Thievery, Fame and Mayhem

Nothing says relaxation like a little canoe ride around the Kellersee... at least for the people in the boat.

Earlier in the week last week two of my friends and I decided to take a boat that the hotel supplies out around the surrounding lake for an hour or so. Since this was the first time the weather really permitted this activity we asked the lady at the main desk to clarify if we could simply just walk up to a tethered boat and take it out. She waved in the general direction of where we knew the boats to be so taking this as a confirmation of our words, we set off. We walked over to a little house that could be a boat house and our key worked in the gate so we opened it and went out on this poorly kept dock and pulled the boat towards us. The boat was FULL of water so, being the brainiacs/ slightly immature kids we are, our first reaction was to try and get the boat out of water so we can tip it over. We all start pulling as hard as we can and the thing doesn't even budge. We pull harder, still nothing. We start rocking the boat as hard as we can in order to slosh the water out of the boat and only succeed in filling the thing with more water. It was around our 3rd attempt at this that a lady emerges from the house (boat house...?) and starts talking to us. She is speaking German and since none of us speak past what we need to get around, we just say "sorry we speak english" she says... "are you going to bring it back" and points to the boat we were like "yes, of course" I mean, obviously we weren't just going to steal it. So she just kind of nods and watches us then goes in and brings us a bucket to help get the water out of it. We thanked her and embarked on our journey. The lake was beautiful to be on and so relaxing but halfway through our trip we started discussing the weird interaction we had with this lady and that's when it hit us.... the "boat house" was not a boat house it was an actual house. Everything in the windows pointed to that, the welcome mat, the plants and curtains in the window... everything. This wasn't the hotel boats that we now saw tied in front of the hotel that were the actual canoes we were expecting not this weird shaped old boat with mismatched oars.... the lady asked us if we were planning on returning the boat... oh my gosh. We stole an old woman's boat.

Needless to say our return journey was filled with a tad more anxiety than we had expected our relaxing afternoon to include. We tied the boat off at the dock, grabbed our shoes and RAN. If only I could write enough German to apologize and thank this lady for, even when she thought we were stealing her boat, got a bucket and helped make our get-away more comfortable.


In lighter and less illegal news, we have been in several prominent German newspapers all that say basically who needs the Hamburg Symphony (professional orchestra they had before we came) when they have us. It's good to hear because a lot of people were skeptical whether the festival would be worth coming to and the word from the media and the audiences that have come is that IT IS. Pretty cool stuff.

That leaves the "Mayhem" portion of my blog. A week or so ago we all got on a bus (55 members of the orchestra) and went on a day excursion to Hamburg. We got there and spent the largest part of our trip just sitting in the U.S. Embassy with one of our orchestras "fans" who happens to be a higher up in the embassy talking to us about what goes on there. A brief tour concluded the boring event and we were bussed to the docks to eat and roam as we pleased. After grabbing pizza we only had an hour to look at the city so we decided to take a running tour of the city. We saw a Gothic churches steeple in the distance and HAD to see it. Since it was a good distance from the docks and where we were supposed to meet the bus we said, "Okay, let's run to that corner and then we'll have a good view of it" so we ran to the corner and there was a building in the way. "okay" we said, "one more corner". This continued until we had run all the way to the church which turned out to be just the steeple of a church built in the 12th century that was bombed and only had a shell remaining. Well worth the run. So we took a couple pictures and a video and ran all the way back making the bus with way too much time to spare to justify our sweaty dash through town.

Love you all,

Doc and E