Wednesday, August 12, 1998
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Wednesday, August 12, 1998 |
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LETTERS FROM MARY - part 1 of 2
By Sallie Satterthwaite Staff Writer It was a busy summer for Mary even before she and Rainer headed off for vacation, canoeing in the South of France. First, however, she reported that she'd been to Berlin several times in May and June. She has a rather comfortable relationship with the music school there, and takes the fast train a couple of times a month, staying for three or four days each time. In Berlin, in addition to the normal accompanying, I'm taking conducting lessons with a man who teaches non-majors. We started in on La Boheme; hard because of all the fermati and tempo changes, but it may be useful, since we've started rehearsing it here, for a premiere in September. I got tired of looking for a room each time, so, for the fall, I've found a woman who rents out two small rooms while she herself sleeps in the living room. It's in one of those tall ugly East German apartment complexes near Alexander Platz. In the meantime, a stage assistant just got a job at the Komische Oper, and has a 122-square-meter apartment (about what ours is) for himself, wife and two kids, and the first thing he said was I could stay there. Hope it works out. Sunday we're travelling to see Rainer's brother and then down to France for three weeks.... She gave me their itinerary: the Grand Canyon du Verdon, Europe's deepest canyon, then Port Vendre where Rainer's father was a prisoner of war for several years, the Bordeaux area, the coast, and Aquitaine for a canoe trip on the Dordogne River. Then on to Versailles to visit Debra, an American friend married to a Frenchman. She worried that they'd have the World Cup soccer competition to deal with anywhere near Paris area. She continues, as though we'd have no idea: There was a terrible train accident between Hamburg and Hanover; 100 dead; apparently a wheel broke and then they rammed into a bridge support.That was the first generation of ICE [InterCity Express] trains and they've all been taken out of use to put on new wheels. Needless to say, train travel is pretty messed up right now. Last year, on the Essen-to-Berlin route, they replaced the older IC's with the second generation ICE, which are built differently than the earlier model. They haven't finished the high-speed track yet so it still takes about as long as before, but it's more comfortable. Now they're bringing in the French TGV wagons which used to stop in Cologne, because they don't flip over so fast if they derail! That hits German pride!.... When they got back to Gelsenkirchen, she sent a fine travelogue: Hi! We beat the main French vacation time -- no problems finding a campsite or a hotel, or with traffic. Three days in the Verdon Canyon area -- walked down to the river on a path that included two tunnels. One took at least 10 minutes to walk through, with flashlight, and a set of stairs down the whole side of one mountain. Pretty. After that: Pont du Gard, Uzes, Arles, and Camarque -- in the bird park with pink flamingoes, horses, bison. Then to Port Vendres [the last town of any size as you depart France en route to Barcelona] where Rainer's father was stationed; still more port town than tourist. We went on up to [the home of] a friend of ours from the orchestra. He stays with his French girlfriend and her daughter in the eastern Pyrenees -- remote, tiny villages, nothing to do there except try to grow wine and maybe sheep. She used to live farther up in the mountains but said it was too cold so they moved "down." He said "second house on the right," and they weren't there when we arrived, but they came after half an hour. We ate dinner together and watched Germany lose to Croatia on TV.... From there, we went to Carcassone, a medieval walled city, in this case, with two sets of perfectly preserved walls. The Dordogne River is only suitable for non-motorized travel. It joins the Garonne on the way to Bordeaux, but is supposedly not as interesting or clean beyond that. We were six days in the canoe, a plastic thing with uncomfortable seats, but unsinkable.... By this time, my impending bronchitis broke out full force. By the time both ears were infected, and then one eye, I had to stop at the first place we came to big enough to have a doctor. And the weather was cloudy or rainy, and cool, till the day we left France. Despite this, [the Dordogne] is a lovely valley and varied: many villages with "prettiest French village" honors; castles, caves, stone cliffs, islands, rich farm land with lots of walnut trees.... More to come....  Back to the
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