The frogs of Göttingen - and Seeburger See

Anyone who's hung around this blog for a long time may remember my account of first acquaintance with the more unexpected choruses of the Göttingen International Handel Festival, when I fell in love with the symphony of brekekekexes in the University of Göttingen's magical Botanical Gardens. On two subsequent visits, their stridency was rather muted - last year's epiphany with a mallard and his drake made amends - but not this past week. It meant a fair bit of hanging around, though, until I finally saw the above fella on one of the lilypads and, in following his progress, got the full sonic works. There's a lot of jumping, but blink and you'll miss the bubble-gum inflating to make the noise early on.

As I explained in last year's blog, the time of the Festival depends on where in the calendar the Germans' Ascension Day holiday falls. This time we were back to the end of May, when the aquilegias are flourishing

and providing a major source of nectar for the bees.

I actually got a double dose of ranine activity on the first full day of my visit to the Festival this year. Not ideal, sleepwise, since I'd got up at 5.30am on Wednesday morning for an early flight and had to do so at 3.30am on Thursday for the GIHF's second 'sunrise concert'. Still, it had to be done: my all-day Messiaenic birdsong experience at Aldeburgh last year taught me that. So after a stunning performance of  a work which came as a revelation to me, Handel's early (and pre-Bach St Matthew and John) Brockes-Passion on Wednesday evening, I decided it made sense to skip Continuum's late-night event and get something approaching four hours' sleep (by the way, all the events I did attend I'll be writing up on The Arts Desk next weekend).

As at Aldeburgh, the dawn chorus was one attraction. It seemed to be starting up in the tree-lined streets of Göttingen as I walked through the near-darkness at 4am to get the coach to our destination. But on arrival at the Seeburger See 45 minutes later, with the red glow of pre-sunrise across the lake,

the full thing was definitely in full spate. You may not see much of what I could, as  I walked through the woods near the lakeside in this short film, but you'll hear what you need to. Of course, our ranine friends soon come into earshot by a small pond.

Then I joined the few other concertgoers who hadn't gone straight into the warm on arrival

seeing this to the left

and some old boathouses to the right.

The one-hour concert began at 5am on the first floor of the Restaurant Graf Isang (est. 1925), with candles lighting our way upstairs and strategically placed in front of the surprise instrument - a clavichord, no less, the first time I've ever heard one live in concert.

Although the actual programme is the territory of my Arts Desk piece, we must just see young Avinoam Shalev, one of the already more than promising prizewinners in which the GIHF has placed justified faith. Israeli by birth, Hanover trained and now living in The Hague, he led us into a mesmerising meditation on the sounds and colours possible within the quieter end of the dynamic range the instrument inhabits. The sun actually rose behind the willows to our left at about 5.25am, as he was in to the first movement of Haydn's G minor Sonata Hob. XVI: 44. I took this picture, of course, in a break between movements, not during, as no official photographer was present.

A bow to a wildly enthusiastic if necessarily small and select audience: note the bird of prey in the first complete window pane on the left behind our clavichordist.

The sun went behind early morning clouds - by 9am a clear blue sky would emerge - but that didn't deter me from taking my breakfast out on to the terrace.

This turned out to be a good idea, or maybe it was just a case of attracting kindred spirits, because first our coach driver, a very interesting and friendly guy called Jan who'd stood for the whole recital, asked if he could join me. Then Avinoam appeared (pictured left), followed by our chaperone Enno (who said he had to stay out of this picture so as not to block the lake view) and Lisa Kraemer from the GIHF Artists' Office.

So we had a happy time - and there was plenty of it, the coach not due to leave until an hour and a half after the concert - mainly fulminating about Brexit and Trump (the legs you may see in the background belong to a bizarre dummy who had an unfortunate resemblance to the latter). This wasn't the only occasion at Göttingen this year where I have cause to invoke the suitable observation of Kurt Vonnegut's uncle on blessed gatherings in lovely places, 'if this isn't nice, what is?'

In fact that was also true of a last meeting yesterday (Sunday) morning at our favourite haunt in Göttingen, the Cafe Botanik. Pictured here, our wonderful co-ordinator, now a friend, Victoria Viebahn, critic Luca and his friend Christian.

You may also have read on this blog before about the Botanik, still run by an Iranian whose menu is small but perfect. On a hot afternoon I had a refreshing glass of sharbat as well as a hummus plate, and yesterday saffron cake was the only option in the absence of croissants - but delicious.

Inevitably, with less than an hour to go before my train back to Hanover Airport, I had to make a last homage to the frogs, taking Victoria with me, and the inhabitants of the noisiest pond were still to be found.

Their neighbours several blocks to the south set up quite a racket, too, and this time the birds were obliging, both aurally and visually.

So I said this farewell to another inhabitant,

found another bee nectar-sipping, this time in a peony

and noted various positive signs of Germany today - funny, isn't it, how its chancellor is now officially the Leader of the Free World - including this sign in the rather deracinated part of the garden (it's now in need of more finances, and too dependent on volunteers)

and these papers and magazines on a rack inside the Cafe Botanik, snapshotting Obama's meeting with Merkel in Berlin as well as Macron, 'dear friend'*,

 and made my way back to the station via the lovely town museum, currently housing a neat little exhibition on Lutheranism arriving in Göttingen (relatively late, in 1529, with predictably disastrous consequences). Maybe more on that in a future entry, but the ensemble is irresistible.

*It actually turns out to need taking in its other meaning of 'expensive', as two folk have pointed out to me; the subheading is how Macron will cost Germany. But the leader actually ends with the conclusion that togetherness for European countries is the only way ahead.

Back to Göttingen: unter den Linden

I could have had lime blossom tea, but in fact this is a finished double espresso outside at Göttingen's Cafe Botanik, still run to judge from that wonderful crockery by Iranian German Manoucher Amin, with the flowers fallen on the table from above (if slightly rearranged). That place was one of two things I keenly anticipated on my return to the International Handel Festival after three years' absence - apart from the performances, of course. The other was the croaking of the frogs in the University Botanic ponds. Never heard such a sound as I'd encountered on my first two visits.

This, alas, was a bit too early in May for full brekekekex coax coax-ing, captured in the film I embedded after the first, 2011 visit, and for that matter for the water lily flowers seen in that entry; since the festival always starts on the Ascension Day holiday, it depends on the religious calendar. But the froggies could still be seen if you looked carefully

and the main thing was the extraordinary quasi-summer weather; Göttingen had been experiencing an intensely cold spring until our arrival, and then along came shirtsleeves-and-dining-outside weather. Even the three visits to the Botanics on each full day I was there showed a rapid onrush. Bloomings observed on Day One (6 May): Tulipa silvestris and Iris pallida adding colour to the as yet minimalist order beds,

Narcissus poetica in the higher-level beds,

a tree peony flower at its height,

dwarf irises flourishing

while the more standard variety was still in bud.

Plus, among the trees, the Acer palmatum 'Atropurpureum' is a glory of the rock garden,

the leaves of the Hamamelis japonica provide some of the most intense greens

the wilder woodland to the north-east featured some attractive lichen

and various ferns were unfurling in the very bright sunlight.

If the frogs were not as yet vocal, wildlife still obliged around the lake. A mallard hen was out on the water keeping a watchful eye on her brood

and when a drake and his mate came up to the bench in the shade where I was sitting, I imagined they were on the lookout for food, but in fact they settled quietly within metres after a bout of self-grooming and dozed. The Bach bag from Thuringia, by the way, was a subversive gesture at the Handel Festival (but surely any self-respecting Handelian would surely acknowledge who's God).

Seeing this mallard hen shutting and half-opening her eyes, and observing the way she breathed in and out, made me resolve never to eat duck again. Am I being discriminatory against the far less social goose, specimens of which nearly had my guts for garters at a Connemara wedding?

Day Two (7 May) brought me to morning coffee with guiding festival spirit Victoria Viebahn (on the right below) and some of the other writers she'd invited along. I won't embarrass them by naming them all.

Several were subsequently amazed by what lay beyond the tunnel by the cafe. There are two: this one is less extensive, but gives you some idea of the green vision beyond.

The tree-lined path along what used to be the city walls, broken only in the zone of the concert hall and State Theatre, bisects the Botanics and helps create this sense of apartness on one side (even though the ring road is not far away). Looking down from the path

and up towards it from the area of the smaller ponds and order beds

as well as from in front of one of the greenhouses on the 'worldly', cafe side. 

I did pop into some of them, and admired the typically German/Swiss collection of spiky devils from Madagascar. Here's Pacypodium lamerei with Senecio crassissimus attaching itself.

The last visit on 8 May, with the Italian and Bolivian among our contingent, witnessed another visitor. Again, we get plenty of herons by the Thames, but this one - I think it's a Great Blue to judge from the markings and the beak - was especially approachable

until it decided to take short flights around the Gardens, always settling close to its take-off point.

I've never known blackbirds to come quite so close as the ones in Göttingen - this male near the gunnera -

though the pair in the back yard here are always happy to splosh about not far from me the minute I've set down fresh water, about which they seem to be most particular. Mrs B has only just hopped out of this picture.

Anyway on that last day in Göttingen, the peonies, mostly in bud two days earlier, had decided to put on their show

and bees were happy that they had.

On, after that, to the university's art collection on its special Sunday opening (I was the only visitor). And I must return to other Göttingen discoveries new to me this year. In short, I really can't think of a more perfect town, both living and historic, among all the ones I've seen to date.