two or three hours later, I had officially earned my sore fingers for the weekend, but at least we played at a more comfortable speed for the rest of the evening. And my autoharp students were amazed that I could pick up an instrument that they didn't even know I played and proceed to play all those songs that I'd never heard. It might not have been about autoharp, but it was a good object lesson the next day when we talked for a while about playing in jam sessions when you don't know the tunes and haven't got the music in front of you.

Sunday after breakfast, I had a wonderful nearly two hour session targeted at the more advanced players. We spent the time learning about playing rhythms for Israeli dance tunes, and really dug into äctualising" several piece that I had brought with me. It really was all about rhythm again, and about learning to allow those rhythms to express themselves as the melodies were played. And by the end of the session, several of the students really had caught on, and everyone had learned something. I teased that I am expecting that when I came back in a couple of years I would ask to hear all of them playing those tunes properly for me :-)

Sunday afternoon wound down with another sharing session. For me the highlight was Siegfried, the German member of UK Autoharps, who had come (at my request) with some German folk tunes to share after I had teased him several months back about his penchant for playing American pop tunes from the 20's to 40's. In a style very much his own that reminds me of harpsichord playing, he stepped us all through several of those tunes introducing his playing with amusing translations of the words to each song.

After the sharing session, Nadine led us in playing a lovely OÇarolan tune together, and then it was time for tea :-) During tea, I chatted a bit with the old-time fiddle tutor, Pete Cooper, and expressed regret that we hadn't had a chance to play a few fiddle tunes together. But it turned out that he had some time, so after tea we sat down and shared tunes and chatted for a few minutes. More good fun: Pete is not a purely old-time guy, and I've got a purely old-time style, so he enjoyed hearing and playing along with my very West Virginian versions of tunes he was familiar with, and I appreciated hearing his interpretations.

So that was the weekend. Great fun to be a tutor for the UK group -- it's rare to have such a friendly, attentive, and dedicated group to work with. Well, except for bad boy Paul who livened up the class considerably on Saturday -- but he's such a nice guy that I think I'll forgive him for participating with such a twinkle in his eye. Next chapter: adventures in Utrecht.

Heading for Sore Fingers in England

So I arrived safely in England and spent the day hanging out with Heather. We talked, talked, and talked, something we never have time to do when we see each other at the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering. Knowing that Heather would have to go into school that evening for a few hours to meet with the parents of her students, I had offered to fix an early supper for us, so we went out to the market. This is one of the things I love to do in other countries -- it's always interesting to see what's on the shelves, how markets are arranged, what kind of things people buy, what technology is in use (or not) -- all kind of interesting social/cultural clues can be picked up with a visit to a supermarket. And of course you get a feel for the cost of living. I noted that the prices of most things were superficially in line with the prices I would expect to see shopping in Pittsburgh -- what I would have paid $1 for was market at 1 GBP. But of course the British pound is worth about $1.60, so in fact the cost of living in that area (Heather lives in Sittingbourne between Bobbing and Milton Regis near the coast of Kent) is about 60% higher. There is a price war on for petrol (gasoline) in England right now, so that was a lot lower than I remembered from our last trip -- .99 GBP rather than the 1.40 GBP it had been at in 2006. But that's still about $6.50 per gallon -- another indicator of the cost of living.

We made supper together, and then Heather went off and I caught up on e-mail and a shower. To solve the jetlag problem, I went to bed really late, and had the luxury of sleeping in until 10 the next morning. By the time Heather arrived home from her teaching around noon, I was fine. So we had a leisurely lunch and headed off for the weekend.

Unfortunately to get to the Kingham School (located in the Cotswalds near a hamlet called Chipping Norton which I think is in Gloustershire) we had to drive the dreaded M25, the ring road that surrounds London. And we were not fortunate on this trip: traffic was extremely heavy, and although we left at 1:30 we did not arrive until nearly 7pm. But a drive like that is a great chance to talk and get a feel for the countryside, so we talked as we drove, and Heather gave me a bit of commentary as we did so. I was amused by the British system of intersections -- they use what they call "roundabouts" (and I would call a traffic circle) almost obsessively. In some areas we would go through three or four of these in a row, each less than a quarter mile after the last -- first exit on this one, third exit on that one, second exit on the next, and so on. I'm familiar with many complicated intersections on the US interstate system, but have never seen anything quite this crazy in the way that it insisted on using exactly the same type of mechanism for EVERY "intersection problem."

Despite the traffic and the craziness of navigating through the roundabouts, once we got off the M25 and onto the A25 and even farther outside the city, the drive was beautiful. Due to a wrong choice at a roundabout, we ended up going through the center of Oxford rather than around it, so I even got a good look at that beautiful old town. Foot and bicycle traffic was thick everywhere, and we were more likely to be held up behind a bus than behind a line of cars. I guess starving students don't bother to have cars when the price of gas is so high :-) I also noticed that cars are uniformly much smaller than in the US. Heather commented at one point that she loved her little car because it was cheap to run, cheap to insure and (what I picked up on) cheap to tax: cars are taxed based on their size and larger less fuel-efficient models pay more. Now THERE'S a tax I could definitely get to liking!

So we arrived at the Kingham School, immediately ran into Sue, another of the British autoharpers I had previously met, and we headed off to supper. The place was packed -- there were nearly 200 people at this "Sore Fingers Weekend," most of whom were fiddle, banjo, mandolin or guitar students there to learn bluegrass styles. There was also an "American Old Time" fiddle class and a banjo class for the same style. And 25 autoharpers who were there for the instrumental instruction rather than any particular style. We met most at supper, then settled in our room (myself, Heather, and another friend, Nadine), tuned up an autoharp, and headed off for the Friday night jam. Autoharper Bob Ebdon, whose name I knew from the Cyberpluckers autoharp discussion group but who I had never met, was sitting down in the thick of things, playing for all he was worth. So I joined him and we spent the evening playing next to each other, leading a few songs and tunes from time to time and playing and skinging along with the others in that very mixed jam. Bob has a lovely voice as well as nice autoharp technique, so I enjoyed this greatly. At one point one of the guitar players, a really fine picker who had been leading some beautiful songs and spirited tunes called for "Wild Mountain Thyme" a beautiful old Scottish (I think) song. When he saw that Bob and I both knew it, he nodded to the autoharps to take a break, so we did together, with Bob playing out the melody and me backing him up with harmony and rhythm to the amazment of the bluegrassers surrounding us who had never heard a duet like that before. Definitely a "moment"!!

Needless to say we jammed too late before heading off to our dorm rooms for some sleep, but I justified it by telling myself that it would be better if I stayed up late so that I wouldn't wake up too early :-)

All right, enough for now. I'll write about the rest of the weekend soon, and then I'll catch up with myself in Utrecht which is where I'm writing from right now. Hopefully photos too if I can find time to upload a few...

On my way

Well, I'm on my way on yet another quixotic journey across the wider world. I realized today that I got my first passport before Sarah Palin got hers and I've visited more countries than she has, so I guess you could just say that I'm adding to my international experience in hopes that the next time around I'll have a shot at that vice-presidential slot.

Well, ok...that's not it. In fact the impetus for this trip was an invitation to visit a friend who emigrated to Israel last year, and I figured that as long as I was going that far, I ought to figure out a way to visit some of my other friends in Europe, particularly those who I had not yet had a chance to visit in their own places. For me, that's really the fun of traveling. To stay with real people who live in the place and talk about everyday things and go to supermarkets and banks and local hangouts is MUCH more interesting to me than a tour of landmarks and museums on someone else's schedule. Not that I won't visit the landmarks, too -- I definitely will! But as with the similar trip that Rebecca and I took in 2006, this one is all about going to places where I know someone and simply spending time there with them.

In 2006, Rebecca and I visited Helsinki, Edinburgh, Whithorn (southwest Scotland), Barnard Castle (northeast England), Oberndorf am Neckar, Wilburgstetten (Germany, central Bavaria), and Frankfurt. This time around I'll be at the Kingham School (somewhere in England..not sure yet exactly where!), Utrecht (Holland), Amsterdam (actually a neighbor to Utrecht), Ribe (Denmark) and various places in Israel. Not the same trip as you can see, and even after this trip there will still be friends in Europe I'd love to visit who live in yet other places. Perhaps two years hence...

But in the meantime, here I am, safely in England staying overnight near London with autoharp friend Heather Farrell before heading out to teach at the Sore Fingers Weekend at the Kingham School tomorrow. I flew from London to Boston to Dublin to London, leaving around 11:30am and arriving in London around 8 the following morning. No problems, everything mostly on time, and the flight to Dublin was empty enough that I had a whole row to myself to stretch out in, everything fit in the overhead, my luggage arrived with me.

Some of you had heard my story about the work permit for England that was almost forgotten and in a panic applied for and granted just two days before I left. So here's the joke: after all that craziness about the work permit turns out I didn't need it because I entered the UK in Ireland, told them I was going on to London right away when they asked me how long I was staying, and that was the end of it because they didn't even ask what I was doing in London! There was no customs inspection in London because a flight from Dublin is considered "domestic." An interesting perspective considering that as Americans we still need to go through customs inspection to enter and leave Canada and Mexico and vice versa of course. It's just one of the small ways in which I'm reminded of the difference between the way we in the US view "international relations" and the approach of the Europeans.

All right, it's 8pm my time so I'm going to shower and then try to get a good night's sleep. I may not have internet access at all over the weekend, so more after that.