Reichenau and Back

Bike route 514137 - powered by Bikemap

I have been a little lazy since the last bout of rebellion, and so, also conformed with the doc's orders i.e. no sport for 6 weeks. Lets makes that 8 for good measure :) And today, I wanted to get back with a big bang, not the post-beans kind of big bang, but the symbolic types - telling the body that the hibernating season is officially over.

If only I did all that I plan to do. If only... :P

What I wanted to do was start at Konstanz, go to Radolfzell, and from there head towards Stein am Rhein, and then head back to Konstanz. But some where within the first 2 kilometers I got distracted. Well, what to say, pretty young things are pretty young things :) I was perhaps a few meters behind these aforementioned PYTs, and well, there was no motivation to overtake them. At the 7 kilometer mark I think I took the wrong turn.

Right-ho, because these PYTs turned left towards Reichenau while I should have continued straight towards Radolfzell. It was only after I lost the PYTs that I realized I was on the wrong route. I stopped to click a few snaps to commemorate the monumental fail I had just committed. Then I remembered that I had left the memory card on my desk at home. So now I had space for only 6 more snaps. I am sure I would have been seething mad if I had discovered the lack of a memory card at the 50 km mark. Am I a believer in signs and destiny? I honestly do not know how to answer that anymore.

Anyhoo, this Reichenau island thingybob is one funky place. Glasshouses everywhere. And rows of salad greens growing all over the place. It is said that people living in glass houses should not throw stones, well these guys apparently can't throw even a tennis ball around. It is also a UNESCO heritage site because of three really really old churches (from the Roman era). Did I go in? no. Why? why not? What people do not know is that there is also a ghost toilet at Reichenau. No. Really. The locals say they can hear the toilets flush themselves at night. And of course, the haunting sounds of a constipated soul attempting to pass stool. Which is why they grow greens in the hope that one day the ghost will be cured....

WC beim Freidhof - i.e. Toilet at Cemetery

The rows of salad greens

The wrong side

Reichenau and Back

A fantastic summer's interlude: le Festival International de Musique Universitaire

For a fleeting four days the Kackwetter we've been experiencing for the past few weeks gave way to clear blue skies. Yeah, its going to !@#$ing rain again tomorrow. Thunderbolts of lightning, very very frightning me, Galelio galelio, figaroooooooo.

In this very brief summer interlude, when men could roam the world in shorts without having their nuts frozen, a very French town called Belfort hosted 2500 musicians. And they performed at 14 different venues over three days. It is called the le Festival International de Musique Universitaire. It is held every year in May, and next year will be the 25th edition. The musicians are usually music students, but that does not mean they play like amateurs ;)

Picking from across genres should in theory have been simple. But it wasn't, because most of what we heard was good. And this festival lets you do exactly that, pick a venue, see if you like the music, if not, move on to another one. Simple.

If, if only if I had to pick the best band from what I heard, then I'd have to pick Sunergy. Sunergy, I learned later via the internet, is a group of four music students from Campus Notre-Dame-de-Foy Canada. They played Mike Stern's Chromazone, and boy they kicked some serious ass. These guys had the crowd on their feet. They were enjoying themselves on stage and their state of mind manifested itself in their music. It was downright infectious. I hope these guys don't stop playing. Heck, I even found them on facebook! They sounded better at the venue than on this video though.

These three pics are not by me! Pulled them off Flickr.

Then there was this group performing Jean-Baptiste Lully's Armide, where the actor's faces are ghoulishly painted white. It was well, Opera. Yeah. WTF? And I did ask myself for a moment - WTF? But once, I went past the WTF stage, it was smooth sailing.

There was also an Indian duo on the Sitar and Tabla. It has been a while since I have been at an Indian classical concert - I think the last one was by Pt. Shivakumar Sharma on the Santoor in 2008. Anyhoo, they were not too bad. I have no idea what ragas they played though.

The other bands which did the trick for me were the Jazz band from Zurich - ETH Big band, a group from Morocco, and of course - Somogo with their didjeridoo and percussion inspired collective madness at the L'Arsenel on Saturday night. And I did see a David Hasselhoff wannabe - blinking lights and everything :)

Not every band we heard was good, not every genre moved the soul. For example a Chilean group dealing in Chamber music played such somber pieces that you could be forgiven for thinking you were at a funereal. Doesn't work for me. Sorry.

And then, there was this new music. One would expect new music to be different, something so profound that we ordinary mortals cannot conceive. But what if we cannot even appreciate it? One such artist was this guy making weird sounds - like the clearing of a blocked nose or the gargling noise one makes when using Listerine in the morning, or the rumble of an empty stomach reverberating in a hollow chamber. In my humble opinion this is exactly what parents tell their children not to do. And this guy was professing such hogwash as music. Sorry, but village idiots like me just fail to appreciate you. Or maybe, it was all just a choreography stunt. I hope.

Allegro con brios typically can not put you to sleep, but voilà, a guitar ensemble did exactly that with Mozart's Symphony number 25. They killed it! Ok, it was like 11.30 at night and I was on my feet for the better part of the day, so sleep came very naturally to me, but I have no doubt that these guys did play their part!

Three days of camping and good music. Merci beaucoup! (the ones who shall not be named) :)))

A fantastic summer's interlude: le Festival International de Musique Universitaire