Paris

So, I haven't posted for a while, but now it's time again!

Last Sunday Philip and I went to Paris for a couple of days, just until our classmates from our music class arrived too. We thought, if we go to Paris, we won't only go for four days, but stay two days longer!

In those two days, we did a lot of cool things! Next to visiting some touristic attractions like "La Tour Eiffel" or "L'Arc de Triomphe", but we also went to the "Jardin de Plantes", a huge park with lots of interesting museum-like "La Grande Gallerie d'évolution" and a huge dinosaur museum!

Besides that we also spent half a day in the "Centre Georges Pompidou", one of the coolest modern-art museums I know. After waiting in line for quite some time, we finally got to look at the great exhibitions and drink a hot chocolate at the top of the place!

By the time the others arrived, we've already checked in to the second Airbnb; a lovely place which was totally made for a big group! After jamming a little bit with the others, we went to see a concert called "Swing Lenny" in the "Philharmonie de Paris". I enjoyed it a lot because it had a lot of nice harmonies and the funky polyrhythms.

We also went to a museum which had a chronological exhibition with instruments from historical times to modern synthesizers and other electronic instruments.

We also visited the opera and saw two other concerts in the theatre of Paris. "Dialogues des Carmelites" and a Beethoven Concerto.

The last thing Philip and I did, while the others went onto the "Arc de Triomphe" was to go to the "Galerie de Paléntologie". There they had enormous skeletons of whales and dinosaurs which was quite impressing!

Altogether the trip was really nice, the concerts were amazing and we had a lot of fun together!

Lots of concerts!

On Monday evening, me and my parents went very spontanously to a concert in Zürich... It might not have been the greatest Idea since I had to wake up around half seven in the morning, but it was totally worth it!! I would say one of the best concerts I have ever heard..! (You can see some video footage ->here<- and you can get to Cory's Website ;)

But I did not only go to concerts this week, I also played at the Rock and Jazz night of the Blues Festival in Baden :) It was a really cool performance and we had a great time playing in front of quite a large crowd!

On Thrusday I went again to the Blues Festival with two friends but only to watch and learn, and yesterday there was a Jam Session in Brugg where we played a bit. Later in the evening I went onto the old Castle Ruin to meet some of my friends from school and we had a lovely evening :)

Animation Festival, Wind turbines and Concerts!

This week was the Fantoche International Animation Film Festival in Baden. I love going there every year because you see unique projects made by people all around the world. I went there this Thursday after school with a friend of mine. We were watching a collection of films on the focus of Poland and after that an international competition where you had to vote which one you liked most.. They are all very well animated and nicely drawn films, but some of them are just crazy or have weird stories.. Others though have really well made and touching stories too which made them even better.

But this morning was nothing with sleeping longer on weekends. I had to get up because I went to play at a concert in a music café at the day of education in my school. It was really cool! First of all we played with the music-workshop (the same as at the summer night party) but a bit less funky and more like café-music. After that I had a performance of a Bossa with a friend, me on the piano and him with a Djembe. It was really cool but also difficult to play because the room we played in had such a high resonance so it was hard keeping track of what the other played.

Thursday I always have three hours of Etna classes. It means experimental natural sciences and as the title says we always do various experiments on different subjects. The last three weeks me and a friend were working on a wind energy project. We have a huge fan to make a wind channel on the fourth floor and we got it up to nearly 20mph. In one meter distance we've put up a wind turbine on which we could change the angles of the blades. Then we measured the power generated by the turbine and which angle was the most efficient. It was so interesting!

Preparing for two concerts and planning awesome summer holidays

I had so much to do this week! Next to a lovely birthday party for my cousin I had lots of practise for next Friday's Sonafe. It's the summer nights party hosted by my school and they expect about 6'000 people attending this year! There are lots of different stands for food and drink and of course performances and shows of various kinds. In two of them I play too; one is the BigBand and another the Jam group I attend every week. This Friday we had a exercising session of three hours but I think we've got it now and are ready to perform!
I'm going to tell you more about it in the post that's about to come next Saturday ;)

I am so excited that we've booked for our holiday for the next summer holiday. We are going on a sailing boat into Croatia and I am sure that it will be just simply amazing!!