Only In Wien

Vienna may not be the only place you will find a free film festival set up in front of City Hall that shows Mahler symphonies, Humperdink's Hansel und Gretel, Verdi's La Traviata, Mozart's Don Giovanni, etc. But it will be the only place you find where people actually go to it! I have been to see several performance thus far, the aforementioned to name a few, and at almost every one, nearly the seats are taken! Mahler actually drew the smallest crowd, except for tonight since it is like 45 degrees and far too cold to be outdoors, but the rest were very full. By the time we headed to La Traviata we were getting wise and got there early enough to get seats.

Tonight's Don Giovanni was probably my favorite production and it was from the 2006 Salzberg Festival. A Martin Kusej production, it is as thought provoking as ever and worth watching if you have some free time and are in a Mozartian, albeit dark Mozartian mood (you can find the DVD online). The modern set is stark white, with revolving floors, walls and doors all used cleverly to create various effects. In addition to the hospital-like set, there are minimal props, which accentuates the feeling of loneliness and emptiness. In lieu of objects as props, Kusej uses people, to portray various themes or events. In particular he portrays the different aspects of the opera's sexuality using scantily clad woman.

One of my favorite scenes, occurred during Leporello's aria where he describes Don Giovanni's various conquests to Donna Elvira. The stage begins to rotate and Elvira walks through what seem like Bloomingdale's window displays. Each display representing a different demographic of Don Giovanni's sexual conquests. The final display is an unsettling scene of disheveled men and women, which upon the end of the aria, perform an incredibly costume change on stage and transform into the wedding party of Zerlina and Masetto.

Most of the singers were wonderful, I especially enjoyed Christine Schäfer's Donna Anna, which I did not expect. Although except for Thomas Hampson's Don Giovanni, I don't feel as though the acting did well in the conceptualized production, it felt very traditionally Mozartian, which just did not work with this production.

If it weren't for the quality of the production I would not have stuck around until the end, especially considering it was probably about 45 degrees out and my roommate forgot to bring me an extra jacket when she met us at the Rathaus.

It's Just Like a Mini-Mall

Every Saturday at the Naschmarkt there is a large flea market set up adjacent to the open air market, where you can find anything from an old chandelier to a sweater to a clam shell shaped butter dish. Yes, a clam shell shaped butter dish, much like the one I purchased on that fine overcast Saturday. It was truly love at first sight. I spotted that shiny silver clam from across the market, as I made my way towards the vendor's table, I knew it was meant to be. I asked him how much, he told me 12, I told him no way. I am cheap even with love. The vendor asked me, what would you use this for, I told him I had no clue! Just then, a lovely Austria lady overheard our conversation and explained it was indeed the butter dish of my dreams! I offered him 6, he say 10, we settled at 8.

Yes, I spent 8 Euro on a clam shell shaped butter dish. No, I do not use it for butter. Mike, don't hate me.

I have an audition today and little time to post.

Billy Joel Wrote this song about my life, therefore I feel I should share it all with you. Please click on the link below:

Vienna

How's Vienna?

My response: "Beyond perfect! I speak german and bake bread and buy food at open air markets and live in an amazing apartment and drink incredible coffee and drink incredible wine and take classes in a baroque palace and is this real life?"

This is how I feel right now and that makes me so happy.

Just Bread and Salmon

I have a feeling this blog will include a lot about food... For instance, today I made myself a lovely dinner of salmon in black bean sauce on a rice bed! Mostly because I went to the market and found cheap frozen salmon filets! I am very excited because that means meat! Even if it is fish! I could afford meat! I don't know if you understand how happy that made me. Either way, I was excited and (over)cooked it for dinner. Turned out pretty well, although over cooked a bit since I had no tin foil to really bake it in.

You wish you had this lamp.

Earlier in the day, when I was at the market I was looking for flour and such to make things like pancakes and bread. You know, because bread is so difficult to find in a pastry centric, bread shopped filled city... I guess I just really like fresh bread out of the oven and I usually by mine the night before so it is half off. You never have to wait for homemade bread to go on sale! Anywho, I wandered around the store reading labels and found one with a german recipe that I half understood, so I got that thinking it was bread flour. Unfortunately it was not bread flour, but fortunately it was a premade bread mixture that was just add water! Easy peasy! So I added my water, kneaded until I was happy, let it rise and then baked it and poof, fresh baked bread. I really don't understand why people don't do this more often, it is economical and yummy! I have a feeling more bread is in my future. Anywho, I ate a piece of bread with my yummy salmon meal.

So basically the point of this post is that my dinner was the highlight of my day. Nothing exciting really happened. Just bread and salmon.

First Day of Classes

Heute haben wir unsere Deutschklasse beginnen! Translation: Today we started german class! Not über exciting, except that we did get to see our palace for the first time! Palais Corbelli is an old baroque palace about one block from Stephansplatz, the city center.

This staircase was the center of Palais Corbelli until WWII when the other half of the building was bombed. The only thing that saved this half was the 3 foot firewall separating the two sides.

Our baroque concert hall seats 50 and has two grand pianos and a harpsichord!

Detail of the fresco on the concert hall ceiling!

Even our study rooms are gorgeous!

After class I headed back to the apartment, got lost, got found, and went grocery shopping. We live very close to the largest open air market in Vienna, the Naschmarkt. There you can find many incredible fresh fruits and vegetables, a few I saw were lychee, jack fruit, and hot peppers. You can also find fresh meat and fish, cheese, olives, and very excitingly hummus! I picked up a few things for stir fry and general goodness and then we headed to Spar and Zielpunkt, two local chains, to check out basics. I really like Spar, it had a good selection and quality, and the Spar brand was relatively cheap. Zielpunkt had a lot of deals and was overall cheaper, but much less selection and there were some name brands that cost the same.

After the grocery stores we headed to an Asian Specialty market, where I was completely at home! Most of the brands are the same and all chinese broccoli looks alike! I picked up the rest of my fixings for my noodle stir fry, including all the sauces I could ever want! Then I spotted the frozen section where oohed, aahed, and drooled over the yummy looking frozen dim sum. Less than 5 minutes from my place I expect to be there very often!

1-2-3, 1-2-3!

Just thought I would add that tonight, we learned to waltz in preparation for BALL SEASON!!! Which isn't actually until January/February, but there is the Chimney Sweepers Ball coming up this fall, which I think we will just have to attend. Party on people!

Erlaufsee

About 20 minutes from Mariazell is the small Alpen lake, called the Erlaufsee. There are many fun activities there on a hot summers day, including swimming and sun bathing on the beach, enjoying ice cream at the lakeside cafe, paddling around on rented boats, or taking an hour long walk around the lake, which I decided to do with a group of other students.

Our walk began by following the lakeside road from the beach toward the other side of the lake. Eventually reaching a small side street where we walked through a small neighborhood of sorts and out toward green pastures and huge Austria cows. Especially coming straight from California where the cows eat brown grass in large herds, seeing an Austria cow, who noms bright green grass with maybe another cow or two, is quite a sight.

We wandered quite a ways away from the lake, taking mostly small one way roads. As we headed back into the woods we found many adorable lakeside cottages, which were very well maintained with an incredible attention to detail! Even the fences to keep the tourists off their lawns had hand painted wooden decorations!

As we continued on our way, we came across an alter for the virgin mary, which are found all over this very Catholic country, in what I thought of as odd places like on a trail in the mountains.

The trail eventually returned us to the lake, where we found a plaque which told the legend behind the silver and black colors of the lake. It was in german, but I think I got the jist of it and basically, there was a miller who lived by the lake with his beautiful wife. Every night she would go down to the waters edge to hear a flutist play and the miller got very jealous, so one night he threw her into the water and she drowned, at this spot the water turned a silver color. Eventually, the miller regretted his actions and was so distraught that he threw himself into the lake as well, and there the water turned black. What a lovely little story, eh?

Well, none of us threw ourselves in and so we headed back to the beach. Although the water was deemed by many to be too cold, another girl and I jumped in off of one of the many public docks and we splashed around for a bit, before heading back to the rocky shore and beach. There were several public water slides available, but some were nicer than others and the one closest to us was on a floating platform covered with bird poop, so we avoided it.

Eventually it was time to head out, so we all piled on the bus and headed back to Mariazell for more orientating! As much fun as it's been, I can't wait to get back and see my apartment!!!

Mariazell

A short 3 hour drive outside of Vienna is Mariazell, the small town in the Alps known for it's Basillica or church.

This originally gothic church was expanded during the baroque and now includes an impressive amount of gold and silver decorations, the metal for which was donated by Maria Theresa herself. Including a large altar made almost entirely out of these precious metals, with the exception of a small wooden carving of Mary, who wears clothes, like a doll, 363 days out of the year. The clothes are just as elaborate as the silver and gold statues and figures surrounding Mary. They are made from the former pearl and diamond encrusted gowns of wealthy woman from all over Europe.

You may be wondering how this tiny town in the middle of the Alps ended up with such patrons. The wooden Mary carving was actually believe to work miracles and people would take pilgrimages from all over to come and see the Virgin's altar. To this day many Catholics travel to Mariazell for this reason.

Which creates a bustling tourist town and a lovely area to visit for college students such as myself! Today and tomorrow we have the afternoon off from our busy schedule of meetings, german interviews, and sessions, so today I hopped on the bus and headed to Mariazell. Known for their Gingerbread or Lebkuchen, I bought a small piece for myself and also tried some Lebkucheneis or gingerbread ice cream, which was surprisingly good! In addition to Lebkuchen, Mariazell is known for their herbal schnopps and pumpkin seed oil. The schnopps is very popular and you can find it all over in the stores. The Kerbiskernöl or pumpkin seed oil is not as common, and although you can find it in the city center in ornate bottles at exorbitant prices, it is better to take a side street and find it at a more local place. Follow a little old lady in traditional dress and she may just lead you to the store that sells it in large quantities for much cheaper. Kerbiskernöl, with it's distinct taste, is incredibly healthy and makes a great salad dressing if you are unsure of how else to use it.

A short 15 minute bus ride took us back to our Jugend und Familien Gasthaus, a surprisingly modern hostel type building, complete with a recreation area with an air hockey and a pool table, a small Kegelbahn or bowling alley, a short zipline, a pool, a sauna, a buffet style restaurant area, and a bar. It also had several conference rooms which serve as our meeting spaces.

Tonight we met in the largest room for a "Traditional Austrian Surprise" as we were told on our schedules. It ended up being about 10 Austrian men in Lederhosen performing traditional dances and then teaching us how to do the dances. It was quite a sight!

Hans, the accordian player, and his wife made us all a treat of bread with honey and they brought honey schnopps for everyone to try.

But the fun didn't end there, for their next dance they brought out axes and a log and told a story about lumberjacks through dance.

This included actually chopping the log in the middle of the conference room and lighting the scraps on fire to cook lard for eating after wood chopping.

Pretty much the most insane evening ever!

Wien!

You only wish you were where I am right now:

Notice the large dome on the right side, I am across the street. Below is a photo of the dome from the front. Go ahead, be a little jealous.

When Mayo, my Viennese exchange student from a few years ago, found out she was going to be in Spain when I got here, she got me in contact with her friend from school. His father and him hosted me and were most gracious. Although I did get lost a little bit trying to find my way there and eventually, with the help of a surprisingly friendly Viennese woman in the U-Bahn, I found my way to their beautiful apartment. Where I proceeded to nap for several hours, waking up only in time to walk to a Spar grocery store and pick up a half off pastry (closing time! woo!) and then eat it in Stadtpark on my way to the IES Abroad Center.

Stadtpark is one of Vienna's many public parks, all of which are incredibly well maintained and manicured. This was just one example, with ornate stone archways, sculptures and even benches surrounding a manmade waterway.

After stopping by my future campus, which by the way is housed in an old baroque palace, I slowly wandered back, noting the surprising amount of H&Ms along the way. All that is left for the night is repacking for my Orientation in Mariazell tomorrow and more sleep!

I spent 8 Euros on this Post

I am in Frankfurt safe, sound and decently well rested. I had a row of 4 seats all to myself! It was amazing, I just sprawled out all over and got really comfy with my 4 pillows and 4 blankets! I was so shocked when we pulled out and there was no one there. It made the flight incredibly tolerable, that and the touch screen personal TV monitors. Yay Lufthansa!

We got in about 20 minutes early and it took all of twenty minutes to get through immigration, security, hit an ATM and find my gate. Much luckier than my last trip to Vienna I guess! And I don't know who likes Frankfurt but I think they are crazy. It is just too big and too complicated! I walked down a long hallway only to turn around and come back on the other side of a wall. ... German engineering? Either way, I think my plane just pulled in, I was worried at first that the gate was going to change cause it looks like an all Lufthansa area but an Austrian just pulled in so it should be mine! I have tons of time between flights, hence the spending 8 Euro on internet. That and the me forgetting my paper with the info about the family I am staying with tonight. Oy vey self. But hey, thanks to my forgetfulness, you all get to hear about my wonderful trip and I now have the first official blog post for my Welt Frau blog! Woohoo! Well heres to hoping I don't bore you and you keep on reading. Cheers!