Okay - I need help! and coffee!

[lesyeuxverts]

Right ... so, I would like a European city that has an old opera house and a large river. Details would be lovely, too ... if you know anything about the city, or the opera house, or you know, generally useful details. I'm not necessarily looking for "Oh, the ----- Opera House is on ---- Street, just between the bakery and the library," but more along the lines of details useful for writing, you know. Are the chandeliers absolutely fabulous, is it entirely red velvet and gilt, has it been restored, etc.

If you have any brilliant ideas of what opera(s) that I might choose, that would be fabulous as well. Simply fabulous ... oh, I do heart you muchly, darling flist.

Also, has the genealogy craze happened in Europe? If you want to trace your ancestors back to, I don't know, the 17th century, is it possible? How would you go about doing it?

While you are being so terribly helpful, can you interpret my strange results and do all of my experiments for today so that I can write? Pretty please? :)

Comments

[gin_tonic.insanejournal.com]

I don't think the Opera house in Cologne is very old (the old one probably got destroyed during WWII), but there might be one in Weimar (Germany). It's were Goethe and Schiller were (there are even their houses that you can visit). I was only in the theatre there, but the impression that I had of the location was pretty golden. XD

Umm ... you could also use Paris, of course. Have never been in the opera there, but have seen it from the outside.
Budapest would be very interesting though.

Genealogy craze ... not sure about that, but there are certainly loads of people who want to trace their ancestors back. And I'm not talking about royals only. I, for one, can trace mine back until 18th, I think. Only one branch of the family though, not all of them. My father did most of the work for that, but I know he looked up people with our name and wrote to them, asking if they might be related to us had any information about our ancestors. But then again there aren't many people with our surname.
Other than that there are registers where you can check and the Internet is pretty helpful nowadays. And asking grandparents and great-uncles and -aunts is always good too.


... Tell me, why am I surfing the net when I should be writing for Nano? I haven't even got a page down yet! And why didn't I accept the coffee that my mother was offering to me? I must be losing my mind!!!

[gin_tonic.insanejournal.com]

How about the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich? I don't like Munich that much, but the opera there was pretty cool and nice. Loads of red and chandeliers. The normal seats were wooden and very uncomfortable, though. XD