Anne-Sophie Mutter has the same travel woes as the rest of us
NewsThe violinist messages:
After one of the hottest and most humid concert adventures at the Tonhalle Düsseldorf I was looking forward spending my day at home chilling. Sadly my flight got cancelled – I have been traveling since 7 am to finally arrive in the afternoon in Hamburg! The glamorous life of an artist. Imagine that happens on a concert day … it has and will. Anyhow, I love the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and am hugely looking forward to the concert!
Yesterday was the first of September. A terrible dark day in German history, a very dark day for the world (1939). To commemorate this, we played the Theme from “Schindler’s List” … and to remember the countless souls lost in all brutal armed conflicts around the globe.
Previously on the Mutter tripadvisor: bad hotel rooms.
She’s a highly intelligent woman, so I am sure she had good reasons, but Dusseldorf to Hamburg, city centre to city centre, is less than 4 hours by train
Оnly if the train is not canceled or there is not a delay of two, three or four hours as usual.
Sadly the trains in Germany no longer run to time as I experienced some weeks ago. I was more than two hours late arriving.
Over a decade ago when I was there it was not unusual to see this sign at a bahnhof:
Zug ist verspätung.
Shocking sign. German grammar isn’t what is used to be.
Re: Schindler’s List.
John Williams was always a magpie, borrowing from Walton, Ravel , Holst and countless others.
But the descending 5ths and first bit of the SL tune are straight out of Mahler VIII
In theory
The train line north from Düsseldorf is a mess right now due to construction and repairs from this spring’s floods.
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a single train journey with DB that was less than 4 hours due to endless delays, lack of communication and cancellations. They are notoriously unreliable, hence artists and orchestras (as featured on slipped disc) cannot rely on them.
The last time I took a train in Germany it was right on time. But this was in East Germany, heh-heh. Karl-Marx-Stadt to Dresden and back.
The Germans are famous for their reliability and Pünktlichkeit. They distribute these admirable qualities over all aspects of public and private life. But since these aspects have developed in size considerably over the years, due to IT, they had to choose one territory to exclude from their prowess and that happened to be the train system because the worst that can happen, is that things slow down, and this merely offers the opportunity to read a novel or to contemplate Nietzsche’s “Will to Power”.
This has as yet not been fully understood by non-Germans and Germans alike.
Thank you for remembering the 1st September, 1939.
I wonder what the gripe about the Tonhalle was, I’ve never been there on a particularly hot day. It was built as a planetarium in 1926, perhaps it doesn’t have much going for it in terms of ventilation or insulation. I always enjoy my trips there though.
I believe she lives in Munich, so was hoping to get back there from Dusseldorft, and THEN get to Hamburg.
I only rode the DB in 1986 and it was great. I’ve heard it’s gotten worse, sad to say. The vaunted German efficiency not what it once was.