I'm in Holland!

Forgive me. My internet access is dubious at best these days as I city-hop and roam for unsecured connections. Updates are therefore going to be a bit spotty, and in the case of this one, a little more uninspired, though there is much to be inspired about. It's more a question of time.

I stepped off the train in Amsterdam yesterday and nearly cried. What a shock after the terracotta and whitewash of Italy. The architecture of Holland, after so long on the peninsula, seems exotic to me, and the flavour of the city is significantly late 17th and early 18th century, and smacks of the affluence the Dutch bourgeoisie enjoyed at that time. Holland was incredibly successful on the international markets and culture thrived; there is no shortage, surely, in Amsterdam.

I find myself now in the Hague for a couple of days, which is a city of smaller proportions but great international importance. The Peace Palace against the sky at dusk takes your breath away. The city is home to over 100 other international organizations, as well as the Dutch Parliament, and the city centre is full of gorgeous 18th century buildings.

The snow has stopped so it has been truly enjoyable to walk and gawk. Tomorrow I tour the Conservatory and meet some teachers -- the fun begins!

Pictures will come.

Postscript:
Remember the shoe drama of Italy? Well, I think I have learned my lesson... NEver buy Italian shoes if you're made for comfort, not fashion. The only shoes I ever bought in Italy gave me grief. I have either extreme strain, a stress fracture, or arthritis in my right big toe on account of the boots I wore all fall and winter... and they were good boots. They are living with my Milanese family now... good riddance.

London: Round One

the hyde park christmas MONSTER!

My first trip to London this year was early in the month of December, when it was just beginning to get chilly, and got dark around 4 pm.
(Europe in the winter never ceases to surprise me -- for example, the idea of temperatures so high as to allow rain all winter is such a novelty. 4 pm darkness would be something I was accustomed to if I were from Edmonton, but I'm not.)

A guy butted in front of me in the boarding pass line, I think without knowing he was doing it; his belated "so sorry, sorry" immediately tipped me off as to his provenance. When I spotted his passport I asked where he was from exactly; turns out we are from the same province, same city, same PART of same city.. and.. SAME HIGH SCHOOL. It is a truly small world.

Aside from a minor broken-boot incident that resulted in a day and a half of sopping foot in incessant downpours, the trip was really lovely. I stayed with an old singer friend and saw another few friends from school and my travels here; I was refreshed by the sight of familiar faces even in unfamiliar locales. London isn't that unfamiliar to me, as I spent three weeks exploring it in 2007 when a good friend was living there. So that probably helped too.

I finally ticked Brick Lane off my London bucket list with a soul-searing curry and a good friend from university. My soul was revived by a rambunctious and truly uplifting production of La Cage aux Folles. Who doesn't need a little drag in their life?

While I haven't been offered admission to the Royal Academy, I was placed on the waitlist for the final round of auditions for the Aix-en-Provence summer residency for lied and contemporary repertoire. A small success, but a pertinent one: the audition was a true learning experience. I went in to that audition about as cold as I could have gone into any audition; they were running early and I was running late, having got lost in the maze that surrounds Waterloo station. It was cold and I had walked for half a hour. I went in and the first sounds I made were.. well.. honks. But I am convinced that there is nothing I do better than contemporary repertoire and art song, especially if it's Hymnen an die Nacht, and I swear to you, there is nothing more valuable than your strongest warhorse on a bad day. That piece has pulled me through I don't know how many auditions. It's not just that though; we all have to enumerate our strengths and play on them, and one of mine is being myself on stage. (It's when you ask me to be a character that I freeze up.) And who better to be singing something as outré as Hymnen an die Nacht or as intimate as, say, An den Mond?

Lessons learned...

Incominciamo!

Seeing as the one-month anniversary of the beginning of my sojourn in Italy has come and gone and nary a blog entry is in sight, I have decided to bite the bullet and post something -- anything. When you put something off for so long because you are waiting for the perfect circumstances, it tends to build in import until you can never find it in you to live up to your now obscenely out-of-proportion expectations. To avoid such an imbroglio I humbly present Blog the First.

Where to begin? Because I am beginning mid-journey I will begin where I am and fill in the gaps as the drift of the discourse allows. I am currently in Milano, living happily in a small room in a family's apartment. (If I had a camera right now, I'd post a picture of it, but I don't-- and that's another blog entry altogether...) There are five of us -- Valentina, Ilario and their two daughters Emma and Bianca who are rather cute, but tend to be up pretty early in the morning, doing as children do... Valentina and Ilario couldn't be nicer people, though. I am very happy to be living with a built-in family; it makes me feel like if I needed it, someone has my back. For instance, Vale' took a morning to go with me to get a certain form for which we thought she would also need to sign -- she didn't but it was no problem for her to put that time aside to do me the favour. I like people like that.

I also like people who are sympathetic to foreigners' plight here in Italy. Italy has a reputation for being rather closed to foreigners -- it is notoriously difficult to obtain any sort of documentation you may need to stay legally in the country, thus rendering it impossible to do so; the language is Italian and too bad if you need me to speak slower; political parties like the Lega Nord are spoken of in foreign media in a light which implies racism and extreme patriotism in the North of Italy. On one hand, Italy boasts something like 8,000 km of coastline (don't quote me) and is easy to use as a gateway to the rest of Europe; it is therefore home to a lot of illegal immigrants (and the displeasure at this is vocalized pretty freely; graffiti like Tutti i clandestini a casa (All clandestines go home) is not uncommon). I get it. It's hard enough to find work, let alone that pays (more on that as well); leave the jobs to the residents. Not that I espouse that viewpoint, or any, for that matter. But there are so many people here that completely debunk the stereotype. Of course, the expat community is strong; every job interview I have gone to has also been a session of legal counsel, friendly advice, or simply socializing. But store owners, railway employees, Tabacchi cashiers (where you get your phone card to add credit, or your cigarettes if you're into that), hotel owners, doormen, parents of children I teach, strangers at the bus stop -- everyone is happy to smile and repeat what it is they are trying to communicate to me, or to share advice on the cheaper grocery stores, or to make sure I know to be careful walking through the area I am in, or just to make small talk or regale me with the stories of their lives. It's nice to know advice is dispensable here, that people are not hostile or closed on an individual basis.

I make it seem like Italy has this awful reputation. In fact, it is a wonderful place and most Italians are very outgoing people. I have made some friends and rather quickly; one of the first things I did was attend a masterclass held by Mirella Freni (I audited) and a couple of the singers there have kept in touch. I went to see Olga Borodina at La Scala tonight and made fast friends with the Japanese girl beside me (hilarious that she's from Japan, I'm from Canada, and we are speaking Italian) and we are going to go out soon with some of her friends. It is true, however, that Milano has a reputation in the rest of Italy for being a miserable, grey, un-Italian wasteland; one lady at the bus stop put it like this: "We only leave our houses to work and we only go home to sleep. And we earn nothing. We live badly here." Strong words indeed! What they don't know is that that is how it is in North America, and that in fact, Milano is as Italian as it gets next to Toronto or New York. I can't imagine a typical Milanese in New York! Good luck! Everything closes on Sundays here, and at lunch a lot of places will close as well; that's typical of the rest of Italy but with Milano's reputation I thought it would be different. I was shocked and amused to discover that the Milanesi don't realize they should just count their blessings!

Speaking of feeling different, my first transformation into a true Milanese has occurred. Usually I am not one to care too much about what you think of my clothes, but I have become painfully aware of my appearance, and that most of the time, I feel terribly underdressed and undercoiffed. They use the expression tirato here which comes from the verb tirare, to pull -- someone who is tirato is therefore pulled together, with no loose ends. I, on the other hand, feel like I am trailing threads and flyaways all over the city. This week, my fixation is shoes. It rained the first few days I was here, and I had some interviews to go to. I needed some nice shoes but not anything too warm, and not the sandals I had brought; I didn't want to spend too much because soon I need to buy some shoes for the colder months (I won't say winter, it only gets to be about 5) so I picked up a pair of faux leather pumps for 15 euro. Biggest mistake of my life in recent memory. Right now the back of my right heel looks like I took a pair of scissors and removed the first 9 layers of skin; my left isn't much better. I am limited to my flats, and they are so painful to wear that I can't picture another day with them on my feet. I have therefore carefully noted the types of shoes of every woman I see on the metro and come to the conclusion that my sandals are now considered unseasonal, and I should be wearing either a ballet flat, an ankle boot, or a sharp pair of black sneakers, think Skecher or Steve Madden, or even Puma, preferably with some bling. I am going to a discount shoe store I know of tomorrow and hopefully, I'll be able to face another day a piedi.
Next up: the eighth wonder of Danielle World, La Scala, and its array of interesting ticket-procurement procedures...