A singular Hilbert scheme in Bath

After 10 hours on the train I am back in Münster now.
Looking back to the time in Bath I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who contributed to my stay which made it such a wonderful time for me. I never expected anything like that before.
Also to you, my dear readers, I want to say thank you for your patience and continued attendance. I hope to communicate directly soon. :)
As a farewell here a picture by ytc about how Bath looked today. :)

As stated before today was the day of my farewell recital, although it was not officially named such. For not too many people (about 20) we played about 55 minutes. The best piece in my eyes was "Im Abendrot" from the four last songs of Richard Strauss which was sung absolutely marvellously today. Not less moving pieces from Mendelssohn (O könnt' ich fliegen wie Tauben dahin, Sei stille dem Herrn), Bizet (Agnus Dei) Stölzel/Bach (Bist du bei mir) etc. Central part was the Air from the Suite in G major of JS Bach.
From the members of the parish's Sunday choir I got a big present after the concert: A picture of the Roman Baths in Bath together with a card with all greetings and signatures. I was completely surprised and amazed, since I had never expected anything like that. Clearly, I will miss this part of my stay in Bath very much! Should I ever come back (and I am planning to), I will not miss the choir rehearsal... ;)
Alright, enough for today, since tomorrow is my last day. I will try to make best use of it. :)
Good night, dear readers.

Time is running, that's what I experience at the moment coming towards the end of my stay in Bath. And even worse time is speeding up every day.
To give an example: Tonight I went out to The Salamander with some friends, colleagues and fellow PhD students from the department for farewell drinks. That gave me also the chance to discover that the impression I caused to people from southern countries cannot be to deep, since the two of them coming from Italy apparently forgot about the date, the venue or any other detail... ;)
Anyway, the six of us had a good time (pubs without smokers are definitely among the best political innovations of the last years!!).
Tomorrow will be the farewell recital at the church, before I take the day off on Monday for packing. I cannot say I am looking forward to that, although there is a nice workshop oncoming in Zurich next week.

Apart from the sunny morning there was also another reason to do the bricklaying work early (ok, not before 9:30 ;)) in the morning: This week starting yesterday the Mozartfest takes place in Bath, and tonight the four of us went to one of the highlights. The Tallis Scholars — being one of the worlds leading groups for sacred a cappella music — were giving a concert featuring Heinrich Schütz, Dietrich Buxtehude, Hans Leo Hassler, Hieronymus Praetorius and of course Johann Sebastian Bach. Also Allegri's famous Miserere was sung.
Since the tickets were almost sold out weeks in advance, the only seats we could still get were in the back of the singers. But this turned out to be a fabulous choice, because the acoustic was brilliant, so we could even understand some words of the lyrics. The best piece for me was "Ad Dominum cum tribularer" by Hans Leo Hassler with its extensive use of chromatic scales in the main motive wandering through all voices. A bit strange was the choice of Antonio Lotti's well known "Crucifixus" as an encore which although sung in a technically brilliant way deprived the piece of its inherent theological depth interpreting the underlying text. Therefore it appeared a bit flat compared to the rest of the concert on the one hand and my expectations on the other hand.
But altogether I must state that this concert was once more a wonderful experience of music like so many over the last weeks. ;)

A long time ago there was a post here about laying bricks for a staircase. As the time of my departure is drawing nearer — yes, only two weeks left :( — it was time to finish old projects. Luckily enough today seems to be a sunny day, so we completed the final 3.5 layers of bricks. Still to come is the sandstone on top of the brick construction, but I shall consider that to be a different story. ;) Even the bricks alone look pretty neat if I may say so. :)
To (ab)use someone else's words: Since something as simple as Rome was not built in one day, it is not a shame for such a complicated staircase to take 5 months... ;)

One concert per weekend is obviously not enough. At least I cannot think of another explanation for what happened on Monday. ;) The English Touring Opera was in Bath with Rusalka by Antonín Dvorak which gave us another nice evening with an excellent dinner first and a good performance after. The ensemble was admittedly very little, only a string quartet, a bass, oboe, clarinet, flute and French horn, but nonetheless the location and the performance were very enjoyable. Clearly my stay in Bath tends to accumulate the highlights towards its end...

As mentioned in my last entry I was in London yesterday for the Rededication Concert of the Grand Organ at St Paul's Cathedral played by Olivier Latry. He is 'Organiste Titulaire' at Notre Dame in Paris and one of the world's most famous players.
The programme was mostly French organ music, featuring Marcel Dupré, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne (Carillon de Westminster) and Léon Boëllmann as a da capo. Starting with JS Bach's Prelude and Fugue in G major Latry (introduced as Olíviay Laitry ;)) showed the full range of the organ's capabilities from soft strings to the full power of the English reeds. Almost 2 hours of great entertainment!

After a pleasant and even sunny day going home after university we found the car covered with rime for the first time this year: Frost has come to Bath, and not even over night but in the late afternoon. It feels like we are going from summer to winter in virtually no time at all.
As wintertime is drawing nearer the time of my farewell is approaching, too. But still there are some nice and exciting days to come I hope. At least my plans are flying high including a concert in London (Olivier Latry), an opera in Bath (Rusalka of Antonín Dvorak) an exhibition and last but not least a little recital I have to prepare myself. I will try to keep you up to date. :)

After a week more or less full of rehearsals we finally had our concert yesterday. Although the church was not quite full the impression I got was very nice. At least I enjoyed singing, although it was the first tenor part. ;) The programme consisted of works by Henry Purcell, one of the best known English composers of baroque time. That might seem a bit lopsided, but he had such a broad horizon musicwise that the variety of our programme was very satisfying in the end.
Sadly enough this seems to be my first and last concert with the Chantry Singers at the same time...

...home in Bath. :) After the last two months of the summer I might have to correct my opinion about British weather tonight. Today it was about 20°C and all sunny, even better than yesterday. Especially the evening was very nice. I could sit outside until late marking my new students' first problem sheets.
In case you haven't noticed yet: "If we take two symmetric matrices they are still symmetric." (2nd year BA Math)

Sometimes I really doubt if the order of the seasons is the same in England as on the continent... Since the formal start of autumn we had more sunny days than during the whole August and September. So far it looks like a golden autumn.
As you can imagine I do not mind more sun like for example today, and therefore spent most the day outside. First I went for a little promenade to the library (they have got some shiny new computers for self checkout, everything is running now using RFID chips), and later in the afternoon kept myself busy in the garden, even without bricklaying by the way since JamaicaBoy (can you understand? :D) is not around this weekend. ;)
For tomorrow I am going to prepare a German dinner, hope it turns out to be as good as expected, so wish me luck please. ;)
So long for today, I hope to welcome you again next time.

After a relatively long period without a movie (about 4 days) today I had the pleasure of a new French movie: Il y a long temps que je t'aime. Despite the suggestion of the title it is not the common type of love story every recent production obviously has to involve. Instead it reveals in a kind of "V-shaped" timeline the story of two sisters separated in their childhood and reunited 15 years later.
The only thing I dislike about that movie is the fact that virtually every protagonist smokes whenever possible. But apart from that this movie gets a recommendation.

Now that it is getting colder in Bath it is time to harvest the last remainings of the garden. Besides tomatoes, courgette and herbs (quite unexpected for me) also grapes. Since they were not quite sweet enough to make some wine, we will have a nice chutney next week. :)
The long running staircase project is also drawing nearer to its end, I hope we can finish it in two further sessions.
Also there are some news from the uni: I moved to a new office; I regard that as a promotion, since I have to share the new one only with a part time lecturer which means that I am alone most of the time.
Maybe I will have to tell something more by next week...

As you might have guessed from the rapidly increasing number of my blog entries during the last three days, I had a very enjoyable weekend, perhaps one of the best so far.
Practising at the organ in the morning I was joined by an excellent soprano, so we enjoyed some pieces of fabulous music together, among which was Strauß, Mendelssohn and Humperdinck. Maybe we will prepare a little concert before I leave...

By the time I got home the morning fog had almost vanished such that the sun could reveal its full strength. Therefore it was an obvious decision to go for a picnic. Since I had planned for a long time to do the Bath Skyline Walk this was maybe the last chance to do it. Not only was the weather almost perfectly suited to that purpose, but also is the green belt around Bath for sure one of the best places to walk around. One of the most prominent locations on that walk is Prior Park Landscape Gardens in Widcombe where we had our lunch break. You can find some photos in the gallery or below.









In the end we spent more than 5 hours out in the wilderness (that's the name of a part of the garden ;)) enjoying the sun ourselves and the nature around. Coming home in the evening I had another masterpiece of the "Cuisine Royale" for dinner: a marvellous Thai Curry first and for dessert a fabulous apple pie.

So far for today, I hope you understand that this weekend is hardly ever to be topped. :)

After a (maybe the last) sunny and warm day yesterday autumn shows his full power today. The morning was quite foggy and sun has not come out yet.
We tidied up the garden a little bit although it was chilly due to the hiding sun. Looking over the fence to the neighbour's garden I discovered that beautiful cobweb which together with the rose hips in the foreground proves that summer has finally gone.

Two postings at one day is my new record which might hold for some time. ;)

I just wanted to let you know what a perfect day I had today. Not only the weather was brilliant: sunny and not too chilly (about 20°C), but also did I learn some things. Starting in the morning when I came to understand the best lesson in Statistics I was ever taught (although there were not many ;)), it got even better when I finally managed to solve a little problem for my work which had been a pain in my back for a couple of days. That was why I was already high spirited at lunch time which might explain why I spontaneously decided to follow GingerCat's suggestion to extend the lunch break a bit to go down to the town for rowing on the Avon. We spent a very peaceful and quiet hour in our boat enjoying the sun and watching some birds and ducks (no photos of that, I am afraid, since I did not bring my camera to the uni). Maybe you can understand why some of my colleagues seemed a little bit jealous after my return to the office in the afternoon. ;)
If only every day was like this one...

Tomorrow I will attend another wedding and hopefully do some concrete work in the garden. May the sun shine upon us. :)

By the way, another nice discovery I made during the last week was last.fm, an internet radio service where you can choose the music yourself.

...and therefore also lots of events on the Parade, many people offering everything from posters to the membership in a rowing club. Of course that makes a lot of noise and unfortunately for those who take the bus to the uni also delays and overful buses.
Contrary to my expectations the weather turned out to be not too bad this week, but I have to admit it is autumn weather. Still some sunny patches, but a bit chilly. I uploaded some new photos I made today in the morning for you to enjoy. :)

After a week in Wuppertal for a "Summer School" (the word autumn school has not been invented apparently ;)) I came back to Bath yesterday. But obviously the sun does not like me to come to UK since after a very sunny week today it is a bit foggy and cloudy.
The workshop went well, it was nice to meet my friends from Wuppertal again, but I will have to improve my knowledge of physics for sure... But first of all there are some other things pressing. I will let you know...
No pictures for today since I did not bring my camera to Germany.

Hello dear fellows,

since my last post you know that I moved again my residence. :) Today now I was invited to a very special party at my old place. My former housemates are moving out today and so it was time to clean and tidy up everything. Before that they had a little "house cooling" party yesterday which I did not attend. So after Mass I went again to Oldfield Park to see what I could do.
I ended up in charge of the garden which was not the easiest job to do, since we only had a lawn mower instead of a chainsaw to cut down the grass (apparently for the first time this year). Additionally there was no rake around, so I had to carry all that freshly cut grass by hand.
After finishing the garden I was asked to clean a toilet which I did not even know about so far. From that you might guess how it looked.... For insiders: Even worse than the one at my place in Wuppertal at half level....
To give myself a little compensation I took a little detour on my way back which brought me to another one of the most beautiful (and of course posh) places of Bath: Lansdown Crescent. As I was without my camera I will have to postpone showing you some pictures. And the best thing about that walk: I saw the sun!!!

Yesterday I took the opportunity of a few hours without heavy rain to wander around towards Lansdown. That is a little village to the north of Bath where in 1643 the so called "Battle of Lansdown" between Royalists and Parlamentarists took place. From a farm house near the old battle field I had a great view over the eastern parts of Bath (Larkhall, Batheaston).

In a week I will go to Germany for a conference for one week, so be prepared for a little longer time without any posting here. :)

After a very British interpretation of the word 'Summer' last week I had a very pleasant weekend with lots of strolling around with my camera (photos to come). It is amazing how much one can discover with two feet and lots of time... And I had lots of time because Monday and Tuesday were bank holidays for some reason I could not yet find out. Anyway the effect was pleasant. ;)
But referring to today's title the best thing is still to come: On Tuesday I (once more) left my room in Oldfield Park and moved to Camden, one of the loveliest places in Bath. (see my gallery for an example) Yet that is not the best. Even better is the view over the city from here and best of all being together with good friends.  I am really looking forward to the weeks still to come.