Before France

My recent fascination with Rachmaninov was fueled in Germany, after I bought a CD featuring two of Rachmaninov's piano concertos (No. 2 and 3)from a music school in Karlsruhe.

Shall continue with the Germany Anthology - A collection of short blogposts.

I shall fast-foward to the day Clarence played - couple of whoops from the audience and a total of three stage-in outs. After that he got really popular for some reasons - his Scriabin was so powerful that the entire grand piano moved when he played the last few chords.

And his Schumann was simply magical...when we all got down to listening to it you could hear everyone stifling their breaths. Really beautiful.

Non-musical stuff include driving and shopping at nearby town of Karlsruhe (nearby being 8km, ok being 50km, far being 100km). The taxis in Europe are insane, because the taxi fare rises by 10 Euro cents every second. Which means for every second, erm. It's 20 cents. You'll definitely go insane if it goes on Singapore dollars.

One taxi trip in Singapore that costs $40. Heard that? HEARD THAT??

Uncle: Thank you. Trip is, let's see...$40. PLus a surcharge of $5.
Me: But...but Uncle! $40 is...
Uncle: Ok enough, lah! We just travelled from Bukit Batok to Chua Chu Kang only what!
Me: Uncle, can use class funds?
Uncle: What that.


Then after that I bought the very kool manuscript paper, with 12 staves altogether. The special thing about is, the manuscript paper is arranged like foolscalp! As in, you can tear them off from the top, not like a book arrangement.

The food portions were as usual, large and salty. And the clothes were also equally large. No salt, thanks.

Not surprisingly I decided to go and shop, simply because I was lacking a jacket that I could wear in Germany. I looked pretty hard though for a costume that could fit my size, because all of them looked like bath robes on me. Only a person like Zhongren could buy clothings in Germany.



Personally I can't remember the arrangement of the trip, simply because I didn't keep a travel log. But I believe after Clarence played we all took a drive to France.

To FRANCE!!! Yeap. Aunty Geok and Uncle Wai picked us up at our hotel, and 6 of us squeezed inside the Mercendes-Benz and headed towards France, which was about 100km away. We went to Strasbourg, which was located at the very east of France. (We were at the very west of Germany, so the trip was possible)

Was really amazed that I could be in another country in this trip, because I was expecting ourselves to be stuck here in Germany for the rest of the week.

Did some shopping again, but I was really depressed because I didn't bring enough Euros. You know, Germany and France are just total opposites. In Germany, everything was large, salty, visually-unappealing.

But in France the clothes were small, non-salty, and visually-appealing. Just check out Lilliput and Brobdingnag.

Will talk about France later in the evening, when PM Lee gives his National Day Rally.