From a protest rave with hippies to a Beethoven concert with high society

I had a pretty eventful weekend with a lot of different stuff going on. On Saturday night, we went to a protest rave. By going to it, I mean we stayed at it for maybe 30 minutes... but it was a traveling rave! The rave started up at Marktplatz and traveled down to Bismarkplatz and down Buergheimstrasse (or whatever that street is called) and then eventually ended up at the Hauptbahnhof. I'm not entirely sure what the protest was about, but all the signs were against capitalism and such, and I'm sure they were also protesting Atomkraft, because that's all anyone's been protesting in Germany since we got here. I actually learned in my political science class yesterday that in the most recent elections for Baden-Wuerttemburg (the state Heideleberg is in), the Green Party gained 12% to get the second most votes, right after the CDU. Much of that I'm sure is due to the recent catastrophe in Japan. Anyways, this rave was CRAZY. There were four different booth/truck thing, each playing different crazy techno music, all driving down the street, with hundreds of people (mostly hippies) just getting drunk and yelling about stuff. Dan noted that it was funny because they were all protesting the police, yet the police were the ones allowing this traveling protest to basically halt all traffic in Heidelberg for a Saturday night...hmmm. It was interesting though, and we definitely discovered the challenge of dancing to Euro-house techno music while walking...sans booze. When you're drinking, walking and dancing I feel is a natural move, but we had just stuffed ourselves with pizza, so were too full to drink haha




The pictures are a bit hard to see, but you can kind of get a glimpse of how crazy the crowd was. The other is a sign the guy in front of us was holding...I'm not going to explain it, but good luck seeing it ;)

On Sunday evening, a group of us went to a classical concert--quite a change from a hippie protest rave, right?? We had bought these tickets more than a month ago and were all very excited to go hang out with high society Germans. The concert was part of a special Spring Festival the city put on and was performed at Kongresshaus, a verrry nice building and concert hall. After some cold and grey weather all of last week, it was so nice to have a beautiful spring day. Luckily Will had his camera so he took a ton of pictures and we were able to capture ourselves being high class for the night. The first half of the concert was a Brahms piece and then some other piece that I didn't know...it was quite modern and not really my style, but still good. Then intermission--I was going to be classy and get a glass of wine, but the beer was 3,50 euro cheaper so I just went with that. We went up to the balcony and just enjoyed the beautiful weather and enjoyed being in the company of all these classy Germans! The next act was Beethoven's 9th symphony. That's right...Beethoven's 9th! I was so excited to see this, because in my German Musik und Wort class last semester, we spent literally a week just on his Ode to Joy, going over the text and listening to the whole thing multiple times. This was the whole symphony though, so we got to see all four movements, and of course the final movement had the four soloists and the big choir. The performance was SO GOOD. There's gotta be something to be said about seeing maybe the most famous classical piece ever written, IN GERMANY. Like I'm sure that piece means a lot to Germans. I can't really think of any equivalent of American music, but you get what I'm saying.

So yes, the production was wonderful. It was one of those moments when you're listening to the music and you just don't want it to end. But it did, and the concert actually ended at 8:30 (because it had started at 6), so Will, Monika, and I got some ice cream on Hauptstrasse (I was actually pretty full from dinner, but we were all dressed up and it just seemed like the right thing to do!) and then Will and I walked all around Altstdt because it was still a really nice night.






The above pictures show me and Will outside the hall, the girls in front of the fountain (Becca, me, Monika, and Bonnie), the soloists of the 9th symphony taking their bow after their performance, and a view from the balcony of the hall during intermission. Blogspot keeps messing up the order that I upload them, but it's easy to figure out!