Places to go, things to see, songs to sing

One thing I really would like to do is to start visiting more places in Germany. So once I am debt free, I will need to decide how exactly I want to do that. I'm thinking something like a weekend away every second month and a day trip every other second month, so that every month I do go somewhere. Every month feels like a lot though so I suppose I'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I thought I'd start a list of potential places to visit.

Day trips (no more than 3 hours away, preferably no more than 2)
Xanthen
Bremen
Bielefeld
Neanderthal (no excuses, this is only half-an-hour away!)
Aachen
Bonn

Weekend trips (no more than 5 hours away, must be reachable after work on a Friday)
Stuttgart
Hamburg
Bayreuth

Longer trips, minimum long weekend
Dresden
Leipzig
Munich
Bodensee
Rostock
Sylt
Berlin

I'm going to make this stuff into a separate page and keep it updated as I think of new places to go or to tick things off as I start to actually go on trips. Hmmm, while I'm at it, I should add some of the places outside Germany that I'd like to go to and some of the things I'd like to see.

In a few weeks time, choir will be performing Haydn's Creation. Last night, as part of our fund-raising efforts for that concert (the big choral works are expensive to stage - we're talking minimum 12,000, which is why we only get to do one every couple of year or as a support to other, state or otherwise subsidised groups), we performed extracts from it at a very posh old folks' home in town. They have a nice theater in the building (and a pub in the basement, so all the facilities!) and it was very close to capacity, I'd estimate just over 200 people attending. It's lovely to sing for an appreciative group and know they really want to be there and haven't been dragged along because they're family. LOL. We sang with just a small six-piece ensemble, with the piano picking up the slack for most of the missing instruments and had two soloists (the tenor bits were mostly left out, except for one trio when our conductor sang the tenor part.

What was particularly lovely about this concert was that because it wasn't a full orchestra and space was limited, the soloists sat just in front of the choir. Normally they sit at the front of the orchestra and the only time you get to hear them properly is during the dress rehearsal when they might turn around and sing towards the choir instead of towards the empty chairs. It was really wonderful to have them so close.

There are one or two places where we could probably do with a little bit more work but overall we gave a pretty good performance. And in two weeks we have a long weekend away to rehearse all day long for a couple of days.

I don't want to start spending money I don't have (even in my head) but I do want to get down on a list some of the things that I feel like I've been putting off or just never gotten around to over the year simply for lack of funds. I may never do all of them but once I have them on a list, at least I can think seriously about them and decide once and for all how important it is to me to give them a go. And one thing that will definitely be up there is singing lessons. I've never really had any proper ones, except for the once-a-year 20 minute session my current conductor insists on having with everybody (and honestly it's a fantastic extra service really, he doesn't get paid anymore for the days he comes early to do this). And I'd love to have more control over what I can do - being able to sing not just loudly but strongly, better breath control and so on. In the meantime, I found a song (don't think it's gone viral yet but it certainly deserves to!) that I think I may need to learn the words for (have already typed them up and printed them out for my books of lyrics) and sing next February during one of our after-rehearsal pub sessions in Halle!

The Ballad of Lidl and Aldi