Week 9 - President of Int. Rotary visit, Cologne, Liege busking attempt

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22/3/2012

Today, normally, I’d be subject to one of my least favourite days of the week. However, because we are being blessed with the presence of the President of Rotary International, we get the whole day off. Kick Ass. So we were supposed to be there by 9:20, but I missed my bus and ended up getting there at around 10:30. Fearing I’d be waltzing in when the man himself was doing a speech or something, Kate (who was also late) , and I tried to be sneaky as when we walked in. So we slipped into the lines that everyone was rehearsing in, after grabbing a rotary umbrella. They morning was pretty full on, and the older people were getting all wound up and stressed. But by the time the President ACTUALLY came (12 o’clock), it went smooth as, and we clapped with our little plastic hand-clappers, and put on our trademark rotary smiles :D.

What followed was us all singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”, and a great speech from the man himself. He was an Indian dude, and spoke really good clear English, and also managed to slip in a bit of humour to his presentation. No cue-cards, no papers, no hiding behind a lecturn, plenty of eye contact, and great vocal modulation and variation. This man know what he was doing public-speaking wise. Then we had a big lunch upstairs, and we had time to chill and chat with the other exchange students, collect some badges (essential at these sort of big get-together events), and enjoy ourselves. But after this was one of the coolest parts of the day. We went and saw the long, eagerly awaited movie made from the extremely successful series called ‘The Hunger Games’. But not only this, it was one day before it was released here. This means we saw a high-key film first in one the of first places in the world to screen new movies. Talk about legit. It was great by the way, and I cant say what it was about or what happened. What I can say is that it is a must see in my opinion, and I’ll be reading the books now for sure if I can find them.

23/3/2012

Today was the day that my amazing host family was taking me to Cologne ! That’s right, it was my first time in Germany in my life, and I was so excited. Having done ‘Wolfstock’ last year (a dramatical production about a group of teenagers who go to an Elvis concert in Cologne), I was keen to see what all the fuss was about. About an hours drive away from home it was, and it was bizarre how we were just cruising down the Autobahn (That’s right, no speed limits here), and Alain just says, “Ah voila, nous sommes en Allemange !”. And just like that, we were in Germany. No massive borders, no stops. I didn’t know what to expect but driving past a sign was probably a bit less than I thought would be the entrance procedure. But I learnt that it’s the same with all European union countries.

Anyway, guided nicely by our French speaking GPS lady, they dropped me off at the “Music Store – Professional”. They were going clothes shopping in a store around 20 minutes away, so at the end of the day I’d text Alain, and they’d come pick me up. This was ideal, as I could oogle and play the guitars and walk aimlessly around the shop for a long time without worrying about the colossal boredom that’d take over anyone in here not totally obsessed with music and guitars. There were some beauties there, The Yamaha silent guitar I’d only seen in magazines. A real Les Paul custom out on a rack. An awesome looking Martin travellers guitar, a parker fly, a USA tele, a few resonators…. Everything. And I checked out the various books they had on guitars. However as expected they were all in German.

Once I’d finished looking around, I decided to go exploring. A small walk away was the main street in Cologne, and it just had everything. Awesome shoe shops (obviously way out of my price range), tonnes of clothes shops, and designer German stuff everywhere. You could also tell this was a tourist town. There were little gift/ souvenir shops everywhere, and I stocked up on some essential post-cards and goodies to chuck on my blazer, evidence of an amazing day in a foreign country. One thing you’ll find anywhere in Europe are beggars, and bad street musicians. But as I turned a corner, I found one of the best street musicians I’ve ever seen. They has this god of a man playing a digareedoo , and he could emulate dub step sounds exactly. Then they had a drummer, who was playing some ‘fame’ street drums who could make a single kick pedal sound like a fast double, and then an extra percussionist who had an instrument that instantly caught my eye. This instrument I’d never seen or heard before kind-of sounded like Jamaican steel drums, but different. After they’d finish I’d learn from talking to the player it’s called a ‘Hang’, and it’s a really new instrument (created around 2003) By two guys in Switzerland. Upon looking into it deeper tonight, I see that they retail for around $8,000 US dollars. As you can expect, there is a massive waiting list, and production is really limited. But I really dug the sound it made, I couldn’t resist taking a movie…

So after this, I had some more walking to do, and found a genuine German pretzel shop. The only pretzels id eaten up until this point were tiny ones you find in palm sized bags of 100. However the ones staring at me in the face were bigger than my head, and covered in cheese. How could you resist buying one ? I got it, and it’s basically the German equivalent of a Belge waffle. Easily findable, and freaking delicious. Like that was my lunch for the day. So moving on, the definite highlight of my day was finding a ‘hard rock café’ in the middle of Cologne that I’d never even known was there. Well this place was utterly amazing. There were guitars that’d been previously owned by such people as Eric Clapton and DAVID GILMOUR just sitting on stands on the wall. No glass cases here. I literally touched these guitars, which to onlookers must have looked pretty strange, as the ecstasy you get from knowing the last person to play this guitar is the person you base most of your influence to pick up the guitar from, is intense. It’s probably a good thing you couldn’t see my face in the picture at this point in time.

There were all sorts of things in here, from Steve Vai’s Ibanez, to Jimi Hendrix’s shirts he wore at Woodstock, to a shirt owned and signed by the king himself. I kind of pitied the workers there… They’d spend all day every day around these items, and so they’re probably not very special anymore to them. Anyway, bought some good ‘ol souvenirs, and moved to the next shop. This was a cute little German shop that had all kinds of really old silver stuff. There were bins of stuff, and I spent AGES going through them and picking out things I liked. I ended up bargaining a sweet as little badge, and a silver shot glass for 1.25 euro. Bargain !

Lastly, once realising I’d spent close to 50 euro’s already, I decided to pull back on the reins a bit, and walked down to the river. The view there was spectacular…. Heaps of cute as couples having picnics in the sun, drinking wine in the shades of trees, and staring across the river, which was surprisingly clean. The foreshore was amazing, lots of grass and trees and benches, and bars and cafes lining the walkways, so a drink was never too far away. Really, it’s the kind of place you just want to spend a few weeks at, not just a few hours. By around this time, it was getting late in the afternoon, and we decided to rap it up, and I met my family back at the same place they dropped me off, and had a nice peaceful ride back home.

24/3/2012

Today I had gospel rehearsals, which meant waking up at the ungodly hour of 6, and getting ready to be there at 9. Here we did the mind-numbing process of setting up all the gear and doing sound checks for a violin, a drum kit, a bass, two keyboards, and two guitars. And of course, there were little problems for most of these things. The end sound result was worth it and we did a few run throughs of Queens ‘The Show Must Go On’. The practice wrapped up at around 2, and I headed home for a few hours catch on sleep and to sort out tonight, which was the joint party of Stephanie Kupper (piano and vocalist in Gospel), and her friend from school. Chris got his host mum Joel to come pick me up, and we got there and got introduced around. But it was pretty low-key when we got there so me and Chris went for a walk somewhere to kill a bit of time and have a beer. Belge parties are way different from NZ, in a good way I think because you can buy alcohol there, which is not only easier, but it’s also nice and cold and relatively cheap too (1 euro for a beer – happy hour price at El Chicco). But it turned out to be a decent night out.

25/3/2012

Today, I had nothing to do in the morning, so once I was ready around 11, I decided to head into Liege and try a bit of busking before I had a repetition for Gospel at 6’oclock that night. I took the train, because I couldn’t be bothered taking the hour and a half (but free) it took to get to Liege on the bus. I found a nice spot by a park, where quite a lot of people were having lunch, but I forgot that NOTHING is open on Sundays here… This obviously affected earning potential a lot. But I had a great time, and its what I would have been doing if I was at home anyway, but I was out the beautiful sun in a park in Liege playing instead. It was nice as. But at the time 3 o’clock rolled around, I got a text from Clara saying I’d missed the rehearsal which was weird, because I didn’t think I had one in the morning (it’d turn out I did – but it was no problem I missed it, because I would end up going to the main rehearsal that night), so I got on the train and made my way back to Verviers. I looked at my arms on the train, as I wore a singlet because of the amazingly rare hot belge day, and my arms were a tad pink. Never thought it was possible to get mildly sunburnt in Belgium…..

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