人真的很懒，可以一个早上起来开word但是不写一个字，就这样混到午饭时间。

书果然是读得越多越觉得自己无知。毕业设计写到现在似乎有很多很多想写，但是却又不知道怎么写。柏辽兹是天才。他的浮士德解构安排上看似和歌德的很像，但到了结尾你会发现，怎么他的浮士德到最后变得完完全全不一样了呢，什么时候开始变化的，你也不知道。就这样，我一笨蛋尝试着分析柏辽兹，你说辛不辛苦。

Liszt: Am Rhein, im schönen Strome

the best of Aspen

7th week, 7th week! Time flies, but I'm so not ready for school, wish summer never ends.

Maroon Bells, the prettiest spot in Aspen. Elevation: 14,163ft.

海拔4317米的科罗拉多高原

Mama deer and her child were wandering outside my window watching me nap.

Renee Fleming sings Gretchen am Spinnrade by Schubert

Was writing a paper on the Spinnrade scene, found this amazing video by Renee Fleming and Christoph Eschenbach. Even tho the end of the scene is quite different from Goethe's text, Schubert still did a good job interpretation Gretchen's agitation, and this video is by far the best heard.  

A road trip

from Nevada to California. You can see the cloud and rain in the far distance. Mother nature is amazing.

Arizona. Look at those weirdly-shaped cactus, I was in the desert for real!

Grand Canyon

Never have enough beautiful words to describe what I saw. Compare to crazy night life in Las Vegas , I much more prefer this way to spend my vacation. I belong to the nature, belong to the air that makes me feel free and happy. 

La Damnation de Faust. Szene 9

Berlioz's Faust is indeed more humanized, right?

across the boundary

浮士德很难懂，第一部分读完了，还是不怎么理解他的哲学。

有点郁闷..
发现最近更新部落格比较勤奋，好吧，上传一段我喜欢的录像，笑一个来~

这几个丹麦人真有想象力。偶尔看到去年夏天在慕尼黑街头拍的一段录像，让我很羡慕street artist。

朋友和熟人

冬天回上海时见到了恩师L先生，闲聊中谈到了中国人，美国人和欧洲人的不同。自然，很难一概而论。中国太大，南北尚有差异；欧洲有各国不同的文化；美国更是个大杂烩。先生说，他很想研究中国古典文学，因为他看不透中国人，不理解中国人。我当时狂热地想研究佛学，于是就聊开了去。

我提到了去年在德国的三个月。我的导师是瑞士德语区人，也是我去欧洲之前唯一有过长期接触的欧洲人。去了德国先在海德堡小住，住家爸爸是乐团的中提琴手，妈妈给报社写乐评，无固定工作。妈妈会因为爸爸偷懒跟我说英文而训斥我们，很可爱。后来去德国北部的音乐节，也就接触了乐团管理层的德国人，另外只就跟中国人和美国人混了，所以德语也没长进多少，此处按下不表。

德国人的stereotype是刻板，与美国人的热情奔放截然不同。德国人的礼貌是建立在距离感上的，他们对人， 尤其是亚洲人非常友好，因为我们是客人，并且可能永远只是客人。但是德国人又可以跟你跟近，一旦熟悉了。德国人的诚实，认真让我感动，虽然有时候认真得会让人抓狂。美国人可以和你一拍即合，但是那种距离感却是永远无法逾越的。这距离感并不是对我一个客人才有的，而是每个人之间都有的距离感。每个人都怕触犯什么规矩，每个人都过着自己的日子，哪怕你再好的朋友都会说，"I don't wanna get into this." -- 非常直接，非常冷。

我说，欧洲人和中国人有几分相似，in terms of brotherhood，因为中国人可以有很近很近的朋友。在欧洲生活多年的L先生对我的结论有些惊讶。他说在这一点上中国人和美国人相似。在中国这些年，周围有很多朋友，但不知道谁是真正的朋友。

我明白了，那时候真的突然明白了，为什么德国人不轻易交朋友，为什么他们的Freund仅指男朋友，而朋友却称作Bekannte，熟人而已。英语中呢，friends是各种朋友的统称，不管是有过一面之交的，还是爱得死去活来的男女朋友。感叹一下，不仅为博大精深的语言，更为文化差异。

不知道什么时候可以找到适合自己的地方生活。有时会怀念澳大利亚人的热情--也许我那时还太小，没有什么事情能让我不愉快的。

还是没心没肺好。

格林童话确实是令人战栗的

真的是巧。前两天才读到白雪公主的恋父情结和王子的恋尸癖，今天因为写term paper上网找资料的时候看到一条新闻，中国友谊出版社出版的《令人战栗的格林童话》因为色情内容被查封了，12月16日新华社消息：“白雪公主与父亲乱伦才招来王后的追杀；王子爱上死去的公主是因为恋尸癖……这些肆意篡改格林童话经典情节、大量颠覆了经典童话形象的内容不堪入目，对未成年人身心健康的危害也一目了然。” 事实上，格林童话并不是格林兄弟们所写，而是他们收集的民间故事，一般在农民中间流传。格林兄弟因为当时的社会政治背景，基于对德语文学做点贡献的想法，才开始编辑这些民间故事，经过几次再版后才有了现在我们读到的为儿童所写的版本；而中涉及的乱伦和性幻想也是本来故事中就有的，佛洛依德对格林童话也进行过精神分析，所谓的色情内容并不是近来被人所添加。例如小红帽中，原始版本是大灰狼让小红帽睡在他旁边，这也正是为什么大灰狼没有在半路上就先吃掉小红帽的原因；白雪公主中关于皇后戳破手指而流出的鲜血和公主的红唇是对处女的幻想；还有追杀白雪公主的是她的亲生母亲而非继母，正是因为她与自己父亲的乱伦而惹祸。格林兄弟为了删除乱伦情节才将亲生母亲改为继母。童话中其他与现在社会格格不入的内容，例如反犹太民族，性别歧视，还有大量继母角色的存在折射出当时人们对婚姻的态度，都是呈现两百年前社会的最好例证，难道我们就应该对所有童话都封杀吗？

为什么社会发展到今天这个地步，还要谈性色变？并且可以因此颠倒是非，蒙蔽不知情的人们。

recent update

Going into the fourth week of school, when is my next vacation?

I can hardly believe it's been a while already since my big Europe trip. Things are pretty much the same, except for the part that I miss Salzau more and more. Just downloaded all the recordings from the summer and listened to it, wish summer never ends.

Moving back to suite now, after a year in a lousy big dorm where it smells like shit 24/7 and still didn't know my pot-headed neighbors when I moved out. Have three lovely roommates, one of which is Rach, of course, my lovely old roomie from sophomore year who now started cooking everyday to make our suite smells like yummy food all the time. The other two girls are sophomores who share a double room together. It's kinda funny to see them so happy all the time cuz it's exactly like me and rach back two years ago, while two other roommates were always staying in their rooms minding their own business -- senior year is no fun. Maybe it's just the process that everyone goes through.

Also, as what we planned, my quartet rehearses in our common room only, never hits the practice rooms anymore, especially when three of the four members live together. How nice is that.

Das Ende

Aug. 27

I flew back from Vienna to New York, transferred at Munich. The last time on the Lufthansa flight this summer, I was lucky enough to be on Airbus 340 from Munich to New York, a very new kind of model with two floors where there were 5 bathrooms on the first floor. I was sitting at the second to the last row, even though there was one bathroom right behind me, I rather ran downstairs all the time like a little kids cuz it was fun. The space was big, four seats in the front rows but only three seats in the back, and I just got lucky. A truly great way to end my summer.

Aug. 28,

Finally back in reality, there's no more summer fantasy, though it was still summer. I couldn't describe how loud New York is... Had dinner with my friend in her apartment in Manhattan, I realized my alcohol tolerance has skyrocketed. We were just talking about our summers, and I still couldn't believe 90 says just passed like that.

Aug. 29,

Hurt my arms from carrying my viola, laptop bag and a 25kg suitcase down the subway at the same time, still feel sore now. Although -- I am proud of myself for the first time that I carried all these myself instead of looking around at the subway entrance and waiting for help.

p.s. I was too busy to update the blog in Aug., now I could only post some pictures. Too much happened in those 90 days, I grew, I learned, and I appreciate all what I've got in my life.

Castle is empty now, but this summer remains in my life forever.

Vienna

Aug.22-27

Finally done with all the concerts, I thought it was time to go back to the states, but it turns out that my visa wouldn't be expired until 27th, so I went to Vienna. That was a 10-hour long train ride.

the most famous cake in Vienna: Sacher Torte

Stephansdom, the biggest cathedral

Vienna is the city for arts. I couldn't count how many museums I went. There are some museums that allow photography, but this is the only museum picture I took, because all the paintings are too beautiful, I tried to keep them in memory, but not in the camera.

Schloß Schönbrunn, imperial castle. I visited 22 room out of hundreds, including the room where Mozart played for the Austria emperor when he was 6 years old.

The restaurant where I had my last dinner in Europe, with my Korean sister, Sujin. It was such a good Austrian dinner which will always be in my mind.

City Hall at night. Vienna Philharmonic was on tour when I was there...so there was public screening of great concerts in front of the city hall every night. huge, huge screen.

Friday, Aug.13

I was so drunk the night before, with my roomie Hannah. We finished the whole bottle of Vodka and puked until 3am. She even puked twice in the next day.


After three-hour sleep, I woke up at 7am with a horrible headache, and realized it was Friday the 13th, sighed.


Short rehearsal break at 12. I went out of the rehearsal hall, heard Misha calling my name and standing right there with roses. I couldn't figure out what was going on, I thought it was just dream -- until half of the orchestra was standing in the distance watching us. He could not have possibly flew over from New York to here, a castle in the middle of nowhere in northern Germany, to surprise me. How did he get here? How did he know where exactly I was? When did he start planning the trip? When was the last time I talked to him? So many questions popped up in my head and I had no clue. 


He arrived at Hamburg airport at 7 am, rent a car, drove two hours in a totally foreign country, with a google map he printed out from home, to Salzau, the castle where I was living in. We spent 13 hours together that day, since he had to drive back to Hamburg airport at 3 am and catch a flight back home. He couldn't really function because of the non-stop travel, it was touching. 


He made my most unforgeable day in this trip.

Thank you, I love you.

miscellaneous

Kiel, a harbor city north of Hamburg, is the capital city of Schleswig-Holstein state. After 22 year of stay in the castle "Culture Center", Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival will move to Lübeck because of the money issue. There was a huge protest in Kiel, where the state government is, led by the festival orchestra members. I didnt go that day cuz I was sick, but still regret today...

Here are some collection of pictures from Kiel, Lübeck, Hamburg, Berlin and Wiesbaden.

Kiel

Lübeck

Wiesbaden 

Mudflat walk near Danmark

Prague, Czech Republic

July 3rd & 4th

We had our charter flights for the tour: Krakow to Budapest, Budapest to Prague. When everyone was on board, we were ready to go.

pictures taken from the flight deck.

Prague is too beautiful for words. Just let pictures talk

view of Prague