The Ballet!

Yesterday I went to see a ballet with Andrea and Kathryn. We really didn't know what to expect heading up there. We had vouchers for free tickets (Kathryn and Andrea remembered theirs.. I didn't) but we didn't know how they worked, or if we would get good seats. Because I had forgotten my voucher, I had to pay for a ticket. While the normal tickets were close to 45 euro, student tickets in the best section were only 12 euro. With the vouchers Andrea and Kathryn also were able to sit in the closest section for free! We ended up sitting center-stage, second row. The reason we chose the ballet, as opposed to a show, was that language wouldn't be an issue. For the most part, there isn't speaking in ballet. That being said, we still had a hard time following exactly what it was about. The title of the ballet was "Und Dann, Tausend Jahre Frieden" which literally means And then, a thousand years of peace. It was performed by a French ballet company, the Preljocaj Ballet Company. The whole ballet was choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj. I was very impressed by the whole performance. While most of the time I had no clue what they were trying to show, I thought the whole program was very intense and filled with feeling. After the ballet, we walked towards the center hoping to find some frozen yogurt. We took a different route than when we got to the theater and we didn't know exactly where we were. We did know that we were going in the right direction though. In order to cross a street, we took a pedestrian underpass, which was painted with all sorts of different pictures that were beautiful and funny. My personal favorite was the typical picture you see of Beethoven writing and looking angry, but a mustache had been added. Once we crossed under the street, we came up to a church. This church looked like a miniature version of one of the cathedrals we had visited. When walking by a German boy approached us with a box of candles saying something in German. As usual, I politely told him that we didn't understand German, and surprisingly he said "That's fine! I speak English!" He then offered each of us a candle and told us about what was going on inside the church. Apparently in 2005 World Youth Day held by the Catholic Church was in Cologne. Since then, once a month, this church has a prayer night where they offer candles to anyone passing by. Anyone who wants to can take a candle (for free) and light it in the church. Then they may feel free to stay and pray and enjoy the atmosphere. We weren't in any hurry so we decided to go inside. All I can say is that I think what they were doing was beautiful. While I love going to church, I find it hard to push myself to go due to the language barrier. All it took was one guy handing each of us a candle for us to go inside for a few minutes though. It was a very nice gesture, I thought. After leaving the church we headed towards the frozen yogurt place. Go figure, the frozen yogurt place was closed. It was close to ten pm. We decided to get pina coladas instead. Ironically, we ran into Mark and Kyle there. Since it has been warming up, the restaurant had tables with blankets outside for people to sit. So, we sat outside, drank our pina coladas, and people watched. The night was a great success! On the bus on my way home, I ran into Megan and Austin on their way back from their weekend trip. When I accidentally missed my stop, Megan was nice enough to show me the easiest way to get back to my house.

At the top is a picture of the Theater Bonn, where we saw the ballet.