abbandono: (Default)
abbandono ([personal profile] abbandono) wrote2007-06-20 09:09 pm
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Miscellaneous Europe updates

Oper Koln

I am pretty sure the original Handel version of Giulio Cesare was not so sexy.  This production featured harem dancers stripping to their undergarments, a male soprano in high heels, leather pants, and pompadour, and Cleopatra as a dominatrix in the third act.  Still, the audience predominated by sexagenarians gave them enthusiastic applause and 4 curtain calls.  Easily the finest young operatic cast I have ever seen.  The hall was uninspiring and the production values more weird than wonderful, but the singing was divine:

More on Brugge

Had a lovely night walking around the place with a couple of people from the hostel: Ellie from Australia and Anne-Marie, a Quebecois studying in Vienna:  Unfortunately, they weren't keen to actually go in anywhere, so we ended up back at the hostel by 10.   I was so wired up with digging on the town that I wanted to head back out; but no one was left in the hostel, so I wandered alone, and ended up having one lonely beer at 't Brugse Beertje before calling it a night.  The place was full of obnoxiously loud English metalheads...not my cup of tea.

I did, however, earlier have an excellent dinner.  I wouldn't have expected it fro, a place called the Hoobit, but the kitsch was non-existent, the all-you-can eat grilled meats were excellent, and the Hoegaarden was ice cold.  Yum!

As a side note, the cute waitress with the geeky glasses and desultory haircut was not my waitress, but she served to prove an interesting point: thong hanging out of your low-cut jeans...tacky.  Sparkling white huge briefs doing same...inexplicably sexy.

Brussels

A nightmare.  More on that later.  Luckily, I am now in the coolest, most convivial-without-being-frattish-and-boorish hostel ever in Antwerp, and down the street is a cafe serving 200 kinds of jenever.  Life is good again.  Let's just pretend Brussels never happened.

Love and euro-kisses

J

[identity profile] minimalrobot.livejournal.com 2007-06-20 07:31 pm (UTC)(link)
If you see Eli Roth at the hostel, run away fast!

[identity profile] la-directora.livejournal.com 2007-06-20 07:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Or kill him dead so he can't make any more torture porn films! Please!

[identity profile] 14icedbear.livejournal.com 2007-06-20 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
yay, white briefs!

[identity profile] greycat.livejournal.com 2007-06-20 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Eeep about Brussels! can't wait to hear the story though. Does it rival your Coachella Story?