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Sunday, 11 May 2014

A Reading, Demonstration and a Concert in Green City Freiburg (Satis Shroff)


I was woken up by the sun's rays that shone into my room. I went to the traditional stony terrace and looked towards the Black Forest mountains in the direction of Kirchzarten and was rewarded by the sight of the rising sun. After a Schwarzwälder breakfast and a quick scanning of the zeitungen I decided to go to Cafe Mozart to a reading by a Freiburger poetess named Lilo Külp, which I'd been postponing all these years. (The Freiburger poetess Lilo Külp reading in Cafe Mozart) The cafe is run by family Rückert and it's near the Siegesdenkmal, a cafe that reminded my of my journey to Salzburg, where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. The poetess was accompanied musicaly by Claudia Thyme, who played the sax and conjured up melodies from 1001 Nights because that was also a part of the reading. The story in verse was about Lousianna, a girl with a beautiful voice. Her father goes on a long journey and gives her a good piece of advice to use her resources. She walks up to a temple. Opens the door, enters it, goes to the altar and starts telling her story. - Suddenly a voice asks her rudely, "What are you doing here?" It is the temple priest. Go away, this is not the place for telling such tales." She's sad and leaves the temple. A small sparrow chirps and says, "Tell your story to the people in the streets." She follows this advice. The people listened, coins began to roll in and she had a lot of stuff for tales. It was a wonderful rendering from a frail Lilo Külp but when she talks her eyes light up and everything she says is interesting. She knows how to capture her audience. (Freiburg's midwives demonstrating low-pay and bad job perspectives at the Kaiser Joseph Strasse, Bertold's Fountain in downtown Freiburg) The Spring Concert of the Musikverein-Kappel organised a good programme and even invited a guest brass band called the Trachten-Kapelle St. Ulrich conducted by Hans Breika, an athletic, tall man. They'd brought their own moderator along: Monika Steiert. The Musikverein Freiburg-Kappel was conducted by Bernhard Winter, a jolly Bavarian, who in the course of the evening told me over a glass of sekt that he'd bought a piece of land in the vicinity of Lake Ontario and wanted to spend the winter of his life in Canada. What a pleasant thought. He confided that he does have German croonies there, and he goes often to the USA and Canada. The moderation of the Kappler band was to be done of Karin Peter but she could'd and so Klaus Gülker , a South-West Radio man with the gift of the German gab, had volunteered to take over the moderation, which he did with elan, spiced with poetry and a touch of humour. The first piece was John William's 'Fanfare' and there was a lot of fanfare in it. The good thing about a brass band is that it's performed with oomph.

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