It's March already!

Not sure how that happened, February seemed to fly by. Perhaps helped by the fact that I've been sick for the last three weeks so got very little done. I'm still not completely right, coughing and sneezing away but at least I'm on holidays until the end of the week (wait, that's tomorrow, how did that happen?). Only have a committee meeting for the Heidelberg March for Science to get to this evening, followed by choir, and then I don't have anything else except housework that has to be done this week.

Despite the "flu-like infection" (doctors here will never say you have a cold and never say you have the flu, it's almost always a flu-like infection) I still made it to Halle and only missed one rehearsal. Well, one and a half really because for a good part of the time on Friday afternoon I was trying but not a whole lot was coming out when I opened my mouth. And the stuffed-up ear on one side during the final rehearsal was lots of fun. Not. Thankfully it popped a couple of hours before we were on-stage and the performance itself went really well. I think it was one of my favourite years so far. There are photos online if anyone is interested in seeing them. I was down on the stage this year, right near the front and you still can barely see me in most of these. And the few where you can see me, my face is obscured by the watermark - in photo no. 50, for example. No. 83 is a bit better I suppose. Oh well. I'd still try and get there again another time, there's nothing like being right behind the drums to keep you in time during the Hallelujah Chorus.

This year I made a bit of an effort to do more of the non-singing activities and dragged myself out of bed early on the Friday morning to head off to the State Museum of Prehistory. It was amazing. Highly recommend it if you're ever in Halle. We were there for about two and a half hours, which was just enough time to get a guided tour around the special exhibition on alchemy and have a quick walk around one level of the permanent exhibition. I will definitely be going back there and probably multiple times. Really fascinating and the way some of the displays are laid out is an artwork in itself.

And then on Sunday I enjoyed the sauna and whirlpool in the hotel for a couple of hours. That did my cold a whole lot of good actually. And since it was Sunday I had the place almost entirely to myself. I nearly didn't want to leave and if I hadn't arranged to meet people to watch the rugby, I might have stayed there all day.

Chocolates from Germany's oldest chocolate factory. These ones are were blackcurrant and chocolate flavour. Yum!

All in all it was another great weekend. Hopefully I'll get to go again next year. They've changed things up a bit so being there last year is not automatically a guarantee of a spot next year. I'll just have to log in next Saturday like everyone else and hope I manage to snag a spot. And then maybe next year I'll be strong enough to resist bringing home multiple boxes of those Halloren Kugeln!