Hallo aus Deutschland!

Hi everyone! I have been in Germany for a week now and have much to share!

Picture Above: Marienplatz during the day

Germany has been amazing so far and I have seen so much and have already met amazing people. I've been to some beer gardens, played in public parks, walked downtown, been to jazz jams, and have met with and played with street musicians!

The first thing after landing, aside from trying to stay awake, was getting a metro ticket and a sim card for the phone. The metro ticket was simple and fairly cheap (9 euros for unlimited train travel in all of Germany for the month!). The sim card was my first time having to awkwardly navigate the language barrier, as those of you who travel are probably familiar with. Luckily, most people in Europe speak some English. Although I don't want to bore you all with the semantics of travel! (unless you want to hear about it? let me know in the comments, I'm very new to blogging or writing down my thoughts in general. I'm sorry if this already sucks, lol)

One of the things I have found most difficult and have already had to contend with is the fear of rejection and awkwardness. It was one of the main things that kept me from reaching out to strangers and musicians I met, not only at home in Chicago but even more so here. I think the language barrier and not having the confidence to be able to articulate myself really decrease my confidence to walk up and make an introduction. My uncle sent me a good Ted-Talk titled "What I learned from 100 days of rejection" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZXgApsPCQ) That, paired with advice from my best friend of "who cares, do it, if it goes poorly you'll never see them again", helped me to get the gumption to put myself out there.

It started by going to the park to practice. As anyone who is a musician in a city, you know it is hard to find a place to practice especially in an apartment building. I've been using practice mutes but I wanted to be able to hear the sound of the trumpet. After developing a "f*ck it" attitude, I built up the courage to find a tree in the park and play. At first, I was really nervous and self-conscious about what strangers might think, but as time went on, those feelings slowly went away and I began to become comfortable with taking up space. It helped when a boy walked by with his grandparents and he stopped to listen with a smile on his face.

On Sunday, I found a jazz club called Unterfahrt that hosts a jam session every Sunday from 8:30-11:30pm. I googled the location and took public transit to get there. After almost walking 15 min in the wrong direction, I found the entrance. I am glad I went the wrong way because I happened to bump into a woman carrying a flute case who was also trying to find the entrance. After asking if she was also trying to find the club, began to talk and decided to sit together. I found out her name was Isabelle Bodenseh, a flutist from Frankfurt. She studied in LA, but after finding out, like many musicians, that the music scene doesn't pay well, she came back to Germany to find out that in Munich, they pay musicians very well. Apparently, in Munich, musicians are usually guaranteed an average of 180-200 euros (per person!) for a gig. But, I didn't come to travel the world to find out about money. Isabelle told me how she had gotten the chance to live and play in Cuba for 1 year! She shared amazing stories with me about her time there and has gotten to play with the musicians from the group "Irakere." But what really caught my attention was her answer to the question "What brought you to jazz?" She said that she had always disliked the rigidity of classical music and the perfection it demands. It can be beautiful, even religious at the time, but she was drawn to the freedom of improvisation. She and her father used to practice together, he was a pianist, and he would play pieces at random and in all different tonalities and have her play along freely. Through this she developed a deep appreciation and love for improvisation, not to mention also became very adept at her instrument. However, even this is not was moved me. She shared with me that she has a disabled daughter. She told me that so much of her life has been governed by improvisation. Without having learned the lessons she had from improvisation and from jazz as a whole, the path forward might not have been found. Life is improvisation and just like improvisation, it takes practice.

Okay, I think this is already a lot! I also have dozens of photos and videos both for stories that I detailed above but also from other adventures of the past week. I will upload them when I have access to faster internet (hopefully soon). Maybe I'll post the photos on instagram and save this for my stories.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think! Again, I am new to blogging and am interested to know what you're interested in! Thank you for reading and following along on my journey