Gundula’s Great Eurasian Roam: Healing Woods & Magical Violin Practice 🌲🎻✨

Finally, I’ve finished the most necessary family visiting duties and kept them short enough that everyone stayed happy, alive, and smiling! 😄🏡

Now, I can truly indulge in what I love most—something deeply healing, empowering, and sooooo satisfying: practicing my violin out in the wild woods 🌳🎶. Years ago, while preparing for my final exam at the Leopold Mozart Konservatorium, I spent day in, day out practicing in the forests 🎻. With six to eight hours of daily practice and some serious exam nerves, it was a genuinely tough time, but playing amidst the trees worked absolute wonders for my soul ✨. I packed a huge bag with food and drink, grabbed my violin, hopped on my bicycle, and cycled deep into the forest 🚴‍♀️🎼.

Forests carry sound beautifully. And as I only realised later, because they naturally filter out anything less than a clean, well-produced tone, they helped me develop a truly powerful, magic tone with incredible depth and differentiation 🌲.

Here is me back when I was 23:

And here is me recently, just last year, living in my mighty Ludwig VAN Beethoven (or, as my brother calls it, my snail's house) :

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/58dcc2_dd89983c868c4f51965721ca66023fa3/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Gund's Forest Practice 2026 - whilst I still wear almost the same colours, the technical equipment is certainly an addition :-)

I feel so blessed to have this opportunity once again—even if British forests never quite sound quite as intensely resonant as German ones! 🌳

Here is a little piece of evidence showing my joyful reconnection with the German forests: 👇✨

https://youtube.com/shorts/JMI3noXMEoc?feature=share