The Theater, the theater...

Sorry for that weird font size change last time...not quite sure what happened.  This week has been fantastic so far.  On Tuesday night our group went to a place called the Weinerei to meet our German language partners.  When you go in you pay 1 euro for a glass of wine and then when you leave you pay how much you 'think you owe.'  Surprisingly people are pretty honest.  I made some German friends at the event and have hung out with them a couple of times since then.  Two of the people I met even lived in Minnesota for a year! 

Wednesday night was the opera MacBeth at the historic Staatsoper (The State Opera House).  Our seats would've been considered "obstructed view" on ticketmaster, but I still enjoyed it.  Lady MacBeth was batshit crazy though...her hair and costumes were so different every time I thought there were about three extra characters.  Thursday night I tagged along with the theater class here and went to Fruhling's Erwachen (Spring Awakening) at the Berliner Ensemble Theater.  The play was all in German and is what the musical is based on in the US.  The play was written in the late 1800s and to me the content was very shocking for the time.  The staging for this particular production was really quite something with modern looking black and white swiveling panels contrasted with old fashioned costumes.  There was a scene at the end where a dead guy is back as a sort of ghost and is holding his head separate from his body and it was very reminiscent of the makeup used in Beetlejuice.  

Anyway...last night was yet another performance night.  During the day yesterday I went to Sachsenhausen, which was one of the first concentration camps.  It was mostly used for political offenders at the start of the war and was eventually used to punish German soldiers after the Soviet invasion.  I was surprised by how little emotion I felt there.  Even with exhibits and a guide it was still pretty hard to imagine.  It was still interesting to see though.  After that, I went to the opera with my two visiting professors...yes I'm a nerd.  We saw La Traviata and it was absolutely gorgeous.  As soon as the music started I thought no way! This is the opera they go to in Pretty Woman! I'm embarassed to say that I knew most of the music from that movie.  This was my favorite opera by far and the whole night with my professors was maybe one of the best I've had in Berlin so far.  They're so nice!

However, I am not just kicking it with the profs.  After the opera I met up with some friends at a bar in Kreuzberg, which is relatively trendy.  The bar we were at had live music and the band was really cool.  It was hilarious though because they played this one song twice where the chorus was, "the penis is lost. the penis is lost. the penis is lost in space...3X" We were all kind of dumbfounded at first because the song was sort of bizarre.  The song was actually pretty catchy though and by the end the whole crowd was singing along.  After that some of us tried to meet up with German university students but probably to none of your surprise, I still get really tired and can't be out until the early morning, so I guess that last part of the night was a wash.  Tonight I have one more performance to cap off this week's art week...wish me luck!

Ellen