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It was raining cats and dogs when I awoke this morning. But since I have a half-marathon coming up in March, I had to get up and get ready for a 10 mile run. Prior to a long run, one has to eat a harty breakfast. (Something I found out the hard way a while back, when I went out on an empty stomach and ran out of energy 7 miles into my run). So while fixing my oatmeal with banana, and of course a coffee, I switched on the TV. Ever the journalist, I wanted to catch up on the latest news about the situation in the Middle East. But alas. After channel surfing for a while without finding any news bulletins, I settled for a classical music channel.

Usually there’s some loud and obnoxious opera on there. You know…the kind with fat ladies singing insanely high notes in the middle of impossible to understand Italian phrases. But not today. (yay!) Instead, a large orchestra filled the TV screen. The conductor waving his wand about frantically. The music was calm, with an amazing build every now and then. So I stopped flipping through channels and focused on my meal, leaving the music playing in the background.

But the increasingly beautiful melodies kept drawing my attention away from my breakfast. Melodies so refined, they could have been implemented in the most beautiful of movie scenes. The final battle in Braveheart. A kiss between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. Frodo returning to the Shire after his quest to get rid of the Ring. You get the point, right?

After listening and watching for a while, I realised this concert was recorded in De Doelen. A famous concert hall in the city of Rotterdam, where I grew up. And then, as if from somewhere way in the back of my mind, I remembered something: My mom used to take me to classical concerts in De Doelen when I was little!

Every now and again there would be ‘cheap’ saturday morning concerts. The most famous orchestras would use the mornings to sort of sound-check in front of an audience. My mom started taking me there when I was really young. Like two or three years old. She would bring mandarin oranges and bananas, and if I started chatting during the concert, she would just start feeding me. I would then quietly settle back into the big red chair, and allow myself to be captivated once again by the music.

And now, 20+ years later, it happened again. I was eating banana while quietly listening to the music coming from De Doelen. I love saturday mornings.

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