Previous stop: Krakow!
Fyi, Warsaw got a bit heavy, though I’m not going into detail about it.
The Polish countryside: farms. Continue reading
Europe Trip 2019: Warsaw
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Category Archives: Travel
Europe Trip 2019: Krakow
Previous stop: Leipzig!
After Leipzig, we drove east into Poland. I still had only my cellphone to take pictures with.
Near the border, we saw all these military vehicles; there were Dutch flags on them! Continue reading
Europe Trip 2019: Leipzig
Previous stop: Berlin!
We left Berlin early in the morning to travel next to Leipzig, where our first performance would be. That’s right, we’d rehearsed three times and we were going to sing in public. Our big set-piece was the Bach motet Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren, but we also had the (slightly more difficult, particularly in the orchestral reduction) Mendelssohn cantata Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten. These two selections in particular were significant for this performance. Continue reading
Europe Trip 2019: Berlin
So earlier this year, I was notified that a choir was looking for an accompanist for a tour of North-Eastern Europe. I love traveling, and Europe, and music, so I was like “heck yiss let’s go” except more formal because they were paying my airfare/hotels/transportation because I poor and can’t afford to go otherwise.
Here’s the photo evidence of what I saw! Click for larger on pretty much all pictures. Continue reading
Cross-Canada Road Trip 2018
I’d been living in Ontario for about 7 years; came for a Master’s degree and was too lazy to move back… until I got offered money lol. I have a job at the Victoria Conservatory now, and because I wanted to keep my stick-shift Honda Civic, I decided to drive there. Tharash came along to see more of Canada and take pictures and carry things, and it would have been a lot more difficult without him so it was really fantastic that he was able to come! Continue reading
Florida Trip 2017!
So back in August (before the hurricane rolled through) I went to Florida! For a few simple reasons: I needed to get out of town, I wanted to meet my other internet best friend, and I needed lightsabers.
I left Sunday night at about midnight, to get to the bus that would take me to the Toronto airport at 1, arriving at 3, so I could get on a 6:00 plane and arrive in Orlando in time for lunch on Monday.
Along the way there were these cool clouds.
Driving the rental car out of the lot was terrifying! But I made it to a parking lot where Yllamse, my friend, was, and then we had lunch at Denny’s because I haven’t eaten at a Denny’s in a long time. This was during the eclipse, so I made a pinhole camera to “see” it. It kind of worked. Also it was kind of dark, but it was also partially cloudy so I don’t feel we got the full effect. Continue reading
Adventure 2016 – Bergen/Netherlands
We managed to catch an earlier train to Bergen than the one we had reservations for, and Jessica happened to also be on this train. I talked with her for a lot of the journey. We knew that Leonora and Thijs were also heading to Bergen next, but once we actually arrived in Bergen, we never saw any of these people again. Oh well, that’s what email is for!
I think the first evening we arrived, we just collapsed at the hostel. There was another actual kitchen that had pretty much everything (except a grater, somehow?) including a bunch of spices in the ‘shared’ cupboard. While Martijn checked that out, I went to the common room, where I’d heard there were amusements. I was wondering if there would be a piano…
And there was! So I sat down and started playing. It was a terrible piano with no tonal subtlety, no working una corda, and no dynamic nuance besides ‘loud’ and ‘louder’, but it had 88 mostly-in-tune keys.
Martijn: *in kitchen* I hear a piano. I should tell Jen… wait a minute… Continue reading
Adventure 2016 – Flåm/Kayaking
This is the part everyone’s been waiting to hear about, partly because it’s the part most out of character for me. When I first told my parents, my mom was like “but you don’t even like camping” which is totally true… unless I’m the one who’s decided to go camping, apparently. And partly because holy freakin cowbells, Norway’s nature is nature at its finest. Anyway, we started out with a train from Oslo to Myrdal. (warning: longer post is even longer)
It wasn’t long before we started seeing patches of snow. At first we were thinking ‘that snow must be in shadow all day’ but then… I’m not seeing a whole lot of shadow in this picture, yes? Continue reading
Adventure 2016 – Oslo
The first three days of my trip were spent in Oslo. The Oslo Pass Card gave us free admission to museums, free public transport (although the city isn’t that big, you can walk to most of the stuff), and if you get the 3-day version (we did), the mini-cruise around the bay is also free. So we used it. (beware: long post is long)
Technically, you’ve already seen Day 1 in the last post. So I don’t know if it was technically cost-effective, because we didn’t really go see anything on that day… but for the other two days, it was definitely worth it to not have to worry about paying for things besides food, just wave the cards at people and get let into things. We found this statue on the way to our first museum, Akershus Castle. Continue reading
Adventure 2016 – To Norway
So as many of you may know, I went to the other side of the planet in search of foreign lands, adventure, blond Dutchmen, and “mountains, Gandalf, mountains!”. Found all of ’em and here is the photo-evidence.
Plane from Toronto to Reykjavik (and from thence to Oslo). Icelandair had the best deal pricewise (and I got to watch the Lego Movie on the way there!). I did have a brief stopover in Reykjavik both on the way there and back, but the way there was too short to do anything and the way back I was too tired to do anything more than sleep on an airport bench. Continue reading