One Day, Four Countries

In a little while I begin my journey from Vienna (Austria) by bus to Bratislava (Slovakia) and then by plane to Brussels (Belgium), topped off with a train trip to Amsterdam (Netherlands). I am pretty sure this the most countries I have ever covered in one day! Back on Monday!

ANTM!

My choir director is a fool! Austria's Next Top Model approached my choir to perform on their show and he turned them down!!! I could've been on ANTM. Granted it wouldn't have been Tyra's ANTM, but ANTM nonetheless.

It actually makes a lot of sense, they wanted us to just kind of show up, no music and since something entertaining while they played the background music. We are currently preparing Beethoven's 9th, an Oratorio by Saint Saen and Britten's Ceremony of Carols. Not exactly the ANTM kind of music.

The Taste of Nostalgia

I made Lasagna today! Abe had a disappointing experience with lasagna in Pisa, so I promised to make some based on padre's delicious recipe. Layers of noodle, spinach ricotta filling, meat sauce, and mozzarella melted and gooey after 2 hours in the oven. It was delicious. And best of all, it tasted like home. I can't duplicate everything over here and I most definitely cannot duplicate dad's cooking, but this came pretty darn close.

Hey, I put some new shoes on!

This morning was homework morning. To compensate for shopping afternoon. Abby and I met at Cafe Sperl, my local Viennese cafe, for an expensive but amazing traditional breakfast with incredible Viennese coffee and proceeded to hang out, drink more coffee, and finish up some homework for the next few hours.


Come lunchtime, we headed back to my place to grab a quick and much cheaper bite to eat, before walking up to Mariahilferstraße. We were on the hunt for Abby's perfect peacoat: warm, good lines, easy to wear with scarfs and blue. We walked the entirety of Mariahilf, at least all the parts worth hitting, before coming up the last mall at the very end. We went inside, partially just to get warm, and ran into a tiny store that was going out of business and was clearly in its last day or two from the lack of merchandise. We found a practically perfect blue peacoat at the front of the store, but of the two left, neither were in her size. Then I spotted the few left over pairs of shoes in the back of the store and headed straight there. Along the way missing the rack full of those blue pea coats, which luckily Abby did not miss. Both of us ended up winning, with Abby finding out this dream coat was only 25 Euro! And me finding a great pair of black high heeled ankle boots for 15 Euro!


And the day only got better from there, as we headed off to Schönbrunn for the opening day of their Weihnachtsmarkt! Probably my favorite of the three I've gone too so far, the Schönbrunn Christmas market was less crowded, more organized and had more homemade goods: all in all less touristy. We enjoyed some Nockerl the Austrian version of Spätzle, Krapfen an Austrian donut which was fried and filled in front of our eyes, Punsch and Glühwein!

Strauss under the Sea!

Went on a musicological mission today. Goal: find the sources for two newspaper articles, find the origins of a photo and then identify the people in the photo. A daunting task to say the least, we headed to the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek or Austian National Library to look at microfilms of old newspapers.

The library is in the Hofburg, which is the old city palace of the Habsburg family, meaning it is incredibly large. So we ended up in the wrong portion of the palace at first, and then once locating the right portion, we bought out yearly passes to the library, since we will be back to do more research and look at old scores. After dropping off our backpacks in the Garderobe (coat check), we headed inside to attempt to find the newspaper collection.

Dr. Solvik had given us somewhat specific directions, the first of which being go left. We did and after following a few signs, ended up in the current newspaper section, which does not have newspapers from 1943. We then followed Dr. Solvik's directions more specifically.

Go Left. Open the door, it should lead to a staircase. Follow the spiral staircase downward. At the bottom, go straight down the hallway. At the end of the hallway, there is door. Knock three times and tell them you eat lunch on Thursday. Enter. Go to the desk and ask for help.

We ended up in the right place and asked for help. Only two of us are german speakers and I am the best of the bunch, so I did most of the talking, and pretty much got that we needed more information in order to get anything from them. So we headed back upstairs to the information desk, who gave us a book in order to look up all the relevant newspapers published in Vienna in 1943. Being during the middle of WWII there were not many, but the book is organized by year and includes a range of 200 years so it took us half an hour to read through every Wiener newspaper titles in the past 200 years and determine the dates they were published. We only found 3 and one we already knew. Oh well, it's all about learning the process. Oder?

We got the microfilm for the important one and were able to date and identify one of the articles. The other two are probably within the other two newspapers which are going to head back and find later. Still no signs of the photo.

At a premier of a work by Richard Strauss (right) in 1943.

After our fun there, I headed back to IES and met up with Abe in the tiny baby IES library. I have to say our the library at the Hofburg palace beats out Palais' little library any day. We decided to make a trip to the Haus des Meers with Zan, getting the German Team back together for another fun and fluent adventure.

The Haus des Meers is about a block from my house and is housed in an old builing from WWII that was designed to be a concrete safehouse in a sense, with lookouts on the top, so it is essentially a tall concrete tower with a outdoor walkway level that goes around the entire outside of the building near the top. It was converted into an aquarium after the war, and two 3 story glass greenhouse looking things were built onto part of it.

I have to say it was pretty awesome. In general I love aquariums, and this one, although small had some pretty cool stuff. Including piranas, one really cool larger tank with a giant sea turtle, and the two greenhouses which were open and had multiple floored walkways to check out the various types of wildlife living within them. Those parts had birds flying around your head, monkeys running along the railings, and bats hanging around above your head. Pretty sweet. Best part is: I got a yearly pass, so now I can go whenever I want to!

Zan left early for class and Abe and I walked around on the lookout level and saw gorgeous views of the city at night. We attempted to identify the buildings but weren't always successful. We petted some koi and then went back to one of the open areas and sat around for a bit, before heading to Pablo's Zuhause for pizza and lasagna.

HARRY POTTER!

On a major Harry Potter high.

The movies are not all that good, we all know this. But my friends and I, our generation really, grew up with Harry. I started reading Harry when I was 8 years old. I was too young to read it myself, my mother read it out loud to me, my brother and sister. I couldn't make it through the third book on my own because I was too scared for a long time, so I just pretended I was reading it slowly until I could read it during the day with my dad nearby.

Point being, I dressed up with my friends. Granted most of my friends do not have the extensive wardrobe which I lugged with me to Vienna, so my costume was pretty much the greatest thing ever (photos to come). I was, as any good Asian would be, Cho Chang. And borrowed a blue and yellow tie from Zan to match my Ravenclaw badge which I made, also awesome. I don't dress up for movies. Not my thing, but this was so great.

Like I said, the movies are not high quality and I give them no high acclaim, but that doesn't change how amazing that movie was. There were of course differences from the book, but for the most part it was surprisingly true to the story. Scary and intense with the right amount of cheesy, made for a great night!

Sidenote on Austria Movie Theaters: Just a fun cultural fact, at Austrian movie theaters you purchase a seat in the movie theater like you are going to a show, so my friends and bought our tickets at the Haydn English Cinema weeks ago and got to the movie right before it started and had amazing seats. Good stuff.

Harry Potter!

Harry Potter 7.1 is going to be in Austrian theaters tomorrow! Austria has the earliest possible premiere date outside the UK, meaning I am seeing it a full 33.5 hours before it reaches US theaters! But who is counting.

I tried to make it to London for the Premiere, but alas was not so lucky. Instead my friends and I are going to see it tomorrow at an English theater up the street from mi casa. And post premiere returning to mi casa for homemade Butterbeer (courtesy of yours truly) and general HP jollyness!

In preparation I have been scouring the city today for various things needed for tomorrows frivolity. I picked up large amounts of ginger ale and butter and searched high and low for anything that has butterscotch flavoring. I am proud to say that there is nothing in Vienna, which possesses such a flavoring. After extensive interwebical research, I have concluded that there is not only a way to make butterscotch, but the best way in which to do so, is with brown sugar. Which also does not exist in Vienna.

Ach, mein Leben!

Fortunately, my friends and I were able to go to a costume shop and find hair dye for our Wesley twins (a short mexican and a tall blonde haired bearded caucasian), glasses for our Harrietta, and nothing for myself. Although my bearded friend is letting me borrow his tie so I can pull off my Cho look. I later went to H&M and purchased a lovely white blouse to really complete the look.

All in all an exciting Harry Potter Premiere Eve and have no fear, photos will of course be posted later.

Apologies

Dear Family, Friends, and Strangers,

I apologize for my lack of posting, it's been a crazy month. I plan to start updating from where I left off and getting to here, all while attempting to keep updating on what is going on in my life currently.

It may be confusing, for a while, since posts will appear on days that they happened not necessarily when I post them. Bear with me, and enjoy! Maybe this month I will get the hand of more consistent posting.

Also thanks to my lovely siblings, who yelled at me enough to get on here and just do it.

Love Always,

Rachel

Föhn!

In German, there is a word for this kind of weather: föhn. It basically describes a warm wind, which comes in the fall or winter and reheats everything. We haven't really had any cold weather here yet, one or two days below 15ºC, but mostly its been pretty warm! Right now, it is gorgeous and sunny outside, I don't really need a jacket - I am just wearing one for looks - and I love it.

Government

So I've been having trouble with getting my Austrian Residency Permit, allowing me to live here legally for the year. Today I made a trip to MA-35, which is essentially the department of immigration to check on my status and see if I could move things along. Another girl in my program, Theresa, needed to get her visa issues sorted out as well, so we went together. When we arrived we were given a number and told to go wait in waiting room G on the 5th floor for our number to be called. The room was full and there were small children running around screaming and all the chair were sitting facing a small screen on the wall which posted numbers and rooms. Everyone sat waiting for their number. The best part was, the numbers didn't go in order, in fact they really didn't go in any sensible pattern.

After waiting for about half an hour I got called in, explained my problem auf Deutsch and was told to go back outside and wait to get called again. I waited another hour before getting called back in, only to be asked why I was here? Why did I come? My permit wasn't ready? I asked if I could do anything. No, so why are you here?

I thanked him, left, and went and got a Kebap.