Empress : Kaiserin: Muenchen | Oberschleissheim | Starnberg

Freitag, Juni 29, 2007

Muenchen | Oberschleissheim | Starnberg | Muenchen

Schloss Oberschleissheim at 10 Uhr. The name refers to a family of castles - made up of the Altes Schloss, Neues Schloss and Schloss Lustheim. I wasn't especially interested in seeing what was in those castles, so we hearded straight for the magnificent gardens. The largest garden compound is situated between Neues Schloss and Schloss Lustheim, and how beautiful and spacious it is!

We have arrived!

First step into the gardens

Oooo... greeeeeens...

The back of Neues Schloss

The gardens

Neues Schloss

Notice the building faraway behind the fountains? That's Schloss Lustheim

BUTT UP! XD;; A female swan feeding

Schloss Lustheim

Incredibly spacious

Finally a closeup of Schloss Lustheim after a looong walk. Strangely doesn't look like a castle to me; isn't it small compared to the massive size of the Neues Schloss?

I walked to the end of the castle compound and saw this - isn't the design cool? So looooong, lol.

At 14 Uhr we were back in Munich's city center, me getting roses for tomorrow's occasion (I'll explain in the next post). It seems that my parents were rather restless so I suggested heading to Starnberger See, a lake far out from Munich where I've visited alone last year.

Starnberger See ("See" means "lake" in German)

The docks

The lake, the swans, and the cold...

We spent a rather long time in Starnberg and I barely made it in time for the Munich's opening celebration (they called it "Festspiel Nacht") of the Munich Opera Festival, which was held at 20 Uhr. I reached Marienplatz at 19.45 Uhr and I ran like crazy to the celebration venue, Fuenf Hofe, a huge shopping complex equivelent to our own Ngee Ann City.

I attended the narration of Alice in Wonderland (in German of course), which was obviously another publicity method for the new opera premiering tomorrow night. Sigh... I would like very much to get tickets for it, but we will be leaving Munich tomorrow morning. T__T After listening to a chapter's narration, I caught a performance of early love art songs done by two sopranos and instrumentalists (oboe, keyboard and cello if I recall correctly?) and the presentation was quite interesting. The Festspiel Nacht was really very happening; there was always different performances taking place at venues all around Fuenf Hofe, and I had a hard time deciding where or which performance to attend next. Outside of the shopping mall avant garde piano music was being played - by a composer apparently - and it seemed like he was rather being well received.

I queued for more than an one hour, but it was worth it - I got to see Kent Nagano conduct! The programme was very interesting, and still I see Germans not really to accept unconventional music. I hope that's due to the cause that the concept and intention behind the modern pieces wasn't properly explained to them. It was all good fun though. It started to rain and I managed to reach the hotel at around 23.15 Uhr, two hours later than I'd expected. Haha.