Mönchenholzhausen/Weimar Sunday 6 June 2010

Bacon and eggs, Irish tea, coffee, cheese, sausages, rolls, bread, butter, jam..... Yes we are back at Mario's breakfast table. Slowly the team trickled in and a few hang-overs were obvious to see - even Judith this time! Bless her, just once does she let loose and then she has to put up with all the teasing. We enjoyed the relaxation of the morning and then set to packing the equipment, exhibitions and luggage back into the vans and trailer.

The time was flying now as we helped to get the pub back to its normal state, getting the stage out, the floors cleaned and then all the furniture back in from the barn over the road.

Then it was lunch with Thuringia sausage and fried potatoes. A coffe and a cake to polish it off and then we all went to the church for one final concert. Natalia and Libor played Barock music from Spain, Germany and Italy and their pure sounds from mandoline and classic guitar neede no technical support. The church was full and at the end Bob and the priest said a few words to all who had gathered together to send off the Culture Trail.

We set off to Weimar arriving there at around 5.30 pm. Uwe, our host in the railway museum cooked noodles and a nice sauce for the evening meal and most of us went to bed very early. We had now reached the half way mark on the trail and it was time for many to gather a little energy for the next festivals to come. Dream-land came quickly to most of us as we lay in our railway beds and heard the summing of the inter-city trains, a hypnotic effect that helps us easily to fall into a deep sleep and enjoy both the silence that suspends in between and the dampened clack-clack, clack clack motion as they pass near-by.

Weimar 7 June 2010

Breakfast at 8 am and at 8.45 we were all heading into town. We almost squatted the Thuringia newspaper offices(Thüringen Allgemeine Zeitung) with all thirteen artists and asked them if they had some time for us. They were very kind and asked us to wait a little while in a brasserie just around the corner. The coffee bill was covered by them. Then the head journalist came and held a long interview with us and promised to send a photographer to the Railway Museum in the afternoon. We then went to the local radio station, 'Radio Lotte' and also walked in with the whole team on the Culture Trail.

They had been pre-warned and were expecting us. They were also more than kind and made sure we would get a fifteen minute air space just after noon. Bob and Patrick were the discussion partners for the interviewer and then Ingo, Peter and Bob played and sang a song whilst Robert danced with his hard shoes the rhythm and Patrick filmed the whole show. The radio people really liked it and we were also very happy for their support. In the meantime Ingo, Jonathan, Philippe and Miguel had gone along to the music school and Judith, Thomas, Antonio and Bekir payed a visit to the art university, the Bauhaus one everybody knows about. They put up posters and flyers there and we all met at 1 pm to get back to the museum.

The afternoon was spent with creating new ideas, rehearsing and discussing points about the trail.

The evening drew near and then Antonio, Judith and Thomas were back in the lime-light. They performed for a small, but content audience with a lot of the Railway Museum team and joined by Mario and Annette from the team in Mönchenholzhausen, who had come over extra to see the theater, because they had been working in the kitchen when they performed in Mönchenholzhausen.

We then got together after the theater to enjoy some warm food around the bonfire and chat together. The guys at the museum are fantastic - we got all our washing done today, watched over by a hulk of a man with a Kaiser-moustache who normally works with railway steel and diesel, now in his role as a host for all we need, like a Mother to us, simply incredible!