Autumn colours

We are quite lucky to have the Bois de la Cambre, a beautiful forested park, within a few minutes walk from our front door. Maggie and I enjoyed some time there this week, and saw - apart from some colourful leaves that almost make us think we are in Canada - the wild parakeets of Brussels cracking hazelnuts, lots of dogs having their exercise, and a lovely restaurant on the island in the middle of the park that you have to take a ferry to visit.


Here's me looking at the dogs...



... and Maggie looking at the parekeets.

Yesterday being a state holiday, we took some chrysanthemums up the street to the Ixelles cemetery and looked around. There were graves from soldiers from the first world war through the second, up to the 1950s. We didn't find any Canadians but quite a few Polish and British mixed in with the French and Belgians.


Then we quickly hopped a bus to the European Parliament to see sections of the Berlin Wall that had been set up around the square. We are getting lots of our local news from Malcolm now that he is an avid listener in history class, and a subscriber to the student newspaper. He was the one to explain to us the context around the recent protests by milk farmers, and was a voluble repository of factoids about the Berlin Wall: apparently it is exactly three metres high. Who knew?


I can't even begin to describe how strange it was to stand there and see these now inconsequential fragments of weathered concrete standing outside of the European parliament like parking barriers. When assembled, they used to form an implacable symbol of partition and dictatorship, a monolith that had predated my birth by some years. Like many of my generation, I assumed that The Wall was a fact of life, that it was forever... I remember my astonishment when it fell, and the tentative hope that emerged from its rubble and seemed to suffuse everyone in those first moments: a hope for a world free from tyranny, of fear, of political repression.


It was a day of hope and optimism for us in Brussels... no matter how large the obstacle, courage and compassion are stronger than fear, and they will win in the end.

* * *

Last night I had a long three-hour coaching with Peter Tomek, and feel very well prepared for both the Brahms and the Christmas Oratorio. I'm very excited to do them both, and have already started assembling my things for the trip. Obviously there are items on the list that are always the same: white tie and tails, shoes, scores, toiletries and so on, but there are always last-minute requests and thank-you gifts to bring along, so I'm starting to get ready now. There will be lots of firsts: first big solo concert work with the KSO; first Christmas Oratorio and first oratorio performance in Toronto, and other firsts. I'm looking forward to them all...