One of my goals, one of the things I felt that I absolutely
had to do while I was here, was to go see a play, opera, or ballet. I mean, you can’t come all the way to Europe
and not see at least one of these. So,
the other day when some of my friends and I were talking about it and they expressed
interest as well I was really excited.
One of the girls looked up some ballets at the local theatre, and we
decided to go to one called “Das Narrenschiff” (“Ship of Fools”). I read the description, and it said that the
show was about a group of people on a on a ship from Mexico to Germany set
during the beginning of the Nazi regime in Europe. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but us
ladies put on our cute dresses and heels and went out to see it. The tickets were only 10 Euro, so it was very
affordable.
The only ballet I had seen previously was a recital of The
Nutcracker, and this was definitely something entirely different. There wasn’t very much dancing, but when
there was it was only a bit of it was what I thought of as traditional ballet,
and one of the main group dances was a Mambo.
There were many characters on the boat:
the captain and crew, a couple that was always fighting, and young
couple (the man was an artist), a woman dressed all in black, an older woman
and her daughter, and many others. The
title was certainly appropriate because, from what I could tell, each of the
characters was definitely foolish in his or her own way.
Needless to say, the ballet wasn’t what my friends were
expecting either – far from it.
Afterwards we went out for ice cream on the square. When the weather got nice the restaurants put
chairs and tables outside on the square, so we sat out and talked for about
another hour (mostly about the ballet we had just seen).
Hopefully I’ll get the chance to go to the opera while I’m
here, but anyway, lesson learned: do
lots of research about anything you go see that you’re not already familiar
with!