Kirchentag, part 2

I found myself abruptly caught up in the spirit of Kirchentag on the opening night's candlelight service. In locations all around beautiful Munich, there were gatherings and we were all given candles. At 10:30 PM a bell rang and each location said the Lord's Prayer together. It was cool cuz it was somehow staggered so you could hear the bells at different times all over the city. I can say the entire Lord's Prayer in German, finally. I couldn't take my eyes off this gorgeous (Arabian) horse statue in the middle of the square, casting shadows on the walls. I traced the outline of the horse over and over on my leg so I would never forget it, so hopefully I can draw it.

Even better was Friday night, after a choir concert we made our way to a traditional and very very old Bavarian restaurant downtown. The serving ladies even wore the traditional Drindl. The place was huge, had two levels, and was completely packed, but we had reservations. I ordered Maultaschen, the best I'd ever had. It's like big fried ravioli with sausage and spinach inside, on a bed of sauerkraut with fried onions. It's a crying shame you cannot get Maultaschen in this region. The drummer guy was sitting next to me and he introduced me to Weizen beer (wheat?). It was kind of like ale. I mean, I really think it is ale, but my bier German is not very good.

It was inevitable, a choir drinking together after a hearty dinner-- there would be music. In fact, this restaurant had several pianos, as if they expect guests to break out in song.

That's what we did. These kids were standing on the benches, arms around each other, singing their hearts out. I blushed thinking "What about the patrons who want to eat in peace?" but actually, patrons started showing up at our door (we had a separate room). Old ladies grinning clapping, trying to sing along. It was amazing. When a song would end, the entire restaurant would explode in applause. Ok, they're pretty good. Professional even.

I stopped being worried and just started singing along. Peter, the choir director, told us to stand up. I asked my man why and he said it's better for singing. Hm.

The pianist is so good. He's the one who played at our wedding. When he got tired, my man took over.

Then Peter dedicated a song (not a Christian song!) to the waitress, and asked her to dance. Of course these ladies are used to this, and she could dance. The song was "The Rose."

The entire restaurant was singing along with us, and I couldn't stop smiling. People were also filming us and taking pictures. To see these kids performing like that after a real performance - you know they just love singing.

They sang some old fashioned church songs, I can't remember them all, and then some modern ones: "Joyful Joyful" is from that Whoopi Goldberg movie, and "I will follow him" is an all time favorite here. "You'll never walk alone" is beautiful, it gave me goosebumps. "Bless the Lord my soul" was pretty, the way they played it. Some were even sung in German: )

They have a traditional Jewish song "Eli" which is haunting, and they always sing the folk-favorite "May the road rise to meet you."


We left the restaurant euphoric, and began our walk through downtown. Under Sendlinger Tor we were all singing again, when we noticed a group of police hanging out near their van. We asked if we could sing for them. They agreed.

It was Billy Joel's "For the longest time" and I'll never forget it. The men had their parts down so well, and the girls obviously love this song too. The cops were grinning and sheepish. People were stopping to watch.

We carried on into the Ubahn (subway) and well, I realized the acoustics are great down there. Again I saw people pulling out their cameras and taping us. (I had to remind my man that subways are dangerous - if you're gonna become a vampire, or get killed by one, your chances are it will happen in a subway.)

To further describe how much these people love being in a choir, even the next day after a performance, we hung out by the piano and they sang until we were asked to leave. My man was playing "Fame" and "We are the World" and "Lemon Tree", fun songs after the serious ones.

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Our hotel was fine, but I really believe a 4 star hotel should have more than 1 ply TP. Don't you? The room was great, a balcony overlooked Munich. I had fun with the Euro-style TV (where you press a channel number to power it on - this is a very important tip for any of you travelling to Europe. The power button does not turn a TV on. You have to hit a channel. It annoys me with the lack of logic, but it is this way with all TVs in Germany.) They had Al-Jazeera (?) and another Arabic station, but no American ones, unless CNN counts.

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More sights of Munich later...

***Updated***

I wanted to throw in some pics of the choir that I stole from their website. My pics turned out terribly so I'll just use these good ones. Can you find my man in all those rainbows somewhere?*giggle * Their shirts say their choir name and have a stylized Wuppertal Schwebebahn embroidered on the back.














This is the pianist and my man grinning about something behind him.