The Bells The Bells

This week has been very similar to last week. Sitting at the back of a rehearsal room, watching the new production of Cosi Fan Tutte develop. Not really much to say about it, apart from today I am not watching rehearsals develop because it’s a national holiday. Mayday. Most things are closed, including the Opera house and there are a few festival type events set up for the weekend ahead.

I didn’t realise it would be a day off. Back home we save up the Mayday holiday for the following Monday, and I had assumed that this was a cross borders agreement. But no.

One aspect of Stuttgart that isn’t ‘off’ today are the bells. So many church bells, ringing at every conceivably relevant time – like 5 minutes before half past 6, and then again at half past 6 and then probably 5 minutes after half past 6 just to make sure. It doesn’t help that my room happens to be within spitting distance of a bell tower, not that I have tested the distance out like that. I won’t miss them when I leave.

Stuttgart

Aside from the bells, Stuttgart definitely still has a charm to it.

I love the big park. Whether it is raining, snowing or mildly warm, I really like how close my flat is to it and how I can walk to both the Opera house and the rehearsal venue via it. There are some cool water features throughout Stuttgart, including big fountains directly in front of the Opera house.

I like the small and easily accessible nature of the centre of town with the mixture of old and new buildings, art galleries’, museums and lots of shops. The city is helped by the UBahn, or underground train network, which is quick, cheap and very convenient for me. The trains only every seem to be very busy when the football is on, otherwise I can almost always get a seat.

Compared to London, the selection of restaurants here is limited. There are a few Chinese places scattered around. There isn’t a good Indian restaurant here, that I have found, and there seem to be more kebab shops than anything else. The gourmet burger revolution hasn’t hit town yet and no one has shown me where to get a good milkshake. There are a selection of standard Italian places, on a level with some of the UK chains, and a few steak places which I can’t afford. The bread is very good...

In terms of doing my weekly shop, generally the quality of supermarkets is lower than in the UK. I always make the trek to the other side of the town centre to Edeka, which for me is the most like a UK supermarket you are going to find. Having said that, food here is cheap. The options are the very cheap, Lidl or Pennymarkt, or the cheap places, Rewe and Edeka, or the genuinely expensive places in the centre of town that are more like Harrods food hall than anything else.

One of the best finds for me has been a little independent sports shop, on Clawer Str. which downstairs has an amazing selection of football boots, all spread out on shelves for one to appreciate. They have special edition Nikes from the last two world cups, loads of extremely limited edition Adidas boots and a pair of shop assistants who, it seems, have no idea how good their collection is. Fortunately I have no money, or I would buy half the shop.

What else

Last weeks blog was brought to you from my flat in England, where I was for the weekend to celebrate my third wedding anniversary. On Friday I also fitted in a visit to Andrew Procter at Physio Ed in Harley Street.

Andrew is a voice release expert, otherwise known as Laryngeal massage. Such massages focus on your neck, jaw, tongue and larynx and are far from comfortable. I last saw Andrew a few weeks after I initially lost my voice back in April 2013 (read my first blog post to learn more) and I wasn’t sure of the benefits of the massage at the time because it took a further 4 months to get my voice back properly.

I decided that, seeing as I feel in a good place vocally at the moment and I am also aware of past tensions that might creep back into my voice, I should just pop in for a check-up. Thankfully everything is fine and Andrew was in fact very happy with how much more relaxed my muscles are from two years ago.

I came back to Stuttgart on Monday afternoon and was straight into the watching of rehearsals. Apart from that I have had a couple of coachings on Borsa in Rigoletto which I cover in June/July, and have spent a lot of time trying to memorise Act 2 of Cosi Fan Tutte.

If you have any memorising advice do let me know, there are just so many words!!

So many words which I must get back to infact…..

Have a great week.

Until next time!