Copepod of Zenith
Jul. 1st, 2025 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoAlas, today the happy snoozing had to stop as we re-entered the real world. I spent a lot of time fussing about trying to figure out how to communicate about various administrative matters in the absence of the phone. I'm having some minor eye surgery tomorrow, and I was trying to find out if it had been pre-authorized. I also had to contact Madame's daughter or friends and find out how she's doing and if it would fit with the schedule to go and visit her tomorrow. Eventually all this was done, but it took much longer than it normally would have. Meanwhile, the Sparrowhawk was on his phone for an hour, talking to some guy in Budapest about how to fill out a shipping form for the phone. They were stymied by a final obstacle: the shipping company requires a billing address in Hungary. They had to give up, as the guy in Hungary had come to the end of his working day, but they hope to reconnect tomorrow and perhaps find a workaround.
We had a Zoom to catch up with Deb and the Prussian. I had thawed some chicken, but because of his Herculean labors over my errant phone, the Sparrowhawk hadn't had time to go to the grocery store. He made a quick dash there (editor's note: redundancy! Is there a slow dash? Well, I guess there could be. Particularly if you are old) and bought a pre-cooked chicken and an assortment of vegetables, and we just had that chicken, plus some rice and broccoli, and saved the other chicken for later. Life is so complicated with all these different forms of chicken circulating around. Then we went off to visit with our men's and women's groups. I get the impression he doesn't have as much fun with his people as I do with mine.
One thing they asked me was what was my favorite part of the trip. It was really hard to say, but certainly Passau was one of my favorites. It was the first place we saw. We were supposed to start in Regensburg, but the water levels in the Danube are too low, so we had to start in Passau--still in Bavaria. We had a lovely tour guide who included many personal details in her stories. Passau contains the first of three churches dedicated to St. Stephen that was saw on our voyage. It's a gorgeous Baroque church, a riot of gilded saints and angels framing heavenly frescos, all gold, white, and blue like an eternal summer. It also contains the world's biggest organ, or would have if part of the organ had not been in the process of repair. It was still a pretty darn big organ, as we learned when we took some of our spare time to attend an organ concert in the church. WOW! What a tremendous sound! I understood for the first time that the organ and the space that it inhabits are one, like the soul and the body, and that you really can't understand what organ music is until you've heard it sounding in the space that was made for it. Listening to a CD in your living room is a pale shadow of the reality. Of course, that didn't stop us from buying some CDs anyway. Our other favorite part of the tour of Passau was Bavarian sausages enclosed in a delightfully crisp roll, with honey mustard, eaten gazing at the Danube swiftly flowing by. A sight we attempted not to take in was the numerous German student types lolling in the grass by the river, mostly nude. We could have made a painting of it: Nudes, with Sausages. Include the church spires in the background, and it would have encapsulated the most significant aspects of the tour.
Oh, I nearly forgot one of my favorite moments: I was nearly mowed down by a bicyclist as we crossed the old stone bridge into town. I felt the wind of his passing, and as he whipped by, he shouted "OMA!" at me in an admonitory tone. In German, this means "GRANDMA!" I liked being addressed as if I were a German old lady instead of a foreigner.
We had a Zoom to catch up with Deb and the Prussian. I had thawed some chicken, but because of his Herculean labors over my errant phone, the Sparrowhawk hadn't had time to go to the grocery store. He made a quick dash there (editor's note: redundancy! Is there a slow dash? Well, I guess there could be. Particularly if you are old) and bought a pre-cooked chicken and an assortment of vegetables, and we just had that chicken, plus some rice and broccoli, and saved the other chicken for later. Life is so complicated with all these different forms of chicken circulating around. Then we went off to visit with our men's and women's groups. I get the impression he doesn't have as much fun with his people as I do with mine.
One thing they asked me was what was my favorite part of the trip. It was really hard to say, but certainly Passau was one of my favorites. It was the first place we saw. We were supposed to start in Regensburg, but the water levels in the Danube are too low, so we had to start in Passau--still in Bavaria. We had a lovely tour guide who included many personal details in her stories. Passau contains the first of three churches dedicated to St. Stephen that was saw on our voyage. It's a gorgeous Baroque church, a riot of gilded saints and angels framing heavenly frescos, all gold, white, and blue like an eternal summer. It also contains the world's biggest organ, or would have if part of the organ had not been in the process of repair. It was still a pretty darn big organ, as we learned when we took some of our spare time to attend an organ concert in the church. WOW! What a tremendous sound! I understood for the first time that the organ and the space that it inhabits are one, like the soul and the body, and that you really can't understand what organ music is until you've heard it sounding in the space that was made for it. Listening to a CD in your living room is a pale shadow of the reality. Of course, that didn't stop us from buying some CDs anyway. Our other favorite part of the tour of Passau was Bavarian sausages enclosed in a delightfully crisp roll, with honey mustard, eaten gazing at the Danube swiftly flowing by. A sight we attempted not to take in was the numerous German student types lolling in the grass by the river, mostly nude. We could have made a painting of it: Nudes, with Sausages. Include the church spires in the background, and it would have encapsulated the most significant aspects of the tour.
Oh, I nearly forgot one of my favorite moments: I was nearly mowed down by a bicyclist as we crossed the old stone bridge into town. I felt the wind of his passing, and as he whipped by, he shouted "OMA!" at me in an admonitory tone. In German, this means "GRANDMA!" I liked being addressed as if I were a German old lady instead of a foreigner.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-03 12:22 am (UTC)