My first day out of North Carolina was rather exhausting and mostly because I lost six hours out my schedule. This entry I devote to the amazing airline that is Lufthansa. Honsetly, the classiest airline I've yet to fly on.
First of all, their flight attends are mostly tall, gorgeous Germans and when they walked through the terminal as a group, everyone turned heads. After walking on the airbus, I found that my seat had a new blanket, pillow, and headsets. This should be expected on any international flight, but I can't say the same things about KLM/Northwest. The next impressive thing was that mixed drinks, beer, and wine did not cost anything extra when the first drink/snack cart rolled down the aisle. Dinner wasn't amazing, but it was rather good for airplane food and of course came with more wine. The mos beautiful part of the flight was that among the options for in-flight entertainment was an opera, "Rusalka" by Dvorak.
I love the music, it was well-sung and really well acted (especially the soprano who sang the title role), but it was definitely a German production (Bayreuth Festival). What's obvious about German productions? They are dark, depressing, and suck the life out of you. I know they are trying to make commentary about society or human nature, and while they were once probably cutting edge, audiences are growing tired of them. And tired of such depressing themes. "Rusalka" is the Czech story of The Little Mermaid. Instead of Ariel (I'm going with Disney names) happily singing with her sisters underwater, and then seeking the human world for adventure and love. This production painted the picture a little differently. "Under the sea" was actually a flooded basement and King Triton kept the daughters locked down in the basement for his own, sick pleasure. Instead of Ursula being the only villain, Ursula and Triton were a completely dysfunctional alcoholic couple who did everything out of spite. Neither are good. Triton regularly rapes his daughters in the opening act. In fact after he's had his way with Ariel, she's had enough and goes to see Ursula who helps become human and this production also has blocking hinting at that she also performs an abortion on Ariel. In addition to such a tragic twist to an already tragic story, the entire chorus comes on stage in wedding dresses (men too) and dance with deer carcasses and the dances are rather erotic and it ends with the each eating their own deer and being covered in blood. Rather than Ariel being a victim of young love we end with Ariel being a victim of male abuse and the final scene placers her in a mental institute with all of her sisters.
After such a depressing production I decided to watch a happy movie that would possible put me to sleep. It was happy, but I could not fall asleep until I watched a concert of Chopin piano concerto #2, and that only lasted one hour.
My connecting flight was actually a connecting train ride from Frankfurt to Stuttgart. But once I got to the trainstation I missed the Bachackademie employe who was to direct me where to go. So I to the S-Bahn (subway) to the airport terminal to try and find the airport contact, Jutta. I found Jutta and she sent me back on the S-Bahn to my stop for the hotel, which was only one stop from the train station. I had been so close to the hotel from the start, I just didn't know where I was going.
I crashed once I made it to the hotel room but made sure to not sleep more than an hour so I could claim somewhat of a healthy sleep schedule.
In fact, I am dosing off as I write this. Hopefully I'll get more time to write about my first impressions of Stuttgart. So many amazing things already... but those must wait until tomorrow.
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