How do I pronounce this?

Yep, you guessed it - I'm travelling again!

Yes, I brought my trumpet.

Bit of a different vibe on this trip, and to be honest it's exactly what I needed. The daunting prospect of a new year and worrying where someone hid my 4 years of degree has been sufficiently counteracted with some productivity doing a postgraduate audition and time enjoying some really fresh air. As in, feels like -4 degrees celsius plus a sea breeze level of fresh. But my, I've not felt so at ease for quite some time, even with the purpose of my trip being for an audition, and not even whilst in my homeland of Yorkshire. How bizarre. Well not really, when you look at how gracious God is. Only he could provide such peace and serenity in such a beautiful creation.

Look at that sky!

I love just walking around a new place, seeing the sights, trying to figure out the language and how the transport system works. Århus is small enough to do that without getting lost, which is just as well because I couldn't find a paper tourist map anywhere. In addition, there's something special about having time alone/with God in a place and not having to be anywhere in a hurry - the complete opposite to life in London. Being able to appreciate the Lord's creation with few distractions is really freeing, and often goes unencountered by many - why? Why do we (myself included) so often feel something is not worth doing unless it is documented? I was convicted to simply enjoy some moments for myself and the amusement of any strangers who may be watching.

In addition, it's been my third experience of Airbnb and I would really recommend it to anyone who likes a homely (and cheaper) stay. It's such a great way to really see how the locals live. It's also been part of the whole peaceful feel to this trip. The neighbourhood in Åbyhøj (good luck pronouncing that, I still can't) is so quiet and has an almost village-like style to it. Excuse the book-like description but seeing it frosted over with the orange sun rising over the hills is literally like something from a postcard (not that I've been able to find any postcards here either). "Quaint" would probably be a suitable description from us Brits.

Music Academy

Musically speaking, I've had the opportunity to meet Kristian Steenstrup - "regarded one of the finest music pedagogues of his generation" and was accompanied by David Strong - a fellow Yorkshireman! Every performance is a learning curve; not only in my abilities but my humility as well - something else that is remarkable in the way God is shaping me as I grow closer to him.

I'm sad to have to fly home tomorrow, but so grateful for this lovely experience and time away. Until next time, enjoy these "documentations" of some aspects of my trip!

S x

Musikhuset

Aarhus Cathedral

Dokk 1 - Library on the harbour which parks your car for you
 (not kidding)

Had time for some skating and thought the set-up was cute. 

A Year Later...

Roughly a year ago, I was delighting in the wonderful time I had just experienced in Budapest on Erasmus. So I decided it was time to re-visit the blog. Since then it's been a year of re-adjustment and challenges and honestly, it's not been that easy. However, I was reminded yesterday that God doesn't promise a life of uninterrupted pleasures, but that we experience Battles and Blessings throughout life, often right alongside each other (Bible in One Year, Day 4). I realise now that the incredible experiences I had were a gracious gift, for which I am so grateful.

In this new year, my first trip starts tomorrow in the form of a visit to Aarhus, Denmark, as I begin a string of auditions to find where my future may lie. There are so many things to consider and explore that it can, at times, be quite overwhelming, but it's so incredibly exciting at the same time. I don't really know where I'll be next year, but I plan to enjoy the process of finding out rather than allowing it to take me over. There's far more to life than stress. I might even stay in London, who knows?
In preparation for this particular audition I've been reading Kristian Steenstrup's book "Blow your mind", which explores Arnold Jacobs' and Kristian's approach to playing a brass instrument. I've found it enlightening to read about the physiology of trumpet playing alongside how we think about our practice and what takes our focus. Highly recommend it to any keen brass players, it's not too long and I found it a very accessible read (any jargon is well-explained). By the way, it's almost half price if you order from here: https://www.speedyhen.com/Product/Kristian-Steenstrup/Blow-Your-Mind/21185209

Danish Kroner

I'd better go and finish packing, but here's a little insight into how I coped on the "come-down" from an incredibly special period of my life;

Through the toughest patches of last year, I found comfort and hope in my Saviour, Jesus Christ. "He is my rock and my fortress." (Psalm 18:2) Nothing else comes close to the satisfaction he provides and particularly when I look back, I know how he has used my trials to bring me closer to him. My prayer is that others would acknowledge his awesome power and turn to him. Not only in the hard times, but in committing their life to him. He changed my life, he could change yours too.

S x

Erasmus has ended?!

Vienna looking marvellous!

Somehow it's now early January and I'm back in my lovely family home with a proper brew having returned to England and celebrated Christmas already. I can't deny how much I've enjoyed my Erasmus experience and although I didn't record it at the time for you, it won't be any less exciting to tell the stories. I've already noticed that I can't stop mentioning Budapest/Liszt Academy/new friends to everyone I meet, that's just a slight warning for those of you I'll see in January!

However it's not only Budapest I'm smitten with, I spent 4 days travelling to and exploring Bratislava and Vienna in late October and I just love the ease of access to these cities and around central Europe. I've got to be honest, I fell in love with Vienna. Go there, it's beautiful. Trains, buses and hostels are lots of fun and a bit of solitary exploration was very exciting and succeeded in making me feel nicely but humanly independent as well as beautifully grateful and dependent on our wonderful Creator. In a short summary, I've picked up the travelling bug giving me the desire to visit many more exciting places!

In preparation for the Varasdy Frigyes National trumpet competition I learnt skills that before embarking on this trip I'd have never thought I could accomplish and along the way I made friends closer than I ever imagined possible in 4 months. Although having friends from all over the world could be seen as difficult, I'm very excited in that I now have many countries where I can have my own personal tour guide! Speaking of the competition though, that was an experience and a half - I was privileged to perform in front of Hungarian trumpet legend, Gábor Tarkövi. Having learnt from memory 2 movements from each of the Haydn and Böhme trumpet concertos, nerves were racing high as I took to the stage. I was pretty pleased with how I played but with over 20 competitors, the competition was very strong. There was a real sense of pride when students of the Liszt Academy achieved 1st and 3rd place!

In my last few weeks there were some really lovely things that happened, particularly as a great way to say farewell before flying home. Other than getting all my courses signed off with good marks, Dad and older brother Jonny managed to come for a weekend visit in early December, ice skating in Europe's largest outdoor ice rink at Heroes' Square with my brilliant Bible study friends was great fun and a "Tim-Tams" party with all the Erasmus students ended my time in Budapest with excitement and a great send-off! Going to miss all you people a lot...

Christmas Markets with the boys!

I now don't think it's possible for me to even nearly sum up my whole time on Erasmus so you'll just have to get me chatting if you want to know all the in between bits... I hope you've had wonderful Christmas and New Year celebrations, I'm certainly looking forward to what 2017 has in store!

Life at the Liszt Academy

Hello, it's me again! However this time I'm typing on a Hungarian keyboard so I bet proof-reading this post is going to take me a while... Having pledged you another post before Sunday, I then realised I actually don't have much time before then to get everything down into words! Although I don't feel ridiculously busy, I look back and notice that I've certainly squeezed a lot into the last few weeks. I also noticed I haven't told you much about studying yet so considering it's kind of the main reason I'm in Budapest, here's attempt no.2 to let you know what I've been up to;

Luckily after a few lessons I'm pleased to say I can now keep up with the pace of the BA2 Music Theory class, just about! We've covered harmonic analysis of Classical and Romantic styles of music and now we're learning how to analyse the form - binary, ternary and rondo so far. Sounds a lot like stuff we already learnt at school right? I thought so too but was proved very wrong when we used terms such as "periods" and "sentences" to describe shorter passages and even discovered mini ternary elements within a piece in ternary form - composers continue to amaze me. They are so much more intelligent than we realise when we just scratch the surface in listening to a piece!

Did I tell you students can get free tickets to ALL of the concerts held here at the Liszt Academy? Pretty cool right, so obviously I've been making the most of the opportunity. The highlight concert so far is definitely Máv Symphony orchestra when they played Dvorák symphony no.9 "New World". What a fantastic piece, especially when preceded by Elgar's cello concerto, what a wonderful evening! As we had bought tickets for this concert we had the privilege of sitting behind the stage so I rather enjoyed peering over the woodwind and brass section's shoulders to follow their music...

Piano recital

Despite the unbeatable sound of a full symphony orchestra, I've also been to a piano trio chamber concert (piano, violin, cello) and a solo piano recital as well as other orchestral works. There is certainly a strong theme of patriotism running through the concert programmes given the amount of Liszt and Bartók that is played! Kodály, Dohnányi and Ligeti also seem to be very popular and I just love how music is such a core part of the culture here, not least in the fact the concert hall is nearly always full (take note England) and there are so many streets and squares named after their composers, it makes me so happy!

Oh also, how could I forget to mention the beautiful Grand Hall and its attention to detail? I noticed during the interval of the last concert there are paintings depicting musical terms, as you can see here with "Scherzo", built into each corner for those in the balconies to enjoy! Student seats really are the best sometimes.

So last Friday we had a trumpet masterclass with Bruce Hellmers, former Principal trumpet of the Australian Opera and Ballet orchestra and fortunately for me, it was all in English hooray! I'm not sure how much some of the Hungarian students got out of it but I'm hoping they understood at least some of his expressions and the slightly odd accent... It was really nice to meet some more trumpet students anyway since I had only met my teacher's 3 other students up until then. Although I didn't play in the masterclass, I still benefited greatly from hearing other people play as everyone seems to be playing the same 2 pieces in preparation for the competition in December, myself included. I'm going to be sick of hearing the Haydn and Böhme trumpet concertos by the end of this term!

Other things at the Liszt Academy you might ask? They're all pretty cool too, I just can't go into detail about them all or we'll be here all night. Trumpet lessons are kind of important though and the delights of having 2 a week mean I tend to put in twice as much work as I normally would! They're good fun and generally consist of me playing something (not up to standard 90% of the time) followed by my teacher playing it perfectly and giving me direction to improve combined with mutual translation lessons of a variety of words! Teaching him "diaphragm" was hilarious.

Time to go and practice again and then watch the Budapest Gypsy Orchestra in concert, have a great weekend!

S x

Half of a fortnight

It's been a mixed few weeks. Don't get me wrong, I still love Budapest but I guess now I've settled into a routine the ups and downs of daily life seem more significant than they were! Having said that, an explosion right next to your university isn't exactly what you would call "normal daily life". So that was strange and pretty sad. Two police officers were injured and although it was initially thought to be a gas explosion, later theories are that a home-made bomb was the cause due to a large amount of nails found at the scene and witnesses. You can obviously read more on the media pages but that caused a bit of disruption and a less positive atmosphere over the weekend. Shame to start on a negative but I'm sure prayers for the two police officers would be appreciated.

Moving on to more cheerier topics, a highlight of last week was when my Mum and younger brother, David, came to visit! It was great to see some familiar, British faces and in between my studying I enjoyed showing them round the city I've come to know and love. On Thursday afternoon we walked up to Heroes' square and round the city park, where I went on my own first day in Budapest! As autumn is well on it's way it looked a bit different compared to during the summer. The leaves have started changing colour and there was a festival with lots of stalls selling food and agricultural things which took up most of the castle grounds! They did have some pretty adorable displays though...

Vegetable train!

With my mother on a boat in front of
parliament.

The following day we took a sight-seeing boat up the Danube, stopping off at Margít Híd (St Margaret Island) so my visitors could see the main sights of Budapest and we enjoyed a lovely lunch of Lángos - basically deep fried dough served with a variety of toppings. So unhealthy but so delicious! During their stay we also trekked up to the castle district to see Buda Castle and the wonderful view of the city and just generally had a great time catching up. Although I haven't really missed home, it's always nice to see your family again!

Since I'm doing 2 weeks in one go I'm struggling to remember everything I've done in that time so this will likely be highlights and may have another post to come shortly covering the other half/study-related parts!

Now this Saturday just gone was the 1st October. I wore shorts and sandals and had a wonderful day in the sunshine with my girl friends Ellé and Salina. Today, October 5th it was 10 degrees celsius and I had my warmest scarf and boots on. How on earth does the weather change so rapidly?! At least it's predictable. And it's not raining, unlike England. Anyhow, we went on an adventure to Óbuda Island, which required taking a suburban railway train! It's a bit further up the Danube and a lot more natural due to the lack of mainstream tourists. I even had a lovely paddle in the river, which I definitely wouldn't do in the Thames. Continuing the nature theme we then headed to Városmajor to hop on the Cog wheel tram, which took us up into the Buda hills and enabled us to reach Normafa - a fantastic viewing point with various trails leading off into the woods, it felt like we could have been deep in the countryside! I do love getting out of the city into the beautiful nature that is all around us and I'm so thankful that Budapest provides such an easy access way of doing this.

360 rooftop bar

Final thing for this post as it's getting late, I went somewhere cool on Friday night - yes, another cool place in Budapest, who would've thought? Following our Erasmus welcome meeting (including free food!) we went out to celebrate a birthday in the group and headed to the 360 rooftop bar. As the name suggests, this is a bar on a roof with a 360 degree view all the way round of Budapest. Because it was dark when we arrived, we only saw the lit up parts of the city but that was pretty cool anyway and it would be strange going to a bar in the day time, right? Sadly my phone memory has been filling up quickly so I don't have any pictures of the view but here's one of the cute set up.

Well, I've booked practice at 9am tomorrow so I'll have to shoot off for some shut-eye but I'm going to pledge another post to you before Sunday as there has been lots of musical excitement happening as well! Hope you're having a wonderful autumn.

S x

View of the Chain Bridge from
the boat.

Part of Buda Castle I hadn't seen
before.

A Brit in Budapest

It's now the 18th September and I've just got home from lunch with church friends. I'm pretty sleepy as I got up to practice before church and I'm going to a concert later, maybe I'll have a nap after writing this...

Liszt Academy Grand Concert Hall

The weeks are flying by! I realised on Wednesday that it was nearly 2 weeks since I last blogged and just can't keep up with where the time is going! However, that means I've had significant progression in terms of sorting out my timetable and getting settled into some sort of routine and it's lovely to be feeling settled into the Academy as well now. My first proper Monday with classes was a shocker - 4.5 hours of music theory with only half an hour break! Yes, that was intense. Luckily I won't have that every week as I'm only going to take one music theory class and I can go to the other one if I want to practice simpler stuff or learn solfege. Thank goodness Erasmus allows for freedom in that respect! I am also really fortunate to have 2 individual trumpet lessons per week - that's definitely a motive to practice regularly! My teacher plays with the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and really seems to know what he wants so lessons are challenging but also very rewarding when I've put the work in. We're currently working on the Haydn trumpet concerto and I had never before realised how difficult it is to play well! Technically it isn't that hard but style is key to creating a good performance. I will also be learning the Böhme trumpet concerto in preparation for a competition against trumpet students from all over Hungary in December - scary but exciting!
I experienced the Liszt Academy main concert hall on Thursday - Hungarian Radio Symphony orchestra performed Brahms symphonies 1 and 3. The acoustics were fab and you can see how beautiful the hall is itself!

Of course, alongside all the studying I have had a bit of time for socialising and eating in many different, lovely places. About a week ago I went with my good friend Ellé to a small Hungarian restaurant near the Liszt Academy main building.We each tried a typical Hungarian dish with "noodles" - Chicken paprika for Ellé and Beef Goulash for me - and we each had a drink. TOTAL price was 2745Ft, sounds a lot right?
But when 330 Ft = £1, work it out... We couldn't believe it either.
Mind. Boggled.

Wood carving, photo
credit; Elle Crowhurst

I love trying new food, especially when it's cheap, but this stuff was cheap and absolutely delicious and I'll definitely be going there again! Or maybe every week...

Anyway just yesterday some friends and myself decided to be cultured and we went to Bela Bartók road in search of a Polish festival we had seen advertised. Unfortunately the weather was miserable and in true Hungarian style, no-one had any idea what was going on... Never fear, we wandered around and found a wood carving place so decided to have a go, but we didn't anticipate how hard it would be! Following this, I had my first experience of a Hummus bar and I was pleasantly surprised.

I'm not usually a huge hummus fan but when coupled with mushrooms and lots of pitta bread I was very satisfied! Following this we visited the Sweet Days Chocolate Festival held outside St Stephen's Basilica which looked and smelt amazing. I only had a little pot of melted chocolate but there were so many different types including donuts with a variety of chocolate toppings, YUM.

That's all for now folks, time to head off for some more practice and a possible nap I mentioned... Have a good week!

S x

CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL!

I have survived 2 weeks...

Funnily enough, I have more than survived, I still feel like I'm on holiday!

Reality has almost hit in that I'm actually getting prepared for studying hard now, but how can I not be happy when I'm studying at such an incredible institution? The past week has been intense but such a great learning curve for what to expect over the next 4 months (well, 3.5 months now). Choir was all in Hungarian, except when he gave bar numbers to start from if he was feeling kind! I don't profess to be a singer and sight-singing at full speed on it's own usually proves to be a challenge. Add to that a completely foreign language where 's' is 'sh', 'cs' is 'ch' and 'a' is 'o' and my mind is truly boggled. Luckily, I've made friends with some native speakers and some fellow Erasmus students, so I can ask for help simultaneously struggling in good company! Lots of practice to be done and I've not even started the trumpet lessons yet...
However, they will start on Friday and after hearing some of the students warming up yesterday, I'm definitely cramming in as much practice as I possibly can before then. I really can't wait to get stuck in and motivated, it's like starting university all over again! (I have already warned my parents there's a strong possibility I might stay here forever.) The only thing I'd need to get used to is the laid back atmosphere, which I have experienced even more of. I suppose it can only be good for you though right? A relaxed attitude leads to a relaxed mind or something like that.

Speaking of relaxation, if you're ever in Budpest you should go to the Citadel, simply for the view. We went just before sunset and saw this beautiful city in daylight and also after the sun had dropped behind the mountains and the main buildings and bridges were lit up. If you're able to hike up lots of stairs, 100% would recommend.
I continued my adventures at the weekend mainly on the Buda side of the river. Here I headed up to the Castle district to see St Matthias church, Buda Castle and Fisherman's Bastion with the last being my favourite because of it's beautiful views and charming appearance. On the way back home I stopped by St Stephen's Basilica and although I didn't go inside, the outside is pretty cool to look at. I also had a fantastic time with 2 new friends being big kids at the water park on St Margaret Island (different place to last time) where they had 4 big slides, a lazy river and a wave machine! I'm so glad I made the most of the weekend as the weather turned for worse on Monday, boooo. But I suppose my English mind had been deprived of rain and I'll appreciate the sun more when it (hopefully) returns tomorrow.
I haven't taken any pictures of food unfortunately, but trust me when I tell you it's great. Maybe I'll do a whole post on food at some point mmmm.

S x

Fisherman's Bastion

Statue at the Citadel

St Matthias church

St Stephen's Basilica

Buda Castle