Phoenix's Europe Tour
Today was our last morning in Trier and we are all a bit sad to leave the wonderfully peaceful R. Schuman Haus. After Chris and I had repacked our bags, and double and triple checked that we hadn't left anything under the bed or in the shower, we head down to breakfast once more. No head cheese this morning thank goodness! Luckily they had managed to fix the enormous mess of a road up to R. Schuman Haus so Sasha was able to bring the bus right up to the front door for easy loading. While a bit of morning exercise is good, I don't think anyone was too keen on wandering partway down the hill with our baggage to load. I took a few more photos of the Haus before we took our things down to load up and begin making our way to Speyer where we will be staying for the next 2 nights.
On the way down the mountain, we again encountered the woman from yesterday, who was waiting for us to present us with a gift of coffee, chocolate and flowers in return for our impromptu concert the day before. We thanked her again with another song, this time Hark I Hear (I think everyone is going to think we are a gospel choir or something!) then loaded her up with Phoenix swag including a tour shirt, a Live in Europe CD and a lapel pin. She invited us back to see her garden next time we are on tour in Germany. It was another uplifting encounter.
Now we are on the motorways making our way to Speyer in the rain. Hopefully it clears up a bit so that I don't need to break out my umbrella. We have the afternoon free once we have checked in around 2 and Barb read from her guidebook that suggested some visits to the cathedral and museums. Hopefully we will have a good opportunity to see the city for a bit before we need to pack up again and head on.
The bus trip to Speyer highlighted more of this regions greenery and including a brief pitstop at a Max roadstop. Most of us piled off the bus to pick something to eat and take a so called "bio break". The truck stop was like a miniature Walmart, with almost anything you could want. Since I already have a bagful of snacks that I need to eat, I skipped buying a sandwich and instead bought some discounted Eurodance music compilations. I didn't have a chance to load up my PDA with much in the way of music, so I am hopgin that I might find a chance to use Magdy's laptop to transfer over some music at some point. Back on the bus, Sasha had a surprise for everyone when we made a cake in celebration of Jaime's birthday. He had picked up something like a flan, which he topped with chocolate pudding and whip cream. What a thoughtful guy! He's continually doing things that demonstrate that he's a very nice guy despite his blatent disregard to traffic regulations :-D When we got back on the road, Sasha gave us a tour through the narrow streets of a city that he called the "wine city" of Germany. Not just surrounded by seemingly endless vineyards, but it even had vines of grapes growing on the buildings and strewn across the roadways. Before getting back onto the motor way we made a stop at the world's larget wine keg, Durkheimer Riesenfaß which holds 1,700,000 litres, but is now a restaurant.
When we arrived in Speyer it was quickly apparent that this was probably the biggest city we had visited so far in our journeys. Some of the buildings became more utilitarian and less charming giving the city a more lived in feel. In our short travels to the Bistaumhaus St. Ludwig where we are staying for the next two days, we passed a number of ethnic restaurants, including chinese and mexican. The Bistaumhaus is again very nice accomodation. I can't imagine ever arranging such nice accomodation if I were to arrange things on my own. I think so the the credit is due to us being a touring choir preforming sacred music, which might get us into religious dormatories that wouldn't otherwise be available. This one is directly attached to the St. Ludwig church, where we are rehearsing tomorrow. So far we have only preformed only our sacred program, although we will begin rehearsing and preforming our secular pieces soon. It's nicer that the beds are again spread out from each other here as they were at R. Schuman Haus, so that my machine is less intrusive to Chris' sleep. We have some wonderful windows here that let in lots of the breeze as well. I might consider washing some more while I am here...but we aren't here as long as R. Schuman Haus.
After checking in a group of us decided to head to the Speyer Tecknik Museum, the Speyer Technical Museum. I wasn't quite sure what to expect there, but Sasha was leading the charge along with Mike, Sharon, Rob, Chris, and Hoot. Sasha needed to park the bus for his day off so he offered us a ride to the museum which saved a bit of time. I was concerned a bit that we would be arriving at 3 with only 3 more hours until closing. As we approached the museum we could tell it would be a great place, with planes mounted up in the air and trains and buses visable through the gates. Sasha, being the master he is, managed to get us a group rate even though we didn't quite fit the definition, saving us a few Euros. The Museum was split between many vehicles that we displayed inside of a large hangar type building, and the lot surrounding, where all the larger exhibits were held. The first thing inside the door of the museum was a display of authentic space gear from America, Russia and other countries with space programs. It varied age from the beginning of the space race until now. A sign hinted to an even larger space exhibit that would be arriving soon - it was a shame to miss it. Not that there wasn't enough to see anyways though! Inside the hangar I ran arouond taking photos of as many of the car and planes on display as I could. They had models from every decade and country, from early French models to the Toyota Prius. They had some displays that you could pay to activate for a Euro or two. My first deposit was in one of the many player organ type devices. The first one had many pipes along with drums and accordians that played in time to a neon light display. This was dwarfed by the massive machine that I played later, which housed more than 2500 pipes and could play any of 600 rolls of music. I made sure to get som good photos of these. There was also a full-size two story carousel that could be activited, but not riden unfortunately.
They had two exhibits upstairs in the hangar building, a model train exhibit and some exhibits on old fashioned living that was a hint of the main exhibits in a neighbouring museum. Our admission to the technical museum actually paid for entry to this other museum, but we would have needed a full day to visit both. The trains were great. They were larger than those you would usually see in a home (which is HO size I think) . They had multiple trains running on a large set of tracks surrounding miniature towns, crossing bridges, and even weaving around a pair of large wind generators liek the enormous ones we have seen frequently in our travels throughout the countryside. They had a smalled set that had a special train that climbed the mountain using overhead power lines. I did eventually manage to pull myself away from the trains and head out into the yard.
We you entered the yard you came immediately upon one of the highligh exhibits, an authentic Lufthansa 747 perched on a stand at least 50 metres in the air. Our climb to the cabin door was rewarded with a fascinating look at the interior of an airplane, much different from what you can see from a plane still in service. In one half of the plane, all of the interior had been removed so that you could see the outer structure of the plane, the skeleton of the structure that runs along the ceiling in the passenger compartment, and even climb down into the cargo area. I had fun looking in the galleys and washrooms of each different class. The middle section of what would be coach, had a glassed in section that showed what the plane would usually look like, with seats, trolleys, movie screens, and some manquin passengers and crew for good measure. They had a similar display in business class, where the seats all had their attached monitors and a pair of Lufthansa headphones sat on one of the seats. I really enjoyed climbing up into the first class compartment, but was a bit disappointed that all of the usual fixtures had been removed and it was just an open space. It didn't give me any reason why you would pay so much extra to sit there, expecially with the tiny washoom and tight staircase. It would have been nicer to get a closer view of the cockpit too, but it was behind glass. Instead of merely walking back down the stairs to get to the next exhibit, there is a slide to go down. Luckily no on bumped into each other or got stuck in the slide.
After the 747 I spent the rest of the afternoon running around to the other exhibits on sight, which included a Russian Cargo aircraft, a ship called the Sean Kelly, a couple helicopters, an older Air Trans?? passenger jet, and a Gerrman U-boat. Besides the 747, the U-boat was probably my favourite exhibit. It was amazing to think that people could work and sleep in such tight quarters, especially during the tense times of war. The living quarters were directly next to the torpedo tubes, not where I would cloose to sleep. Walking the length of the submarine, it was amazing how tight everything was, but at the same time how it was made so that you could access everything if it needed to be serviced. Right before climbing back out, I could see that they had a special service cooridor that someone somewhat smaller than me could belly crawl across to get to some of the generator components. Closing at 6 o clock came much too soon for my liking, even though I had already filled up my memory card and completely exhausted the battery in my camera :-(
After collecting a somewhat smaller group than we had at the start of our visit, we wandered back towards the centre of town, passing through the domgarten and catching our first sight of the amazingly huge Speyer Dom. Hopefully we have a chance to get a better look at it during our free time tomorrow. Back in town we wandered through the pedestrian mall in search of somewhere to eat. We ran into Miles, Corlynn, Rob and Maureen at a nice looking italian style cafe, and decided to join them. The group continued to grow and grow until we had almost half of the group eating and drinking together. The weather for dinner seemed almost perfect, with the sun out, yet a breeze keeping us cool enough to be comfortable. I think everyone enjoyed their food and drink. I had the tortellini alla panna, which was yummy, probably due to the huge amount of ham and the full cream sauce. Over dinner, and for the next hour or so, I had the pleasure to listen to Hoot and Don talk about their lives in the recording industry, and found out some fascinating things about both the industry and them individually. They seemed to know so many of the same people it was funny.
Chris was a bit anxious to find an internet cafe again, and to pick up a phone card, so we excused ourselves from dinner and wandered further along the pedestrian mall. In our trip from the Bistaumhaus to the Tecknik we had passed a place that seemed to fulfill both needs, so we tried to retrace our turns on the bus by foot. After only 1-2 false starts we hit upon the store front we were looking for - we even noticed that Jaime and Matt had beat us there. We poked our heads in even though the sign said that they had closed a minute or two ago. The man an the desk said that he would remain open for an extra 30 minutes to Chris headed straight to the bank of telephones and I head over to the computer terminal. I had a chance to check my mail and write another note to my sweetie. I also got back to the email that Lara had sent me regarding the Coen/Schaeffers possibly attending one of the concerts. I had just enough time to update my facebook status, then I signed out. Before leaving the internet cafe I bought a strange drink that I had noticed a few times before, mezzo mix, cola with orange flavouring. Its nothing I would bother picking up again. Somewhat surprising, Chris and I made it back to Bistaumhaus St. Ludwig withouth any trouble at all. Again it felt like a full day, so we both went to bed fairly quickly.
On the way down the mountain, we again encountered the woman from yesterday, who was waiting for us to present us with a gift of coffee, chocolate and flowers in return for our impromptu concert the day before. We thanked her again with another song, this time Hark I Hear (I think everyone is going to think we are a gospel choir or something!) then loaded her up with Phoenix swag including a tour shirt, a Live in Europe CD and a lapel pin. She invited us back to see her garden next time we are on tour in Germany. It was another uplifting encounter.
Now we are on the motorways making our way to Speyer in the rain. Hopefully it clears up a bit so that I don't need to break out my umbrella. We have the afternoon free once we have checked in around 2 and Barb read from her guidebook that suggested some visits to the cathedral and museums. Hopefully we will have a good opportunity to see the city for a bit before we need to pack up again and head on.
The bus trip to Speyer highlighted more of this regions greenery and including a brief pitstop at a Max roadstop. Most of us piled off the bus to pick something to eat and take a so called "bio break". The truck stop was like a miniature Walmart, with almost anything you could want. Since I already have a bagful of snacks that I need to eat, I skipped buying a sandwich and instead bought some discounted Eurodance music compilations. I didn't have a chance to load up my PDA with much in the way of music, so I am hopgin that I might find a chance to use Magdy's laptop to transfer over some music at some point. Back on the bus, Sasha had a surprise for everyone when we made a cake in celebration of Jaime's birthday. He had picked up something like a flan, which he topped with chocolate pudding and whip cream. What a thoughtful guy! He's continually doing things that demonstrate that he's a very nice guy despite his blatent disregard to traffic regulations :-D When we got back on the road, Sasha gave us a tour through the narrow streets of a city that he called the "wine city" of Germany. Not just surrounded by seemingly endless vineyards, but it even had vines of grapes growing on the buildings and strewn across the roadways. Before getting back onto the motor way we made a stop at the world's larget wine keg, Durkheimer Riesenfaß which holds 1,700,000 litres, but is now a restaurant.
When we arrived in Speyer it was quickly apparent that this was probably the biggest city we had visited so far in our journeys. Some of the buildings became more utilitarian and less charming giving the city a more lived in feel. In our short travels to the Bistaumhaus St. Ludwig where we are staying for the next two days, we passed a number of ethnic restaurants, including chinese and mexican. The Bistaumhaus is again very nice accomodation. I can't imagine ever arranging such nice accomodation if I were to arrange things on my own. I think so the the credit is due to us being a touring choir preforming sacred music, which might get us into religious dormatories that wouldn't otherwise be available. This one is directly attached to the St. Ludwig church, where we are rehearsing tomorrow. So far we have only preformed only our sacred program, although we will begin rehearsing and preforming our secular pieces soon. It's nicer that the beds are again spread out from each other here as they were at R. Schuman Haus, so that my machine is less intrusive to Chris' sleep. We have some wonderful windows here that let in lots of the breeze as well. I might consider washing some more while I am here...but we aren't here as long as R. Schuman Haus.
After checking in a group of us decided to head to the Speyer Tecknik Museum, the Speyer Technical Museum. I wasn't quite sure what to expect there, but Sasha was leading the charge along with Mike, Sharon, Rob, Chris, and Hoot. Sasha needed to park the bus for his day off so he offered us a ride to the museum which saved a bit of time. I was concerned a bit that we would be arriving at 3 with only 3 more hours until closing. As we approached the museum we could tell it would be a great place, with planes mounted up in the air and trains and buses visable through the gates. Sasha, being the master he is, managed to get us a group rate even though we didn't quite fit the definition, saving us a few Euros. The Museum was split between many vehicles that we displayed inside of a large hangar type building, and the lot surrounding, where all the larger exhibits were held. The first thing inside the door of the museum was a display of authentic space gear from America, Russia and other countries with space programs. It varied age from the beginning of the space race until now. A sign hinted to an even larger space exhibit that would be arriving soon - it was a shame to miss it. Not that there wasn't enough to see anyways though! Inside the hangar I ran arouond taking photos of as many of the car and planes on display as I could. They had models from every decade and country, from early French models to the Toyota Prius. They had some displays that you could pay to activate for a Euro or two. My first deposit was in one of the many player organ type devices. The first one had many pipes along with drums and accordians that played in time to a neon light display. This was dwarfed by the massive machine that I played later, which housed more than 2500 pipes and could play any of 600 rolls of music. I made sure to get som good photos of these. There was also a full-size two story carousel that could be activited, but not riden unfortunately.
They had two exhibits upstairs in the hangar building, a model train exhibit and some exhibits on old fashioned living that was a hint of the main exhibits in a neighbouring museum. Our admission to the technical museum actually paid for entry to this other museum, but we would have needed a full day to visit both. The trains were great. They were larger than those you would usually see in a home (which is HO size I think) . They had multiple trains running on a large set of tracks surrounding miniature towns, crossing bridges, and even weaving around a pair of large wind generators liek the enormous ones we have seen frequently in our travels throughout the countryside. They had a smalled set that had a special train that climbed the mountain using overhead power lines. I did eventually manage to pull myself away from the trains and head out into the yard.
We you entered the yard you came immediately upon one of the highligh exhibits, an authentic Lufthansa 747 perched on a stand at least 50 metres in the air. Our climb to the cabin door was rewarded with a fascinating look at the interior of an airplane, much different from what you can see from a plane still in service. In one half of the plane, all of the interior had been removed so that you could see the outer structure of the plane, the skeleton of the structure that runs along the ceiling in the passenger compartment, and even climb down into the cargo area. I had fun looking in the galleys and washrooms of each different class. The middle section of what would be coach, had a glassed in section that showed what the plane would usually look like, with seats, trolleys, movie screens, and some manquin passengers and crew for good measure. They had a similar display in business class, where the seats all had their attached monitors and a pair of Lufthansa headphones sat on one of the seats. I really enjoyed climbing up into the first class compartment, but was a bit disappointed that all of the usual fixtures had been removed and it was just an open space. It didn't give me any reason why you would pay so much extra to sit there, expecially with the tiny washoom and tight staircase. It would have been nicer to get a closer view of the cockpit too, but it was behind glass. Instead of merely walking back down the stairs to get to the next exhibit, there is a slide to go down. Luckily no on bumped into each other or got stuck in the slide.
After the 747 I spent the rest of the afternoon running around to the other exhibits on sight, which included a Russian Cargo aircraft, a ship called the Sean Kelly, a couple helicopters, an older Air Trans?? passenger jet, and a Gerrman U-boat. Besides the 747, the U-boat was probably my favourite exhibit. It was amazing to think that people could work and sleep in such tight quarters, especially during the tense times of war. The living quarters were directly next to the torpedo tubes, not where I would cloose to sleep. Walking the length of the submarine, it was amazing how tight everything was, but at the same time how it was made so that you could access everything if it needed to be serviced. Right before climbing back out, I could see that they had a special service cooridor that someone somewhat smaller than me could belly crawl across to get to some of the generator components. Closing at 6 o clock came much too soon for my liking, even though I had already filled up my memory card and completely exhausted the battery in my camera :-(
After collecting a somewhat smaller group than we had at the start of our visit, we wandered back towards the centre of town, passing through the domgarten and catching our first sight of the amazingly huge Speyer Dom. Hopefully we have a chance to get a better look at it during our free time tomorrow. Back in town we wandered through the pedestrian mall in search of somewhere to eat. We ran into Miles, Corlynn, Rob and Maureen at a nice looking italian style cafe, and decided to join them. The group continued to grow and grow until we had almost half of the group eating and drinking together. The weather for dinner seemed almost perfect, with the sun out, yet a breeze keeping us cool enough to be comfortable. I think everyone enjoyed their food and drink. I had the tortellini alla panna, which was yummy, probably due to the huge amount of ham and the full cream sauce. Over dinner, and for the next hour or so, I had the pleasure to listen to Hoot and Don talk about their lives in the recording industry, and found out some fascinating things about both the industry and them individually. They seemed to know so many of the same people it was funny.
Chris was a bit anxious to find an internet cafe again, and to pick up a phone card, so we excused ourselves from dinner and wandered further along the pedestrian mall. In our trip from the Bistaumhaus to the Tecknik we had passed a place that seemed to fulfill both needs, so we tried to retrace our turns on the bus by foot. After only 1-2 false starts we hit upon the store front we were looking for - we even noticed that Jaime and Matt had beat us there. We poked our heads in even though the sign said that they had closed a minute or two ago. The man an the desk said that he would remain open for an extra 30 minutes to Chris headed straight to the bank of telephones and I head over to the computer terminal. I had a chance to check my mail and write another note to my sweetie. I also got back to the email that Lara had sent me regarding the Coen/Schaeffers possibly attending one of the concerts. I had just enough time to update my facebook status, then I signed out. Before leaving the internet cafe I bought a strange drink that I had noticed a few times before, mezzo mix, cola with orange flavouring. Its nothing I would bother picking up again. Somewhat surprising, Chris and I made it back to Bistaumhaus St. Ludwig withouth any trouble at all. Again it felt like a full day, so we both went to bed fairly quickly.