La vie bohème

Julia Reporting:
8am this morning - whilst sleepily piling myself and my obedient orange suitcase into the Frankfurt airport shuttle bus, it occurred to me that a musicians life is a little like a game of pinball, we just get pushed (or bus'd or plane'd or train'd) around from place to place. But this mornings trip was different....I was finally travelling back to Paris after well over 2 months of living out of a suitcase. Ironically, after dreaming about unpacking my suitcase for so long, I just can't face it tonight and itis sitting on the floor of my apartment looking heartlessly abandoned and suspiciously full!
Even though it is a difficult lifestyle at times, it has it's equal share of benefits. Following the Concert in the beautiful city of Graz, where I stayed in the hotel with the funny pillows (see this post), we went on to do a couple of concerts with the wonderful soprano, Roberta Invernizzi. We played a program of Bach and Handel in two amazing locations, the Aldersbach Klosterkirche (see photo above) near Passau in Bavaria - a very good example of Baroque architecture (albeit RATHER over the top), and the next day did a 6 hour journey up to Eisenach where we played in St Georges Church. Eisenach was the birth place of J.S Bach. His father was the organist at St Georges Church, and J.S Bach was also baptised there. It was really exciting to be in the church where the young Bach would have spent so much time in his early years...but WE didn't have much time to spend and unfortunately we left for Frankfurt almost straight after the concert, so no time to look at the Bach house and museum (sniff).
We arrived at our hotel last night at midnight, celebrated the birthday of a colleague with a couple of bottles of champagne in the dodgy hotel bar before the detestable sound of my alarm mercilessly wrenched me out of my much needed sleep just a few hours later...what made it easier was the prospect of coming home to my own apartment, my own bed, my own space, a bit of home cooking, and no more weird pillows or buses, or planes for another 3 weeks...I am spending my holidays AT HOME!!!