An Englishman in Plön

What a motley crew...

Ok, it's taken me a while, but I thought I'd just put up a few pictures and say a few things about The Salvation Army's Music School I went to in Germany a few weeks ago (as promised!). I've been to a fair few Music Schools in my time, but there's just something about the German one that's really cool. And it's great to be at a Christian camp with so many different types of people - and of course seeing old friends and meeting new ones. And here's a little of what went on!

The big football tournament is a pretty big tradition at Plön. I'm the fine specimen in the middle, wearing the blue Faroe Islands shirt (that must be a first). This was shortly before I had my lights knocked out by a goalkick to the face (thanks Oli!)... I don't really remember the rest of the game...

Soaked with a tray (the photo descriptions write themselves really).

P Paddy. Patrick does rap.

Yes, this is me as a pirate (man, to anyone who wasn't there, this music school must seem a little weird...). One of the team events was to dress some people up as pirates in about twenty minutes, using whatever you could find. I think we did pretty well! Yeah, the colour of the headscarf isn't particularly manly, but as we didn't have so long, we couldn't be choosy (and at least mine didn't have flowers on it). And the most impressive thing? I didn't actually have a beard then - Clara did it with a mascara brush. I think she has a fine future ahead of her in the fake-beard mascara industry.

This game hurt.

The youth choir. We're laughing because we were doing 'Let's Get It Started' as a fun item at the Vorkonzert (basically like a talent night and a time to perform all those pieces that weren't quite good enough or didn't fit into the final concert at the church) and we'd just sung the 'Let's get it started, HUH!' bit...

Ruben - my room-mate. Oh the parties we had in Room 210...

Daniel steals my thunder...

One very cool thing that they do is an open-air concert on the Saturday in the town centre (done by one of the bands). We don't do that enough. I'm the good-looking top baritone player...

The final concert is in a great church in the town centre. This was the youth choir singing 'O Happy Day'.

My observations...

1. Germans don't like Marmite (and who could blame them?)

2. NEVER order an After-Eight Ice Cream Sundae.

3. A lot of Germans do this when they're thinking about something...

Sarah can do it better than I can - and Daniel does it even better, but he does it anyway, so that's not so impressive. I'd never noticed it before (nor had many Germans), but I left a trail of self-conscious people behind me...

4. Translating into German on the spot in front of like a million people is HARD!

5. And for all British guys, German girls seem to really like the way we pronounce the name 'Chandler' (worth remembering).

Thanks to Rebecca for most of the photos! (Not entirely sure what I'm doing here...)

The lake at the Army camp. Pretty cool, huh?