Kassel and the theatre.

This morning, I was woken by Julia's mum to go to Kassel together. It was about 9am, and i quickly got dressed, packed a bag and went downstairs to eat breakfast. We eat breakfast together while everyone else slept and then got ready to go.

We were in the car by about 9.30am and drove to Kassel. It took over an hour to get there and then we had to try and find the castle... We followed signs and finally got there. We had to park quite a distance away from the castle, in an icy car park which we were worried about getting out of later on... We walked up to the castle and it was raining and very slippery. It took a while to find the entrance to the museum there, but we found it on the other side of the builing and went in. Being a student, I cost nothing, so that's good.

We put our bags and jackets in the cloak room and started walking around. The bottom floor was full of cork sculptures of old buildings in Greece. They were very detailed and quite amazing. We went to the first floor where the entry is and looked at all of the Ancient Greek vases and helmets. Some of the items were thousands of year old... It was quite amazing to see that they had to kept so well.

Kassel famously has this giant sculpture, Hercules. It sits of the top of the hill, on top of a building. We couldn't see it becuase of the fog and rain, but there was a copy in the gallery. We went through the first floor and walked up to the second, which was all German and Italian painter's work. We walked through, amazed by some of the work and read the stories to go with the images. Most of the paintings were extremely old and the colours were great. Some of them had been restored as well. We walked through, there was a lot to see. At the end of that floor there was this a giant 340cm x 665cm painting by Johann Melchior Roos. It was full of animals and so detailed. I sadly can't find a picture of it on the internet.

We walked up to the next level which was filled with mostly still lifes. There were really good, lots of food and all of them were extremely details. I was writing down all of the artists that I liked the works of too. On the same level, there was also an exhibition of Italian drawings, they were all small studied and showed the progress to a final piece. There were all very interesting and once again, so details. We walked through some more amazing still lives and then some paintings with animals and boats.

We went to the next floor, which was the final one. It was named after Rembrandt becuase over 10 of his paintings are kept in the museum. We walked through. MOst of the paintings were huge and really detailed with bright colours. Some of my favourites were the very dark portraits. The paintings were all amazing and we spent a lot of time in the gallery. I filled about 3 pages with artist's name's that I found fantastic.

Julia's mum and I caught the lift down to the bottom floor and drnak coffee together. We got out stuff, asked the lady at the desk where the old glass house was and found out in was only about 200m away. We walked there and tried to find the entry. We paid a little bit and walked through the glass house. It was nice and warm. All of the plants were labelled with the countries they were from. It wasn't too big, so we didn't spend very long in the building.

We left and walked back down to the carpark. We got to car out and were very relieved. We found our way through Kassel and onto the Autobahn back to Marburg. We drove for an hour or so and got home. One of our family friend's was over. We sat and drank coffee together until her son came back from horse riding and we ate together. We made use of the deep fryer again and made calamari and chips. Julia came home and everyone left.

We relxed around the house a bit, I did some knitting and then Julia's mum, Julia and I got ready to go out again. We left at about 5.30pm to go into Giessen which is abour 30 minutes away. First stop was a computer store, where we were had to find a laptop for Julia. We found one and it was quite easy. We paid and left.

We started driving into the middle of the city, but took a wrong turn and ended up on the Autobahn until we found an exit. That filled up a lot of time... We drove all the way back and got where we needed to be. The Giessen city theatre. We were going to see a criminal comedy of some sort. The probelm was trying to find a parking spot... It took ages and I think we drove around the whole city. We finally found one in a side street, less than 10 minutes before the play actually began. It wasn't over close to the theatre, so we had to run most of the way. I swear, I nearly died. We got in about 1 minute before the play started and sat down. It was quite hard to understand, but it was also a musical and some of the songs were in English. The man sitting behind me was great at singing, whistling and clicking his fingers... That made it a whole lot better...

Some of the songs were ABBA covers and at the end tehre was an ACDC song. The bows went on for over 15 minutes, even though there were only 4 men and a small band that performed... It was alittle over the top, but the play was still good.

We left and walked out into the cold, to the car. We drove back into Marburg and got home after 10pm. We started up Julia's laptop and got that all sorted, then sat around and eventually went to bed around 12am.