Mittwoch 1 September: So today we had our performance workshop meeting and got all of our chamber group assignments and teacher assignments. I am playing in ten chamber groups... wow. Ok, so the most anyone else is playing in is 5. I don't know how well this is going to work. I guess we'll just have to wait and see... We've all been talking a lot about travel plans for the nine day break which is coming up after one more week of German intensive. (hooray!) Originally we were thinking of going to Spain and then maybe Morocco for a day. The only thing with that is that it's pretty dangerous to travel as a girl alone in Morocco, (there would be four of us, but still all girls, one is blond, probably just not a good idea) Plus you need shots and stuff so I think it requires a little more planning than we have time for. Anyway, after hours of deliberating and discussion we've decided on a trip to Paris! There weren't any flights until Sunday and Marisa and I have to fly back Wednesday so that we are back to Vienna since we're going to Oktoberfest on Friday in Munich.
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| Fruit at the Naschmarkt, it wasn't too crowded at 8 am |
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| There are so many spices at the Naschmarkt! The air smells amazing! |
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| One of the rooms of coffins, I like the symmetry here |
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| This room was really weird, but the ceiling created an interesting light. |
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| The ceiling/top of a coffin... |
Donnerstag 2 September: Yesterday my German class had the assignment for each of us to buy something from the Naschmarkt and order in German. I bought 30 dag Gouda. (Which is pronounced Gauwda rather than Gooda) Then we all brought what we bought to class and we made breakfast, so that was pretty fun. Since no one else wanted to get up early to book the flights to Paris we had to wait to do it until I was done with my German class. What unfolded next is quite unfortunate, but I saw it coming. I checked in the morning and plane fares were the same as the night before. By lunchtime they went up 10 Euros. I bought my ticket then they went up 10 Euros. Emily bought her ticket and the went up 20 Euros. Then Marisa bought her ticket. Kind of unfortunate... The moral of the story is book things as soon as you know you are going to do it!!! After that I went with another one of my roommates, Lauren to see the dead Habsburgs since they're all buried in a church a block away from where we have school. It was really interesting. There were about five or six rooms of these elaborate coffins. It was really interesting to read about how long they all lived and where they were born and where they died. There were a ton that died as babies or infants. Another trend was that a lot of them were born somewhere else, but died in Vienna, I guess that would make sense since Austrian royalty settled things through marriage not war. Some coffins had lots of flowers and things people had left, which I thought was pretty fascinating. I decided to make dinner for my roommates and David and Ben since Meg found asparagus for me at the Naschmarkt!!! (You just cannot find vegetables here... I guess all they eat is bread, meat and chocolate. I made a pasta dish with olive oil, lemon juice, oregano and satéd asparagus with feta sprinkled on top. Then I made a garlic bread with Katie's loaf of ciabatta, just using butter and garlic sprinkles. Emily made a salad and bought some cookies. Later a bunch of my friends went to Porgy and Bess which is a jazz club here but I had so much homework and I'm starting to get sick so I decided not to go, which I was very sad about.
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| Peach and raspberry wine at the Rathaus |
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| The Rathaus with the giant screen in front |
Feitag 3 September: So tonight is the first night of 24 hour Ubahn. It's a big deal (All the papers are calling it the party of the year) and starting this weekend the Ubahn will run 24 hours every weekend. No more taxis or Night bus! So in honor of the Ubahn, there's a huge celebration in all Vienna. Tons of bars and Diskos are letting people in for free if they print out a ticket online. We all have our tickets and are ready to go out and celebrate! (I'm still sick so I rested up all afternoon) First we went to the Rathaus. They were playing the LA Phil premiering the John Adams piece "City Noire" which was really amazing. Then they played Mahler 1, which I was never really fond of before seeing this (I'm more partial to Mahler 2 and 5) but after seeing this performance, I love Mahler 1 also! It was so amazing. Dudamel was conducting and it was just so good! The second and third movements were my favorites!!! At the Rathaus Emily and Marisa got raspberry wines and I got a peach wine, which was very good. I just love going to the Rathaus at night, it's so much fun and you can see really amazing performances! After that it was party time! We went back to the apartment to change and everything. On our way upstairs our downstairs neighbor yelled at us for being too loud, even though it was the boys in number 6 below them, so Emily went down and told them to be quiet. Then about half an hour later she came and knocked on our door and yelled at me, so I told everyone they had to leave and I got upset because no one was listening to me and didn't care that the neighbor was mad! Ugh. So finally we left. Then we had this funny confusion of waiting for some of my friends Amanda, Siena and Jeremy. Finally after we all found each other we went to get our other friend Zan and we all went to the Volksgarten which is a Disko and we danced for a long time. It was really weird because we all danced with people there but all the boys looked like they were 16 or 17 or 35... It was all very strange, but we had fun anyway. Then we left around 2:30 and got pizza and kebaps and by the time we got home it was 4 in the morning! Needless to say, we all slept in Saturday, haha.
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| Hahahaha, I can't even recreate the scariness of this picture!!! |
Samstag 4 September: So like I said, everyone in my apartment slept in today except for Katie, who left for a weekend trip and Lauren, who didn't go out. The other five of us were out until lunch. Emily and Marisa and I went and got sushi at a place up the street from where we live and I got a fortune that reads "Answer just what the heart prompts to you"or in German "Antworte mit deinem Herzen". How's that for a culture trip. Going to a Japanese restaurant in Austria where you receive a fortune cookie (usually found in Chinese restaurants) where the fortune is in English and German. Then we went to the Westbanhoff station to buy our Vorteil cards. (This is a card that gives you huge discounts on train travel within Austria and to neighboring countries.) You have to have a picture of yourself to get the card so we had to go to these photo booth things and get our pictures taken, which was pretty hilarious since all the instructions are in automated German. You're also not allowed to smile so all of our pictures look like we're ax murderers or something. Mine is so funny and for some reason my eyes are huge in it! I look like some demonic character from Sailor Moon... wow, glad that's going to be on my train card now... Then we were going to try to book a train from Vienna to Prague and then from Prague to Bratislava, which is all relatively close, but the lady was just being rude and said the ticket was a lot more money than I found online without the Vorteil card, so we just bagged that and I'm going to look online. Then we went to the Naschmarkt and Emily got sachertorte, I got cheesecake and Marisa got black coffee. Now we're just lazing around, I'm probably going to do my German homework. I can't practice this weekend because I didn't know the center was going to be closed today so I didn't bring my viola home yesterday! I'm going to have to plan better I guess. Tonight there is a 20 years of Hip hop party! I'm so excited! I hope people want to go after staying out so late last night. I really like the people I've been hanging out with here and I think this is the first weekend so far where I actually feel like I live here. The past weeks I've just felt like a strange visitor and have been having bouts of homesickness and culture shock, but I think I'm finally getting it so that's exciting! Well I guess I'm going to look up trains to Prague!
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