A couple of you have been asking me to keep you more updated on what's been going on with my adventures here in Europe. I'll do little posts here and there when I have some down time. The truth is, though, there is so much to do and see and so little time to do it, that I don't want to spend my time writing in a blog. And I'm honestly trying to "get away from it all" for a little while.
Now, that being said, I do have some down time today before I head out exploring again. And there will be a lot of value in this blog as a tool to remember my experiences. So, I can't promise I'll update this a lot, but between intermittent Instagram posts, which are shared to Facebook, and this blog, you should be able to figure out that I'm still alive and well. If you want to text me, you certainly can! Just download the app - WhatsApp, and it won't cost me .05 to 50 cents a text, :)
Tuesday, June 9th
Arrived in Berlin and made my way to my hotel, which I had booked for myself. Spent the next little while trying to stay awake, so I went for a walk around the area trying to find an electronics store to buy a power adapter. Found one. Bought one, Rejoiced. Explored more. Bought dinner at a grocery store (I was actually really excited for this. Wonderful cheeses, fresh bread, and great meat all at a very inexpensive price. Grocery store lunches were my favorite lunches on my mission. Quick, cheap, and tasty). I went back to the hotel, ate dinner, and fell asleep around 8:00 PM.
I woke up at 3:30 AM wide awake, so I did some research online, played around, and went for an early morning walk. Had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel, and then took off to find my hostel - Heart of Gold Hostel - where I would be staying for the next 3 days. I met my roommate for the tour - a 2nd year grad student of scenic design named Matthew. Cool dude, but I wouldn't see him very much in Berlin. He had a lot of friends from school in town.
After locking up my things, I went off to explore the town center in Berlin. Gorgeous buildings.
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| Altes Musem, Berlin, Germany |
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| Berliner Dom, Berlin, Germany |
I heard a violin playing somewhere, so I tracked her down and listened for about 15-20 minutes. It was beautiful, but tragic. Some of the music she was playing reminded me of the 1940s, and all I could think about was the depth of destruction and pain to the citizens of this beautiful city brought on by the choices of mankind during the 2nd World War and the time as the German Democratic Republic under Russian control. So much art, beauty, architecture, human spirit, and soul was destroyed under the oppressive times. I recorded a bit of her playing, but I'll have to upload that later. Her name is Olga.
Met the rest of the tour group, and it should be pretty fun. A few retired theatre professors, a couple working professionals, and a few design students. It's been really great so far!
That night I went back to the hostel and hung out in a lounge area with these three girls who I later learned were speaking a dialect of Spanish called Basque. They are from Northern Spain and only spoke limited English. We got to know each other a little bit - again, language barrier - but we ended up playing guitar and singing songs for a couple of hours. We communicated through a lot of gesturing, smiling, and Google translate. I played some of my favorite songs in English, they played and sang some beautiful Spanish music, and we took turns singing together songs in English that they knew - "Let It Be", Adele, a random country song - and then I tried to sing along in Spanish to their songs. By the end, I was pronouncing things pretty decently, I think. Oh, and ya. They're gorgeous. And also really cool people.
Thursday, July 11th
Went on a walking tour of Berlin with the main group today. We walked all over, and saw a lot of beautiful things.
Here a couple more videos demonstrating one method of creating storm effects. (Edit: the rest won't upload. They're cool, though.)
Wind effect
Of course, there were some fun toys and technologies to play with/look at...
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| Magic Panels |
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| Little baby birdies. How cute. |
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| Source 4 Mini - look how cute it is! |
I then went to see a play at the Maxim GORKI theatre in Berlin. I saw a show called Entertaining Mr. Sloane in German, with English subtitles. It was hilarious, wacky, conceptual, and exhausting all at once. I'm glad I went. Oh, and students tickets here are so cheap - only 8
€ at a semi-professional theatre. Amazing. The play was great, but I did fall asleep. Darn jet lag.
After the show, I went back to the hostel and ran into my Spanish friends and several others - a couple of Australians, a French-Canadian girl, a Mexican, a dude from Georgia (country), two Americans, and a girl from Argentina. We all hung out in the bar for a while, and then went out for drinks at a cocktail lounge. Though I didn't drink anything, it was fun to hang out with everyone. Hostels are so chill - everyone is just out to get to know each other and have a good time. I learned a bit of Farsi, and a lot about how to mix different drinks.
Oh, and when I say that everyone is out to get to know each other, I really mean it. This wasn't an issue with my group, but apparently has been in the past.
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| Stay classy, Berlin... |
All in all, though, it was a really cool place and I would definitely stay there again. I love getting to meet so many different people, all with different stories. Some very interesting people, with varying motives for their travels. A few people there just quit their jobs to travel for a few months and get drunk. One guy told me that that is his primary goal. Odd. Others are on a bit of a spiritual journey to rediscover themselves, and most of the others are there for work or a vacation. Either way, a lot of cool people. The longer I'm Germany, the stronger my desire to learn languages grows. I feel bad not speaking German, and try to speak it as much as possible in every interaction with Germans I have. I've been able to do 4 things completely in German. I can order gelato, ice cream, and bakery items in German, and order theatre tickets. So ya, you could say I'm practically fluent now...
I just feel like travellers who insist on only speaking their native language, and not even attempting to learn the language of the country they are visiting are doing themselves such a disservice. Getting to know the culture of the people by talking with them is my favorite part of travelling.
Next though, I want to learn Spanish. Sure, the 3 beautiful Spanish girls have something to do with that, but it's also widely spoken around the world, and would be very useful.
Friday, June 12th
We had a wonderful guided tour of the city of Potsdam from an American woman, who had been living in Germany since 1968. She had some sweet stories of contraband smuggling, embassy espionage, and life living in Germany during the cold war.
Potsdam is an absolutely gorgeous city.
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| River on the way - Palace in the background |
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| Potsdam bridge |
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| Hans Otto Theatre in Potsdam - Germany's "Sydney Opera House" |
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| Crown-Prince Wilhem's home - Famous for the Potsdam Conference |
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| Of all the palaces I've seen, this is one in which I would actually want to live. |
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| I mean, look at this place. |
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| Ice box |
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| Streets in the Dutch Quarter of Potsdam |
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| The Summer Palace of Frederick the Great |
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| In-the-way guy. |
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| Ooh, pretty. |
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| This place is insane. |
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| Amazing vineyards. |
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| You know, just my Summer Palace. |
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| Yup. This place is amazing. Your move, Italy. |
After the Potsdam tour, I decided to skip out on the tour of the Reichstag building and go see another show. I went and saw Fast Normal (Next To Normal) in German, and it was beautifully done.
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| Fast means almost in German |
This is one of my favorite shows, but I've only seen it twice. This German production was delightful. The set design was unique, but worked so well.
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| The LED Screen was awesome - part cyc, projection wall, and message board |
The lighting was chilling, and dramatic in all the right spots. The performances were outstanding - definitely on-par with the Broadway shows I've seen.
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| From the edge of the stage. |
Even though I couldn't understand it, I was brought to tears within the first ten minutes. The part of the show where Diana makes more and more sandwiches did me in. It was so well portrayed. I love it. I would love to see it again, because I tried desperately to stay awake - went out at intermission for a long walk, bought some caffeine and ate something, but when I got back for the second act I soon fell asleep and missed most of it. I was upset to have missed it. Sometimes you just can't help it. Like when I slept through the 2nd act of Wicked at the Pantages Theatre in LA, or when I slept through the last half of Violet on Broadway with Sutton Foster. If you see a show with me, your primary task should be to keep me awake. I would be so grateful.
After that, I went to try to find the Berlin Wall - at 11:00 PM. I found my way to Checkpoint Charlie, but the actual wall - the part I wanted to touch and look at - was boarded up for the night. Darn tourist attractions - how dare you be closed at midnight. I later found out that there is an open section of the wall in another part of the city, but it was too late. Next time!
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| "Berlin Wall - 1961-1989" |
Saturday, June 13th
We left Berlin for Dresden at 9, got to Dresden a couple hours later. The old town area of the city was, as you know, nearly completely destroyed by the Allied bombings of Dresden. It breaks my heart how much was lost. Nearly everything has been rebuilt these days, and it is absolutely gorgeous now.
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| At the Royal Palace - Dresdner Schloss |
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| Looking East at Dresdner Schloss |
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| Big rain storm for abut 30 minutes. Still gorgeous. |
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| Church of Our Lady - Dresdner Frauenkirche The black bricks are original, picked out from the rubble and rebuilt. The white bricks are new. |
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| Katholische Hofkirche - rebuilt |
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| Fountain at the Zwinger |
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| Katholische Hofkirche |
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| Aftermath of my birthday fireworks. |
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| Gorgeous. Katholische Hofkirche |
Sunday, June 14th
I went on a run this morning across the bridge and into the new town area of Dresden. Still gorgeous.
I made my way to the Dresden ward of the LDS Church, and it was very nice. I forgot that Germany has stakes and wards, and when I walked in and asked where to go, they hooked me up with some English translation headsets. Pretty sweet.
After church, I walked a few miles across town to get to the Semper Opera House (Semperoper), where we had a tour from the Technical Director of the opera house. It is an incredible building, and has been built three times. Originally in the middle 19th century, and then again about 40 years later after it had burned down. It was used all the way until it was completely blown up in 1945 during the Dresden Bombings. It was rebuilt from 1976-1985 in the time of the German Democratic Republic. The really crazy part? The entire building was rebuilt without any of the original architectural plans. The new plans were all done from photographs and the memories of the earlier patrons of the opera house.
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| The 2nd floor lobby |
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| View from the balcony |
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| Inside the theatre. |
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| The Iron stage Curtain was in. |
Backstage is enormous. There are essentially 4 full stages backstage, each of which can be fully set up offstage with the set for Acts 1, 2, or 3. The center stage lowers, and then the other stages can be mechanically moved into place over top of the center stage. They perform shows in repertory, and changeovers take two crews of 40 stagehands 3 hours to fully changeover from show to show.
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| Backstage looking stage left. |
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| Same position looking stage left. |
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| Looking stage right. |
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| And all the way stage right. |
The opera has fully in stock costumes, scenery, and performers to put on 47 different operas and 45 different ballets at any time. 1,300 - 20' by 8' by 8'6" storage containers spread around town contain the set, and there are an additional number of storage containers for costumes. They have a yearly budget from the government of 50 million Euros, plus an additional 20 million Euros from ticket sales. The budget for materials cost alone for a typical set is 100,000 - 150,000 Euros. Insane.
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| In the basement. The tracks in the floor have a flat wagon which is used for transporting 20' storage containers full of set pieces. |
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This was taken shortly after the Dresden bombings.
This whole theatre was rebuilt from photographs and memories... Insane. |
Well, that takes me up until tonight - Sunday evening, June 14th. I'll close this post with some pictures from my morning run. I'll try to write more next Sunday. Until then, keep on, keeping on.
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| Elbe River |
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| No idea, but it's cool. |
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| Yup, don't know. |
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| An old puppet theatre. |
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| Fun little sign across the river from Old Town. |
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| Looking North-West(ish) |
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| Terrace garden in Old Town |
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| Something in Old Town. |
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| Good healthy breakfast - Erdbeer-Plunder (Croissant with vanilla pudding and strawberries) |
1 comments:
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