The Chimneys

While I was in Dublin I stayed in a hotel not far from where I grew up and right on the sea. I took masses of photos, mostly of the same thing, hoping one might be good enough to get printed out in large and hang somewhere. I kind of have an idea of doing the same thing with a few different landmarks over the next few trips back there so that I can someday have one section of a room showing some of the best of my hometown. Or perhaps just have the different pictures dotted throughout the house. When you can see things all the time and then all of a sudden they're not in your background anymore, you do sometimes feel the lack somehow.

Anyway, this time round the photos are of the chimneys. These chimneys form part of the power station at Pigeon House or, as wikipedia tells me, actually Poolbeg Generating Station on Dublin Bay. It's funny how you know some stuff about your hometown but how often when you actually go looking for the facts you realise you only knew half bits and pieces of the actual information. At any rate, driving along the coast road as a child, on the way to visit my grandparents on the northside of the city, or on the way to the airport, we always looked out for the first view of the chimneys. My dad used to run a garage along Sandymount Strand, from where I took most of my photos. That was years before I was born but it did mean that he always had the answers to our questions about the area. What's that, why, when where etc., etc., etc. As an adult I used to love going to Sandymount Strand to walk along the beach or, if the tide was in, along the lovely promenade that was built. It was a lovely Sunday morning thing to do, although you had to get there fairly early or the place would be crowded. For once I was in Ireland during a heatwave so the weather was amazing and the light was incredible, although at times the sun was nearly too bright to allow really good photos. Here's one of my favourites of the chimneys though.

The chimneys, taken from Sandymount Strand

It would have been lovely to get this photo when the tide was in. Sandymount Strand is one of those where you can walk for more than half-an-hour to get to the sea when the tide is out and yet only leaves a few inches of beach visible when the tide's fully in. Here's one taken the following day but from Blackrock, which is a few miles away, when the tide was coming almost in.

The chimneys, taken from beside Blackrock DART Station

And there were lovely clouds just a small bit to the left of the chimneys in this one, which would have made it perfect. I can kind of understand why artists can end up painting multiple pictures of the same scene. So many variations.

The chimneys, taken from Sandymount Strand. That's not sea in the background though, it's mist evaporating.

I happened to land in Dublin on Saturday evening and by the time I had collected my rental car and driven over to the southside, it was dark. I had just turned on to Sandymount Strand when I noticed the moon. And it was incredible. I pulled into the first car park to get out and look at it, because I really wasn't sure I could look away and didn't want to end up crashing the car! It was gone within a few minutes but it was one of the most amazing moonscapes I have ever seen (I want to say it was one of the most amazing moons I've ever seen but it's the same moon every night, after all!). It was giant in the sky, flaming red and so low it looked like it was perched on top of Dun Laoghaire pier. Along with the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves (moon and waves, anyone?), well, I have to admit I did get a little teary-eyed. But that's not the kind of thing you can photograph and hang on your wall so I'll stick with the chimneys for now. Anyone have a favourite of the photos above?

Getting To Know Me in 10 Questions: The Travel Edition

Stealing this from Live to List, who in turn robbed it from somewhere else. That's just the way t'internet works, innit? Honestly, I'm kind of struggling with a touch of depression at the moment. I haven't quite fallen into a hole and I am fighting it hard but it is a struggle. For some reason this time round I don't really feel like I'm finding the words to write it out either so I might do a few of these meme type posts to see if it gets the juices flowing, so to speak.

1. Your most treasured passport stamp?  I remember going to Prague on a school trip when it was still in Czechoslovakia and being so excited to get a stamp in my passport. But it turned out we had a group passport so I didn't get one. I think I was so disappointed I've never really been able to get excited about it since. Also, almost all my travel has been within Europe, so no stamps anyway.
2. Can you recite your passport number if asked? Not at all. Not even a little bit.
3. Preferred method of travel: plane, train or automobile? Trains all the way. I, along with all my siblings, used to get really bad motion sickness when we were kids. Train's the only thing I've never been sick on. I still can't read or do anything else in a car or bus so it's a really boring way or me to travel. And I love that even if I miss my train, I can just get on the next one in a couple of hours.
4. Top three travel items? Books (these days my Kindle), comfy shoes, a shawl/huge scarf, preferably my hemp one, which works equally well to keep sun out or warm me up.
5. Hostel or hotel? Hotel if possible
6. Are you a repeat visitor, or do your prefer to explore new places? Both, I suppose. There are so many new places I would like to see but really, I prefer to really get to know places and feel at home there. Actually, I think that's the reason there'll be less and less travel in my future - I find myself yearning more and more for just one place to stay put and feel like it could take a lifetime to really get to know a place that well.
7. Do you read up on your destination, or do you wing it? I wing it. Although I always make a token effort and get a guidebook or two from the library, I rarely do more than flick through. And yet my best holidays have often been the ones where I've travelled with people who've done loads of research.
8. Favourite travel website? Don't have one. I do use roomex to book hotels, usually, so I suppose they deserve a mention.
9. Where would you recommend a friend to visit, and why? Slovenia, to go walking and be able to fill your water from the gorgeous rivers. Boston - 'cos lunch in Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market!
10. You're leaving tomorrow and money is no object: where are you going?* Siberia. Or anywhere else on my list!

*[pedant hat on]The original meme, or at least as many as I clicked through to, had "money is no option". Assuming that the question isn't about where you'd go if you had absolutely no money, I've corrected it.[/pedant hat off]

Plan a nice birthday and then nature takes over

I have a couple of days off work and am heading to Dublin for my long-planned long weekend birthday treat. I started my birthday off in style by going out for drinks after choir yesterday evening. Okay, there's actually nothing too unusual about going out for drinks after choir but I had warned people in advance so there were a few prepared to stick around until midnight to "feier in den Geburtstag ein" (celebrate into the birthday - it's extremely bad luck in Germany to wish someone happy birthday before the day but not all that unusual to stay up until midnight to wish someone happy birthday as soon as your birthday arrives). It was a lovely evening, very quiet but full of laughter and good chat. And at midnight, the waitress turned off the background music and blasted a CD of "happy birthday to you", which was kind of amusing. We've only been there a couple of times before but it seems to be the kind of place that adopts you quickly.

Got home just after one and spent 45 minutes or so packing and tidying up a bit (despite plans to have it all done on Tuesday evening!). Slept really well and had only minimal problems getting up at seven o'clock. Funny how it's so much easier to get up for holidays than for work! Did the washing up, brought the rubbish and recycling down and gave the floor in the kitchen a quick clean and still had time to have a shower, get dressed and head for the bus to get to the airport - yes, the bus. None of my usual running out the door and hopping into a taxi because I'm late.

I have a full program of fun and lovely things planned for today. Have tickets for a lunchtime concert in the National Concert Hall at one o'clock, floating booked for four and a hairdresser appointment at six, followed by meeting my brother for dinner. And then sleeping in a really comfy bed before getting up to head to the Craft Fair tomorrow (which I just got a free ticket for, woohoo!).

I had checked in online yesterday so just had to drop my bag off, there was no queue and I only had two people ahead of me going through security and no-one at all ahead of me at passport control. It's ages since everything just ran so smoothly for me when travelling. And then I got to the gate and while reading through some happy birthday texts they announced that our flight is delayed by about 70 minutes. There's a superstorm on the way - actually, it's five small storms one directly after the other and the first arrived last night. It's mild here but apparently very windy in Dublin so the plane was delayed from there. It has just landed here though so hopefully we will get out of here before the weather gets bad. I don't think I'll make it to the concert as I'll only be arriving in Dublin at around 12.30, I think but we'll see how it goes. And hey, for whatever reason, emirates' wifi is free at the moment so things aren't all bad!

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