Berlin philharmonic day!

Today was another whirlwind of awesome activities. We started out the day by attending church at the Berlinerdom! It was incredibly beautiful and the organ was so reverberant and loud! Last notes rang for about 5-6 seconds. The player was quite talented as well! The sermon was quite enjoyable too- we were able to listen to an English translation! I'll let others explain further, but don't be surprised if we all discuss lentil soup more than normal when we get back. :)

We then made our way over to a Sunday flea market where a street was packed full of merchants and food that makes you want to have six stomachs. There were SO many unique things, it was a blast just walking through. However, the wind chill today made the weather the coldest it's been so far, so we were all pretty frozen. I got myself a warm drink only to unknowingly spill it all over my front. Turns out my lid was loose. >< ah well, it gave everyone a good laugh at least, haha. 

Next we decided to go find the Jewish museum. It was a very uniquely designed building. It was built with the intention of giving a history of Jewish history and also giving you a feeling of an absence of a massive amount of people in the European population because of so many years of Jewish discrimination. There were various "void" rooms that were empty on purpose to give you a physical feeling of that absence. A very sobering and interesting museum. 

Then! After some more delicious döner kebabs ( Seattle seriously needs one of these kebab places...) we made our way to the Berlin Philharmonic concert! Holy crap! We were all very, very, excited with high expectations and I'm pretty sure they blew all our expectations out of the water. Also! We got to upgrade our seats (thanks Dr. Powell) so we were sitting VERY close to the orchestra. First on the concert we listened to Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children. We all knew this one was going to be a tad unorthodox, but it was SO increadibly different live. Everything about it was just awesome. You could see dust coming off of rocks percussionists were hitting together, see the pianist squeeze into the small bright red toy piano, watch the soloist writhe as she sang into the open piano, and see the percussionists as they chanted. If you listen to the recording I guarantee you'd giggle at the odd sounds the soprano soloist makes. However. Tonight it all just made sense and was more impressive than "too weird to handle". The soloist was phenomenal and everyone was so locked in with each other. The level of focus was astounding. Then, Bruckner no. 9! HOLY CRAP. That was one awesome performance. Minds blown. It was pretty much an hour of dramatic climaxes and hushed valleys. The brass section was particularly noteworthy. As Dr. Powell put it: "Their livers were flying out their bells". Man, they could play. And the strings barely needed a conductor. They were so in tune with each other ad they all knew exactly how they wanted each note to sound- Vienna Phil has got some contenders! It was an amazing day.

As for now we are drinking the hostel home brew while trying to figure out how to get the game on here (starts at 12:30 am our time ) Go Hawks! Tomorrow we say farewell to Berlin and head over to "Czech" into Prague (hah). More puns to come, prepare yourself! :D