This time, as my long e-mail of Jan 10th tells, I'm traipsing around Germany to Dessau, Chemnitz, Leipzig, Halle or Magdeburg, (or neither of those two...) Koblenz and Wiesbaden. And today, the third of January, I started this tour, with training in Dessau.

This went all right, although there's no openings known of in the company at the moment, so it's a matter of waiting, and seeing, before I know if there's even a chance for things. I was rather pleased with my training, when I considered that in the last TEN days, I have had exactly ONE ballet training. (That is not the best way to stay in shape, and be prepared for auditioning. But... that's the &*@#! situation I'm in... and a malicious, controlling Ballet director would have consciously arranged things that way, (Which I really hope is not the case with me: That it was just awful, terrible luck, all around.) Anyhow, I'm feeling really bitter, and sore, and fed up with the whole world at the moment, so I'm NOT fair with anyone alive. (or dead, for that mater.)

Well... As I was saying, the training was allright there, and after, I was talking with some of the extra dancers, who are guests for one of the pieces that's being done there. -And they showed me a German Dance magazine, with a list of auditions in it. About half of them, would not be for me, or were one's I'd already found out about. The others... I made good notes of. And one in particular caught my attention: In Vienna, (I forget what it's called in English: in German, it's simply "Wien".) On this Sunday, the last day of my vacation, and the day I haven't been able to find anywhere to go on. And it's a great company besides. SO, that was the seed of an interesting idea planted in my head. (although there were numerous problems that were associated with it: Contact is to be made by e-mail or Fax, the two things I'm without. I don't know if I could make it back to Detmold for work the next day. I don't know if I could make it down there, after auditioning on Saturday in Germany. I don't know where I'd stay if I went there, AND... I don't know if I want to spend the 150 Euros or so, if I can get down there, for an audition that I just might have no chance at all in.

But, it was still an interesting thought, and the last good thing to happen in my day.

After that, I waited around in the cold for a couple of hours, to contact my friend in Dresden, (Whom I really miss, and wanted to spend an evening talking with.) And found out that my plans on staying over at her place were unachievable, (Due to some complications of her life right now.) And, there's also no time at all today for me to even visit for a half hour. Perhaps tomorrow... for an hour or so, in the early evening. (Oh Great! I'll see what time it works to be in the next city after that, and if I can catch an evening train to Halle... or somewhere.) So... No meeting my Dresden friend yet.

Now, the youth Hostel in Chemnitz, (My second destination,) was a far way out of town, and somewhat overpriced as well. So... I had been trying to contact this other one, in a nearby village, only 20 minutes by train away, and in an incredible old castle, in the middle of it's forested grounds. I thought this would be great to stay in... but they had never answered their phone. At last though, just before I caught my train, I got a hold of them on the phone. -and found out that it is a good 20 minute walk from the train station.

So, I decided to stay at the one "In" Dresden. (I understood it to be about 20 minutes out side of it.) Well... then my train broke down, in some back-water village... and I followed the other passengers out, hoping like hell that they knew where they were going, and that I could simply follow them. So, we all piled onto a bus, and went bumping down these country roads, until we got to Chemnitz. And then I called the Hostel, asking direction on how to get there...

And was given directions, (thankfully, in English,) to go to this one Street-car station, and then make a 20 minute walk... And I felt like I was going to lose it. I (Rather politely,) responded that I might go to this near-by castle instead, and wished him a good evening. -Only I couldn't get in touch with the nearby-town-Hostel-in-a-castle. AND... the next train going out there, was after nearly two hours. (Although it WOULD only take 20 min to get me there.)

So I called the Chemnitz hostel back, and got clearer directions, and got on the first street car that pulled up to the train station, to take me to the central exchange, (of the City transit.) -And there I waited, as two other street-cars pulled up, and then left. The One that I chose, seemed to be on a break. When I at last got to the main exchange, I found out that I'd just missed the number 5, which I'd been meant to take, and would be waiting about 25 minutes. Then, I had a flash of inspiration, that lead to the ONE other good thing to happen to me today:

I called this hostel back, and asked if there was any place out there that I could have dinner at. And they admitted that there was piss-all out there, in the hinterlands of a back-water. SO, before I headed out of the center, I went to a food court in a shopping mall, and bolted two plates of third-rate Chinese food. (The noodles were tasteless, Even smothered in chilli-sauce.) So, at least I was well fed.

Then, off I went, to the end of this streetcar line. And then turned off, and found the field I was meant to cross. And there were, naturally, No Lights, (which is really the natural state for fields, of course.) So, I just headed across it, in what I reasoned to be the right direction, doing the best I could to keep out of the deeper puddles. Oh yes: it was a rather soggy field, and it was lightly raining too, and all dark, and...

It's hard to describe, to someone who's never seen it, but I'll try devoting this paragraph to it: There are the Communist, or Stalinist housing blocks. These are The ugliest, most horrid insults to architecture, short of Habitat 67 (Or possibly worse than that. SORRY Granny and grand-dad! But that's just not... a lovely mass of concrete blocks!) Well... the Russians, or international Communists in this case, didn't even have creativity with them. It was just concrete rectangles, about 5 or 6 stories high, all made identical, and just dropped at random in big, open, barren fields. Not properly grouped there either: just in a jumbled cluster, that makes the actual addresses on them impossible to find. Well... this field I had to cross, it was one of THOSE fields: with depressing concrete living blocks on each side of it, and no sign of life, other then an occasional path, trudged by the depressing people living in those blocks, (Not the path I was in search of though: Ones going off in the other directions.) It was an epitome of Desolation. (And if I may have just a little more time, to digress upon this: It reminded me acutely of my first year in Estonia, and I lived in one such neighbourhood, and one winter day, went for a walk, and got partially lost, and was walking across one of these huge, wind-swept fields, without any sign of life around, with the snow half way to my knees, and the weather 15 below, and nothing on the horizon, but indifferentiable concrete clusters. -And How I dearly hoped that I was going in the right direction, and would get to something that would orient me soon.)

OK, so in the middle of this field, at a particularly mushy, wet part, my phone rings. And it's the director of Halle Ballet, telling me that the day I'd assumed I'd go there to do training, is a holiday, so it won't work at all. And I was just thinking to myself, "Don't let him ask me any specific questions! NO! Even if it was only a mater of consulting my time table to reschedule, it's Too Damn Dark here in this rainy field to do that!" -But, I managed to leave it pretty open, saying I'd look into Wednesday and Friday, and call him back to say If I'd be there one of those days. So... there was another part of my plans, down the tubes. (I'll see what I can do about juggling the cities around, but it won't be easy.)

At length, I came out of the field, and onto a road, and was pretty lucky, to turn down it in the right direction. All in all, it took me about 20 minutes to get to the Hostel, from the streetcar station, and only the toes on one foot felt a little chilled.

After that, nothing else went wrong, and it's only been a steady slouching since then of washing some clothes, making my bed, and getting into it, to write this long, old Journal entry. And NOW, I think I'll get to sleep, and hope that the next day will contain a little more sanity, and predictability, (or do I mean Dependability?)
M.