Trying to be brief

Here ar a few things from the last week or so that I want to say in the 15... 12 minutes I have before I leave for chorus.

I've been doing a lot of listening. Aside from classes, last week I went to two extra lectures - one on the work that's being done to identify books that are now in German libraries that actually belonged to Jewish citizens before they were forced to sell them. Basically it means taking every book that a library acquired from the 1930s to the 1960s in hand and looking to see if some identifying mark is there, or had clearly been removed. The libraries were very thorough both in removing nameplates with Ex Libris (Jewish Name) and all records of all books that they acquired during that period.

I also went to a lecture on "Mythos Kindler" - from the new editor of the Kindler Literatur Lexikon, in the context of a series of lectures on canon and literature. It was in the Paulinerkirche, which is no longer a church, and has been the university library since the eighteenth century. Now it only holds the oldest parts of the collection. Today I had class in the library and got to look at very old prints of Erasmus of Rotterdam's writing - the oldest I got to hold was from 1545, if I remember correctly. I was also in the 10% of class that had done the reading (that's 2 of twenty students). Good times.

Today has been alternating perfectly sunny and raining. It makes me wonder if there's someone who's have a bad day, and that's who the rain is actually following around all over the city.

I went to the botanical gardens on Friday (which were packed, since it was a holiday, everything else was closed, the weather was great, and the garden doesn't charge a fee to visit). Of all the wild and wonderful plants there, my favorite were the two dogwood trees, in full bloom. I didn't expect to get to see something so homey there. :)

The kitchen here does not have a bread slicer, the joy of my kitchen in Storkow. It does have this awesome tupperware hand powered dicer though that I use for onions, and I love it. (The german name for tupperware is tupperware said toopervahreh.)

I went to an English Stammtisch on Thursday and I think it will be part of my weekly routine - very friendly laid back atmosphere.

The amount of pollen on my windowsill right now is grossing me out and I'm trying to stay focused and finish this blog entry instead of getting up and wiping it off right now. In spite of pollen, open windows are a must (to avoid must! ha! ...ooh boy)

I'm going to chorus now where we'll work some more on the Bach cantata "Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, aber die welt wird sich freuen" (You will weep and cry, but the world will rejoice), the last normal rehearsal before our huge chorus rehearsal weekend and performance on Sunday. Hopefully the congregation will react like the world at our performance. Hm.