Pictureless post

Still no sign of the new exchange students, which means they'll probably arrive only at the end of the month. Our temporary flatmate "C", who is spending some weeks here on transfer to another apartment, is being extremely helpful with the household management and today we found ourselves ecstatically discussing shopping lists and the proper way to clean the floors like any old married couple. I'm almost getting used to the idea of having someone to eat with three times a day. And it's definitely the first time someone has liked my cooking so much it's on the wishlist for tomorrow's lunch.

I have also learned that when you have heart-sick French people in the house, playing love songs by Jacques Brel inevitably results in pitiful moaning, waving arms and, in the most drastic cases (seconds before bedtime), violent protests. Be warned!

Meanwhile, Petra has found a new best friend: her teacher from the intensive German course, who sends her midnight emails asking her to change the theme of next morning's presentation from the banning of smoking in restaurants to something "more current". After straining our grey cells for plausible subjects, the best ones we could come up with were illegal immigration - with our household members posing as "live examples" - and something with a title like "When 2 become 3: relationships during an exchange year".

Today in the university library, I listened to a previously unknown oratorio to me: Händel's "Israel in Egypt". I'm glad I finally got to know it and I'm adding it to the mental list of works I want to conduct one day. Händel gave an overwhelming majority of the music to the choir and there's a lot to have fun with, from the raging explosion of "He gave them hailstones for rain" to the deliciously titled "And with the blast of Thy nostrils". Another pleasant surprise among recently discovered pieces is Shostakovitch's oratorio "Song of the Forests", introduced to me by a friend.

In case you haven't noticed, the "What I'm listening to" -section on the sidebar has been given a fresh look. The list is updated every end of the week and on Monday you should be able to see that my playlists are also brimming with rediscovered timeless classics like Beethoven's sonata op.111 and Mozart's clarinet concerto.

Just kidding.