Hey mummy,
today we went to the Starlight Express in Bochum.
I’m not sure if you know what Starlight Express is. If not, I will tell you now: Starlight Express (short StEx) is a musical by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber in which a boy dreams of the world championship of the trains. There’s a young steam train, called Rusty, whose girlfriend Pearl, the observationcar is. But there’s also a Dieselengine, whose girlfriend Dinah the dinning car is. The Diesel engine is called Greaseball. He is said to be the favourite as he is the “fastest thing you’ve ever seen.” Suddenly there’s a new engine – Electra, an electrician engine and right before the first race Pearl decides to leave Rusty for Electra. So Rusty doesn’t want to race anymore. The first race starts (together with Greaseball, Electra and two international engines) and Greaseball and Electra win. Greaseball uncouples Dinah. In the meantime Poppa, an old steam train, finds Rusty and sees that he is not that confident anymore and that he does not want to race without Pearl. So Poppa takes his place and wins the second race. But due to the fact that he is old, he doesn’t have the power to take part in the final race: So he begs Rusty to take his place and after a small argue he does. So he asks for the Starlight Express, a God-like train. Back to Dinah: After Greaseball uncoupled her, she talks to her friends (Ashley the smoking car and Buffy the buffetcar) and in the end she decides herself to race with Electra because Pearl is racing with Greaseball now. The third race takes place and Rusty is cheated. So he lost his tracks and the race has to be repeated. The audiences sees and know that it wasn’t his fault, because Greaseball and Caboose did it. That’s what even Pearl gets to know but she can’t leave Greaseball as she also took place in this race and is guilty as well. During the fourth race, Pearl gets injured and Greaseball uncouples her. But before this race takes place Rusty finally meets the Starlight Express and now he has the power to win the race. The race takes place and surprise: Rusty really wins! Pearl just recognizes that she has been in love with Rusty all the time and returns to him.
That’s it and to be honest: I really shorted the story as I think, you have to watch it all by your own. I also didn’t mentioned all characters that occur in the musical.
Back to our trip. Today is a very special day in Bochum. It’s called “Goodbye” or “Castchange”. That means, that this day is the last one of some of the actors as they’re leaving StEx for going back to her home (most of them are English, American or whatsoever, but you hardly find a German actor in it) or because they already have another musical they are staying in. Unfortunately we didn’t watch the show, but we do on Wednesday, as it is the opening show of the so-called “New Kids” (actors, who rehearsaled for the last three month for staying in there. In this time they learnt how to skate, how to do the make up, how to sing the songs (in German) and the choreography). I really can’t wait to see the show.
Today I met some other ToyVoyager as well – the ones I already travelled with to London – and we had a little party with a really big pizza and stuff like that.
Unfortunately we didn’t take so many pictures, but as I already said, it isn’t the last time, that we’re around the Starlight Halle. Here are now some pictures:
That’s us in front of a banner. Here you see the character Pearl, the observationcar (pink) and Buffy, the buffet car (yellow / orange)
That’s just me and Dinah, the dinning car. We both have the same colour ^^
Love and miss you
