Wednesday, July 4, 2012

My "Castle on a Cloud"


“Castle on a Cloud” was pretty close to my feeling about an excursion I went on. For those that don’t know, I was in Salzburg, Austria from May 27 to June 30. I went to the Hohensalzburg fortress… a CASTLE!

I’ve been having so much fun that it feels like I’m on Cloud 9 and I went to a castle… GET IT?! … okay that was a cheesy segway, but oh well…

“Castle on a Cloud” is a song from the musical Les Miserables. The little girl, Cosette, is singing about her safe place, which is a castle on a cloud that she dreams about.

“There is a castle on a cloud,
I like to go there in my dreams.
Aren’t any floors for me to sweep,
Not in my castle on a cloud.”

Cosette is living at an inn with the innkeeper’s family. Her mother, Fantine, has to work and if Fantine’s employers knew she had a daughter, she’d be fired. So the innkeeper’s wife lets Fantine pay her a certain amount of money to take care of Cosette. But the family makes Cosette work all the time. Sweeping floors is her job and the innkeeper’s wife and the innkeeper himself yell at her all the time.

The story is sad, at least in the beginning, but if you’ve never heard the music, or seen the musical, you need to check out Les Miserables. You won't regret it.