It may have been my first audition since Covid, but I think my lasting memory of yesterday will be that it was remarkably wet. I chose my adjective carefully there.
It was always going to be a day of adventure. I left my flat at 5am in light drizzle, equipped for the 7.5hr trek across the country with some good books and a cereal bar. The man in front of me on the train was also in it for the long haul - although had rather more lavish provisions - and we got up at each station to have a little stretching break together. No words spoken, but we nonetheless reached mutual consensus that this was our thing.
By lunchtime I was in Berlin, and off to a friend's flat to warm up (thank you Lee and Tim!) By now the rain was what you might call horizontal. Not quite skin soaking but starting to creep into my toes...
From central Berlin, to Schöneberg for the main event. With hindsight, I should have taken a cab.
By the time I got off the tube at Yorckstraße, the rain was truly torrential. My boots were filled from the bottom and the top. My clothes were soaked into my skin. My umbrella didn't stand a chance - and about halfway through the 15 minute walk (which felt a lifetime) it gave up the ghost and died on me. My suitcase - purchased for €20 the day before - put up a good fight, but I believe that even the most expensive, designer suitcase would have succumbed at some point.
And so, I arrived. I had a dry dress packed in my case, which was luckily unscathed, but as soon as I put it on, it soaked straight through. I hadn't realised until this point that the rain had permeated every inch of my skin. Let's not even discuss my hair... Thanks to the foresight of putting my arias in a plastic wallet - only the top edge of each score had turned to wallpaper paste - the staves themselves were salvaged.
And so it was in this state that I went into my first audition in 6 months. It went surprisingly well, and the lady auditioning was kind enough to take me seriously despite looking worse than Elizabeth Bennett after she had trekked to Netherfield. By the end of the 20 minutes, there was a small pool of water at my feet. I had made my mark.
I spent a good ten minutes before leaving wringing out my casual clothes in the bathroom, and then it was on to the delights of the city. But that's for part 2!