2nd Day of the Fair + Paramount Theater

Another day, another bunch of appointments that were over quite quickly, and with it the GTE. It was actually not as bad as I thought it would be, I could have had a couple more appointments. Obviously, I didn't ask for more.
Instead, I wrote my name on the list for people who wanted to go on a tour through the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville. I've learned about it during one of my appointments and when Teresa, the woman from Charlottesville, told me that she wanted to organize a trip to the mall downtown, I just asked her if it would be possible to see the Theater as well. She arranged it immediately, and so me and a few other people left the hotel a bit earlier at 4pm to go there. It was a very nice, old theater from 1931, which was restored to the old glory 20 years ago, to be a place for live music, ballet, opera and cinema. We were able to go onto the stage and try the acoustics (Alex randomly started to sing and decided that the acoustics were brilliant), as well as see where the changing rooms were, where all the people who have ever performed in the theater have signed the walls. A funny story about the Paramount Theater: The former owner wanted the floor to be painted and when the employees asked which colour, he just answered: "For all I care, you could paint a dinosaur. Just do the job." When he came back, there was a dinosaur on the floor, grinning. It's been there ever since and everyone remembers the floor with its dinosaur.
After the tour around the Paramount Theater, we looked at the little shops at the mall. I honestly expected a huge shopping center, as I only knew the word "mall" to be that. As it turned out, it's more of a European pedestrian zone with a nice open space, surrounded by little shops, restaurants and cafés. We sat down in the Crush Pad Wine Bar, which was recently named in the Top 5 wine bars in the US. And it really was a nice place with shelves full of wine from around the world (but especially the region). The most expensive wine I saw was a bottle for $400. The vibe was cozy and laid-back, though. And we met the owner of the bar who was French, has lived in Germany (in the non-existent city of Bielefeld) and Belgium and didn't like to live in the states. He said that the Germans are the best people, we would always be very funny and chill. I don't know what they did to his brain in Bielefeld, maybe some tests on aliens, but I didn't know that such a positive feedback for us Germans could exist. It felt very appreciative, though.
After an hour, it was time to move our group toward The Doyle Hotel, where we'd have our closing event of the GTE. We had good food and drinks and a DJ who could mostly read the room. And I must have been in superb company, as I was convinced to go onto the dance floor to actually dance. Whoever knows me, knows that I've never ever danced before in public and felt 100% uncomfortable with it... But for some reason I started to feel alright with the people I was with. I gotta admit that I have never felt so good within an international group before, so I really enjoyed the feeling of being amidst... New friends. The party at The Doyle Hotel ended quite too soon, but we went into the Buyer's Lounge at our hotel and did some more or less karaoke there. Marlon sang (amazingly good) to Celine Dion and Adele, the French girls sang to some French/Belgian songs. The Brits at the other table tried to dampen our mood with nasty comments about the songs we chose, but we fought them with our happiness, until 11pm. Then I went to bed, tomorrow would be a very early rise.Okumaya devam et