First off, I would like to apologize for the general state of MIA that I have recently been in; what can I say, it's hard to sit in front of my favorite little ThinkPad screen when the splendors of Vienna are calling day and night! But to those of you who have been sending me really detailed emails and keeping me up to date on life back home: THANK YOU! I'll be getting back to you with more than a few sentences within 24 hours. For those who have been playing Skype-tag with me: the game's not over yet. I still want to talk to you! For those of you who I have not heard from yet: I'm still waiting...
As far as what I've been up to for the past week and a half, well, it hasn't all been fun and games. I've been running a lot of errands that sometimes involved carrying really heavy loads across town (like picking up a new guestbook for the house or taking some letters to the post), I've had meetings (typically over lunch or dinner), I've been working on my German (by going to performances); all really strenuous and not at all enjoyable. But don't worry because I have been able to fit in some pleasant mornings. And afternoons. And evenings. I'll give a brief rundown of the particularly notable happenings of the past thirteen days.
I left a wet and stormy Winston-Salem the day after graduation (!!!!) to arrive in a temperate and sunny Vienna by Wednesday afternoon. Dr. Levy was already at the house, but he let me have the day to myself to unpack/get my room organized and get reacclimated with the area before we walked down to Graf (a nearby restaurant) for dinner. Mostly just a casual, low-key day which is exactly what I needed.
Thursday I met with Günter and Dr. Levy over lunch at a pizza place near Graf where I had a Quatro Stagioni (four seasons). I don't know if they do this back home but I was amused to discover that unless you tell them to mix it, they do one quarter of the pizza with artichoke hearts, one with mushrooms, one with ham, and one plain cheese. Four seasons. But despite getting a full nine hours of sleep the night before, I found it bordering on impossible to stay awake after lunch, to the point of almost falling asleep mid-stride while walking home. So I took a quick nap though I knew better than to do that while trying to readjust my internal clock. Dr. Levy had been invited to a benefit piano recital for the tsunami relief fund and asked if I wanted to join that night. Well, I suspect you don't need me to tell you my answer. We left Flow House at 18:15 to get there, anticipating trouble with the bus because Wednesday literally every single bus that came by was so packed that people were all but falling out as the doors opened. It turned out there was a concert going on at Turkenshanz Park that we thought would last through the weekend. But for Thursday we were in luck; the bus wasn't crowded at all. By the time we transferred to the Ubahn (underground-ish rail system) and got off at Westbahnhof (an Ubahn stop) we were due to arrive to this concert quite early. So we started walking down Mariahilfer Strasse (a main shopping street)... and kept walking... and walking... finally we got pretty close to the Museumquarter (you guessed it - an area jam packed with museums) and decided (and by that I mean Dr. Levy decided) that this couldn't possibly be right. So we backtracked, found a map, found the street we were supposed to have turned off on... going the other direction on Mariahilfer Strasse from Westbahnhof. But we made it just in the nick of time. The pianist, she was no more than 25, was really good, played some Haydn, Schumann, Debussy, and Liszt, but there were maybe 20 people in attendance. It was in a really obscure place, though, and I imagine not advertized very well. But oh my gosh it was a BEAUTIFUL room! I can only describe the color as 'peaches and cream' - obviously not a color, but it was a softer version of a peach color. The columns and details of the room were all an off white color. At the top of each column the upper half of a woman was carved, twelve in total around the room, and the windows behind the piano were really ornate with frosted designs of the Austrian crest and semi-floral patterns with dragons sprouting out of them. I wish I had had my camera! We went out to eat dinner with the pianist, two of her former music instructors, random friends, and a couple she used to live with in France afterwards and I had some delicious smoked ham - a little on the thicker side - with mashed potatoes whipped to a perfect creaminess.
Friday Dr. Levy and I spent the afternoon at the Naschmarkt - more or less a permanent farmers' market. There were foods of everything you could possibly imagine, including many I didn't know (like JackFruit, easily bigger than my head). We stopped at a kabab stand but I couldn't think of the German word for "spicy" quickly enough to tell the guy not to make mine spicy, and he smothered it in spicy-ness. I was barely able to get it down, but I figure Mom and Dad would be proud. Dr. Levy and I then meandered back towards Stephansdom, essentially the center of the city center, and that walk (about 15 minutes) emptied our stomachs enough so that we could get some gelato! Guess who else's favorite flavor is pistachio! We then just started wandering up and down streets, sometimes coming to places we knew, mostly checking out little side allies, and didn't head home until 21:00.
Sunday I was invited to Günter's wife's father's home for Austrian-style grilling with Dr. Levy. We spent a good portion of the late morning/afternoon there and the food was delicious!! All sorts of meat including steaks, chicken breast filets, sausages, ham, ribs, great bread, multiple salads, and a wonderful cake with some fruit in it (not fruitcake) for dessert. The conversation was mostly in German, but it was good for me and I was able to pick out parts of it and at least follow the general topics they were discussing, even if I didn't know exactly what was being said. That evening Dr. Levy and I had fourth row tickets to a performance of Amadeus - the story of Salieri's (an Italian composer who moved to Vienna) hatred for Mozart and how he claimed to have murdered the Viennese superstar with a boorish character. Again, all in German, but the acting was superb and I already knew the plotline so I was sort of able to follow. But the stage was all white and almost completely lacking in props which I found a bit difficult to get past at first. The acting was certainly good enough to pull that off, but I admit that I love elaborate settings and beautiful costumes to accompany exceptional performances.
Monday I was in town in search of this obscure little theater, the Gesellschaft für Musiktheater (Society for Music Theater), which was going to have a quartet performing Shostakovich among others that night. Along the way I stopped to help a woman that looked utterly perplexed and, long story short, ended up showing her around for a couple of hours that afternoon and she and her husband joined me for the performance that night. It turned out they also know the family of one of my Thacher friends.
Quick aside on the Gesellschaft für Musiktheater: I knew it was going to be a small venue but it looked like a very pleasant little room to hear a performance in.
Nice, right? Well, it was in the same room... but the paintings had been changed out and the new ones were, uhh, not much to my taste.
But despite that it was a very nice performance. I was also particularly pleased to find out that in fact the 20 Euro ticket actually got me free access to every other performance there for the rest of the month.
Which is why I decided to return on Wednesday for another performance that included Shostakovich (a trio this time). During the intermission I was going to read as I was there by myself, but the room had gotten a little stuffy so I got up for a minute to stand out on the balcony. I ended up getting into a conversation with a fellow who turned out to be the trio's agent, and he invited me to dinner with them after the performance at a little place around the corner. Since I hadn't had dinner yet, I couldn't think of any reason not to go, so I lingered a moment when they finished playing and he found me and we all headed out. The musicians were in a rage, though, about their payment. They made Gulu (the agent) guess how much they each made that night. 100 Euro? Lower. 75? Still lower. 50? No. 40? Keep going. 25? Down. 20, you've got to be kidding me! Nope, not 20. 15? No! Higher. 16! They each got paid 16 Euro for their performance that night! It turns out that this 20 Euro for the month ticket that I thought was so great ripped them off horribly. The owner of the theater came in during intermission to pay them and his policy is to divide the income from anybody who paid for a ticket that night between the musicians (and himself). Only three people paid that night and everyone else who was there already had their month-pass. Apparently he was also very confident about giving them each their money and made them sign a form accepting it. I'm just shocked that he's able to keep the theater running! I guess it would be great for anyone performing at the start of the month. Anyway, the dinner was great, the musicians (all in their upper 20s or so) were really nice and quite humorous, and they invited me out to lunch with them the next day. One of them also lives in the district next to mine, so she said she'd call me up for coffee and such, too!
Got lunch with them on Thursday as planned, then spent the afternoon reading in the Volksgarten. The first group from Wake (counseling) arrived on Friday, so I had to stay at the house all day to let them and show them the ropes as they all came separately. One fellow came with his wife, and since they didn't have class until Tuesday (when she was leaving) they were going to spend a day in Vienna then go up to Prague on Sunday. So I spent a few hours helping them come up with a one-day itinerary to make the most of the city. I was planning on doing a few hour walking tour of the 1st district with the rest of them on Saturday, but it was raining so I had to readjust it quite a bit and we ended up going to places where they could spend time looking around inside. I went out to dinner with Dr. Levy, Günter, and Andrea that night at a great restaurant that I'd never heard of before (okay, I haven't heard of most of the restaurants here) that was conveniently close to the house. The part worth mentioning was definitely the dessert, but I shall wait to describe until I can also show a picture of it; words really won't do this one justice.
Yesterday morning I went to a performance at the Spanish Riding School with a small group that I was able to convince of how astounding these horses and riders are. They are quite deserving, if I may say so, of getting to ride in this room almost daily:
As for today, two more students arrived so I've been helping them get settled in. The last one should arrive tomorrow. Other than that not too much is on the agenda. Although I am particularly excited to see this:
on Thursday evening. My understanding is that thousands of people come to this Summer Night Concert and they set up a huge stage behind Schönbrunn so I think I'll head over early and spend the day there with a book or something along those lines. I would like to get up near the front if at all possible, and I don't see why it shouldn't be doable.
Anyway, that's enough of an update for one afternoon I believe. Now that this is all set up I'll try to post frequently. Hope all is well and I look forward to hearing from you all!
Tschüs!
P.S. quality for quantity on this post, my apologies
