My Second Spring Break in Germany and Prague

This past week was quite different from my trip to Italy back in March. It was a strange combination of being relaxed and being extremely busy, but it worked, somehow.

To begin at the beginning – a week ago Saturday, we traveled about 7 hours by train from Strasbourg to Berlin, managed to find our hostel (which was the first of the rather nice hostels we had), and went out for dinner. Unfortunately, though our Thai food was quite yummy and cheap, it took the restaurant 20 minutes to get all 8 of our dinners out, which meant we ended up being just a few minutes late to the Berlin Philharmonic. One way Germany is different from France – everything starts exactly on time. So, we watched the first half of the concert from the lobby TVs, but even through the TV, I could tell that the orchestra was pretty darn amazing. For the second half, we got the full experience of the awsomeness that is the Berlin Philharmonic. Our seats were behind the orchestra, which meant that we were looking right at Seiji Ozawa, as if we were being conducted as well. It was an unbelieveable experience – to see Seiji Ozawa at work, and have this wonderful music surrounding you (the concert hall, of course, has ridiculously amazing acoustics, possibly better than Carnegie Hall – I can’t remember three years ago very well), and it was so easy just to let yourself go and be enveloped by the music. Every single instrument was exactly in time with the others, not a single one stuck out any more than the rest – there could have been one violin, viola, cello, and bass, except that that would have been much quieter. The brass and timpani players, despite having to count for most of the piece (it was a Bruckner symphony, but I’ve forgotten the number), always came in perfectly – in time, exactly correct pitch, tone, everything. All 7 of the students were ready to marry the french horn soloist after the concert (if only because he was astoundingly good at the french horn – he didn’t have much else going for him). In short, I think that might be the best concert I’ve ever heard. I know I saw the Vienna Philharmonic 5ish years ago when my parents, Beth and I were in Vienna, but I can’t remember the concert so well now. The Berlin Philharmonic, though, took my breath away. If someone wants a little taste of heaven on earth, I would say book a trip to Berlin and get tickets for the Philharmonic. Just be sure to buy the tickets pretty well in advance, and get to concert hall early. :)

Sunday in Berlin was mostly free. After a relaxed start, Claire and I went to the Berlin Zoo, and though we spent about an hour and a half there, we didn’t see the whole zoo. It was a beautiful day, though, and the animals were certainly out and about. As neither of us had been to a zoo in a while, we both really enjoyed it. After a bratwurst of some kind on the run, we met our professor and the other students for a 3-hour walking tour of Berlin. Our tour guide, Torben, who was from New York but has lived in Berlin for six years, was an amazing guide. Even though the tour was long, it was very enjoyable, and most of what I was hoping to see in Berlin was covered by the tour. We learned a lot, which is always nice when one takes a tour. Some highlights from the tour sites: we walked through Museuminsel, where Berlin’s best museums are located, saw a lot of important churches including the Berlin cathedral, the Brandenburg Gate, Hitler’s bunker (that was a little eerie, especially as now there are luxury apartments built around the area – the Germans don’t associate much importance with the bunker, as that was only one small thing in the grand scheme of WWII), the longest stretch of the Berlin wall that’s still standing, and Checkpoint Charlie. The bummer part about Checkpoint Charlie, though, is that everything is a replica – the guard house and sign saying “you are entering the American sector” are not from the days of divided Germany, but have been put there since Germany has been reunited. Torben also had a story up his sleeve for pretty much every sight we stopped at – from the man who locked his wife and son in a broom closet all day at the building where he worked, so after hours he could hook up a cable from the roof to the other side of the wall and get to West Berlin, to people who rented the lowest car they could find and zoom under the gate at Checkpoint Charlie in the middle of the night, to name two. A very interesting tour, and very fun. After the tour, Claire and I went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which was cute and interesting, even if their English translations were a little funny. The things people did to escape East Germany… it was amazing. After dinner, we called it a night.

Monday was our completely free day in Berlin, and Claire and I enjoyed ourselves. We started at the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building, and waited about an hour to get through security and see the view from the top. I will say, though, the view was AMAZING. You could see pretty much the entire city, and as it was yet another sunny day, it was not bad at all. After a quick lunch, we went to the Pergamon Museum, which houses Berlin’s most impressive ancient artifacts. The museum is named after the Pergamon Altar, from the ancient Greek city of Pergamon, and the altar is huge. Not only is it tall, but the whole structure is covered by wall sculptures depicting the battle between the gods and the titans. Very impressive, indeed. Another major artifact housed in the museum is the processional way of Babylon, which ends with the Gate of Ishtar. Nebuchadnezzar II (of Shadrach, Mishach, and Abendago fame) had built this walk and gate, and the tiles have either survived quite nicely or been very prettily restored (probably the latter), and the walk and gate are beautiful. And very big. I felt even shorter than normal walking through them, but I didn’t mind. The impressive architecture of ancient times tends to have that effect on me, sometimes. :) We walked around the rest of the museum a little, and then decided to swing by the Rathaus before heading back to our hotel for dinner, and to change for the opera we went to Tuesday night. The opera was really, really, really strange, though – I don’t think I liked it. It was Lady Macbeth von Mensk by Shostakovich (he only wrote two operas), and was about this woman (named Katerina) who was bored with her married life, takes a lover, her father-in-law gets jealous (because he decided to sleep with Katerina while his son was away, but discovers the lover), so Katerina kills her father-in-law, then husband comes home and gets jealous, so she and lover kill husband. That’s basically the first two acts, and they were LONG. The second two acts consist of Katerina and lover preparing to get married, but after they are arrested for the murder of husband (no one really figures out that Katerina had killed father-in-law), they’re sent to Siberia for prison, where lover falls in love with on of the other prisoners, and uses Katerina to secure the other prisoner’s love, then Katerina gets jealous, and kills the other prisoner and herself. Jolly opera, that one. And really hard to stay attached to. The orchestra was good, I think, but as the story was so bizarre, I had a hard time paying attention to the music. But, not everything is the Berlin Phil. :)

Tuesday morning, we left Berlin and headed off to Dresden. We arrived, found our second nice hostel of the trip, and went into the city to explore. After finding a map, Claire, Dr. Nick and I went to the newly rebuilt Frauenkirche, which is really, really colorful. It almost looks like a children’s play place, except that it’s a church. It was cute, though, even if the bright yellows, pinks, and blues made it feel very different from your usual church. Claire and I decided to do something a little silly and go the German Hygenic Museum after the church. Not sure if that was the best way to spend the afternoon, but it was certainly different. Sadly, it took us longer to get there than we thought, so we only had time for the special exhibition and no time to walk through the permanent exhibits. The special exhibition was interesting, though – it was about the Third Reich doctors’ experiments with eugenics (basically, their belief that the Aryan Race was superior, and the experiments they performed to drive their point home). Not the most cheerful exhibit, but it did make you think. The other interesting part is that it’s an exhibit from New York on loan to the museum in Dresden, and there was no hint of bias or views at all – just straight facts. After checking the time and realizing we had run out of it, we walked as fast as we could back towards center Dresden to meet up with the others for a walking tour of Dresden. We had another good guide, though he was not nearly as young and cute as our guide in Dresden (another point of Torben’s appeal, I suppose ;) ). Our Dresden guide showed us the main sights of Dresden, including the castle, the cathedral, Frauenkirche, and the mosaic of all the Saxon rulers by the king’s building (Dresden is the capital of the state of Saxony). After the walking tour, however, Claire and I were both feeling pretty beat, so we just went to an internet café near our hotel to get in touch with the world again, got take-out for dinner, and ate it while we watched 10 Things I Hate About You. Claire had never seen that movie – I couldn’t believe it. It’s one of the classic chick flicks, in my opinion, and by the time one is 20, I definitely think it’s a must-see movie. :)

Wednesday, we took a day trip to Leipzig. I enjoyed the day, but I’m not sure how interesting the city would be to a non-music person. We began with a short detour into Nikolaikirche, which was J. S. Bach’s secondary church in Leipzig. After that, we went to the Bach museum, which was cute and interesting. It’s not actually Bach’s house, as the complex he shared with the other professors and students of Thomasschule (where Bach taught when he wasn’t writing music) no longer exists, but the museum is approximately in the same place. Right across from the museum is Thomaskirche, where Bach worked for about 25 years. Most of his pieces were written for this church, and as he was required to have new service music every Sunday, it explains why he has so much music published. The church wasn’t terribly exciting, but just to be in the church that means so much for today’s music history, considering nearly all music written after Bach was pretty much based on his theories, was a cool experience. After Thomaskirche, we visited Mendelssohn’s house in Leipzig. Mendelssohn was very important in reviving Bach’s music in the 1800s, so it was only fitting for him to spend his last years in the city where Bach had spent so much time. We didn’t have too much time between Mendelssohn’s house and our train back to Dresden, but we had enough time for ice cream (paid for by Syracuse University – yay!), and a little wandering time before we made our way back to Dresden for another opera concert. The eight of us met Professor (Raymond) Bach in Dresden, as Dr. Nick had to return to Strasbourg on Thursday and Prof. Bach would continue with us to Prague. The opera in Dresden was very different from the one in Berlin. Though the opera (The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz) isn’t very modern, the entire set was modern. The middle of the stage was a tunnel, in which the dancers and singers would climb around, and the chorus was dressed kind of like construction workers, and came in and out on the sides of the stage, which had platforms that resembled what you would see at a construction site. The production was very colorful, with the back of the tunnel opening to reveal a TV screen of sorts that they would show different “shows” on – one resembled a racing video game, at one point there was footage from the world wars, another time we saw JFK. I also think, though I had a lot of trouble understanding the French and the German subtitles didn’t help me much, that the opera was supposed to be set in a military hospital in the States. Various US icons made appearances – there was one point that the dancers were all wearing stars-and-stripes costumes, and they had big masks on of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, a cowboy, a Native American, etc., and another point, the girls were all dressed up as cheerleaders and the boys were dressed as football players. That was definitely an experience – seeing a French opera performed in Germany with the US’s stereotypes frolicking on the stage. And though I couldn’t understand the plot at all (something about Faust falling in love with this girl, and Mephistopheles wants to bring the two together so he can tear them apart and get Faust to sign to be on his side – Mephistopheles is devil-esque, but not actually the devil), the production was phenomenal. There was so much action, so much emotion… it was a little crazy, but it was good. Also the music was much easier to follow and had more emotion than Lady Macbeth von Mensk, so I enjoyed listening to the orchestra much more, and actually remembered the music this time. :) After the opera, since it was Dr. Nick’s last night on the trip and Alyssa (one of the other music students) was leaving from Prague for the States (and therefore it would be the last time the whole group of music people would be together), the seven of us took Dr. Nick and Prof. Bach out for drinks. Kind of silly, but it was fun, and I think Dr. Nick appreciated it.

Thursday, we left Dresden to go to Prague, and said farewell to Dr. Nick. After getting to Prague (and finding our hostel), we discovered that our hostel had overbooked, and we were transferred to their 3-star partner hotel. Not so bad, except the fact that it was a little frustrating and were worried about running out of time before we could get lunch and get into the city for our third walking tour of the week. We did have time, fortunately, and we had another good guide for Prague. This tour also lasted about 3 hours, but was a little more relaxed than Berlin. We didn’t have quite as many sites to see, but we still got a fair amount of the city – Old Town Square, the Jewish Quarter, various churches and synagogues, the palace where the Czech government works today, the cathedral (which is enclosed by the castle), and the Charles Bridge, for the highlights. After scarfing down our dinner after the tour, we made our way to the State Opera Theatre for Verdi’s La Traviatta. Out of all the operas I saw this past week, this one was by far the most normal. It’s your traditional opera story – boy meets girl, they fall in love, misunderstanding occurs, girl leaves though she doesn’t want to, boy gets mad, girl starts getting really sick (from consumption, of course), boy realizes his mistake and tries to make up for it, but girl dies before they can get married. And though this story was much easier to understand (despite the opera being in Italian and the subtitles in Czech), by the end of the opera, I was far less moved than I was by The Damnation of Faust. It might have been the set – it was very simple, and not very engaging. It also might have been that the singers were more singers than actors, and so they didn’t capture me as much as the singers in Dresden. But, it was still refreshing to have something easy to follow after two very confusing operas. After the opera, we went out for dessert, as we didn’t have a chance to eat dessert before the opera, and Thursday was Theresa’s birthday. When we got back to the hotel, the real celebrations started, and at one point, the lady sleeping in the room next to us had to come tell us to be quieter… oops. But, as I remained sober for the night, I could help keep the noise level down. :) At 2 in the morning, I decided I could go to bed even if the others kept celebrating, but they ended up just watching Grey’s Anatomy, and collapsing on the bed. I woke up at one point, and saw Elizabeth, Theresa, Alyssa, and Kristen all completely passed out on the double bed – it was really cute, but I was too tired to think about taking a picture. At 4:15 am, Alyssa left for her plane back to the States, and after that, I could just sleep.

Friday was a little weird. First, I woke up sick, and didn’t have the energy to leave the hotel, though I really didn’t want to pass up a free day in Prague. Around lunchtime, I finally decided I wanted to leave, and as I felt slightly better, Claire and I went to visit a couple sites. We saw the church she had sung in two years earlier with her college choir, and then went to the National Marionette Theatre to pick up our tickets for the show Friday night. Unfortunately, they cancelled the show at the last minute to put on a children’s show, so we couldn’t see Don Giovanni as performed by marionettes. :( However, the guy we talked to at the theatre was incredibly nice, and let us in to see the stage, and gave us a whole history about the theatre and the marionette company, all in pretty good English. It was very nice of him, and he definitely didn’t have to do that. So though we couldn’t see the performance, it was still a nice trip to the marionette theatre. We stopped at a café close to the theatre, in hopes that eating something might give me some strength, and over the rest of the afternoon, I did begin to feel slightly better. We then wandered around the Charles Bridge area, looking at souvenirs (I didn’t end up buying anything), and after a very overpriced dinner (we ate at an Italian pizzeria that was playing American oldies – in the Czech Republic – interesting combination), albeit with a nice waiter, we went to the park on the hill next to the castle to watch the city lights come on. The hill is far above the city and offers an excellent view, and is one of the most peaceful places I’ve been to in a very long time. Very few people came up as far as we went, and we were surrounded by birds singing, with a monastery at our back. After a fairly busy week, it was very relaxing just to sit there and be still for a little while. After that, we went back to the hotel and crashed.

Yesterday, Saturday, was entirely uninteresting. It took about 11 hours, including layovers, to train it from Prague back to Strasbourg, and then I was too tired to do much of anything once I got back to my house. It was very nice, though, to come “home” again, be in my own bed, and especially in my own room again. Sharing a room with 2-4 other people for a week straight can get interesting…

And just to let you know, as I took 400 pictures this last week, it'll be some time before I post my pictures from this vacation... sorry. :)

My break isn’t entirely over yet – the Conservatoire, which is my only work left now that I’m done with classes, is closed Monday and Tuesday, which means it will be a little hard for me to practice. I’ve decided, as a little extension to my birthday celebrations, I’m going to visit Nancy (the city) tomorrow, and then I can cross Nancy off my list of places to see before I leave France. It’s only an hour by train from Strasbourg, and hoping there are still tickets left (I only decided this last night), am planning on having a nice day in the city with which I share a name.

Speaking of my birthday… Other than visiting Nancy, my birthday plans will be eating dinner on the river in Strasbourg, and then going to Haagen Daaz for a scrumptious, if rather expenisive, sundae for dessert. So, I’m 20 today. I can no longer claim teenagerhood – guess I better start acting like an adult now. :)

And as a little side note, thank you to all for the cards, both snail mail and e-mail, Facebook posts, and e-mails I’ve gotten today. They have certainly made me smile. :)