Ballenberg

Ballenberg is an open air museum in Switzerland
that gives you an idea of what Switzerland used to be like. It features around a hundred or so century-old buildings from all over the country. Also included are farm animals and old-time gardens and some of the old machinery and traditions that were most prevalent in the last couple hundred years.
We spent hours walking around. It's pretty interesting to look at and one of the hugest exhibits I've ever seen. There is so much to see!. I took a ton of pictures but thought I'd highlight some of my favorite parts.




My most favorite part was going to the cheese house and seeing how they made cheese back in the day. You can see in this picture that the cheese maker is skimming the top of the surface of the water in the cauldron and taking the cheese curds. He then puts them into those buckets for cooling. We got to sample some fresh cheese and it was fantastic! One of the rooms in the house was a little cheese store and we bought several different kinds of cheese. They didn't last very long! We at them up pretty quick!





This is an old wine press. I could not believe how large it was!












Here are several cow bells. I couldn't imagine being a cow and having to wear one of these. They are really big and heavy!














An old office/reading room.















If you have any extra time, I'd encourage you to check out the website:

http://www.ballenberg.ch/en/Welcome

Like I said, there's so much to see and the pictures I've shown, along with my description, really don't do it any kind of justice at all.

Summertime

One of my favorite concerts I played/sang this summer was in August. I had the pleasure to play and sing with a jazz saxophonist from Germany named Uwe Steinmetz. We met in Austria back in May during the arts conference I was at. Since we knew we'd be playing at the same place in Basel in August, we decided to do couple songs together. It was one of those moments where the excitement gets to you and you can't stop smiling like you got the biggest piece of chocolate cake out of everyone else.
I've only written one jazz song in my life and couldn't wait to hear how it would sound with a saxophone. Does it sound stupid that I got goosebumps from my own song? One thing that's so great about collaborating with other musicians is that you get to see them take a song and go some place with it that you could never go. He hit it out of the ballpark. It was a grand slam...a homerun...a plethora of goosebumps...whatever you want to call it. I REALLY wish I had a recording of it, but I don't. My camera ran out of battery power right around that time.
Uwe's choice of song that we collaborated on was "Summertime" by Sam Cooke. Up until that point, I had never heard of it and I really don't know why I hadn't heard it before. What a great song! I downloaded a couple different versions from iTunes. It's more in the vein of a jazz lullaby. My favorite line from it is:

One of these mornings, you're gonna rise up singing
You're gonna spread your wings and take the sky

Just before my camera shut down, Bryan was able to capture a bit of it on video. The sound quality is horrible, but you get the idea and you can hear how obviously talented Uwe is.

Woodstock

It's been a long time, I know since this blog has seen any action, but I'm about to update you on some of the things I've been up to the last couple of months...
As I'm sure you know, this year was the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival.
On the same anniversary weekend in August, there was a celebration of it here. I got to be apart of the festivities.









My friend, Luzian, accompanied me on the drums and we had a grand time playing. I ended up doing a cover of Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart"...not nearly as good as the original, of course, but A LOT of fun to play and have the crowd singing along.
There were a lot of other great bands and musicians that played and what made it even more enjoyable was how much variety and diversity there was!








And, of course, there was some dancing...












....and great food!