Bagels, Mauthausen, Musikverein, und mehr!

Hallo!

The past couple days have been crazy because we are in the middle of midterms!  I don't know why, but on my program they make a huge deal out of midterms...they're worth the same amount as my finals.  (Ew!)  But before midterms started, I got to do a couple neat things.  Last Saturday, I went with my friends from Emory to one of the only bagel places in Vienna, Bagel Station.  Everybody working there spoke English and we all got everything bagels with cream cheese.  The cream cheese tasted a little different, but the bagels were SO delicious!  Such a welcome and familiar taste!!

Bagel Station!

Last Sunday, I went on an excursion with my program to Mauthausen, which is a concentration camp about 2 hours outside of Vienna in a small market town.  One of the strangest parts about the whole thing was how beautiful the entire area of the camp was...it didn't seem to fit with what happened there.  The actual camp itself was extremely eerie.  We saw the entrances, the watchtowers, the barracks, the housing of the officers, the memorials in the front of the camp, and the quarry where prisoners were forced to climb up the hills with 100-170 pound rocks.  One of the professors who came with us said that the tour of the camp was the coldest she had ever been since she had lived in Austria, so I guess we got a little sense of how miserable the winters were for the people in the camp.  I can't imagine how they worked in that weather in almost no clothes!  It was a pretty humbling experience.  After we all froze on the tour, the bus stopped at McDonald's so people could get coffee and American food...how European of us!

one of the memorials outside of the camp

the quarry that the prisoners had to walk up and were forced to jump off of

the camp itself was beautiful...very strange

the entrance to Mauthausen

the view from the watch ledge of the main area of the camp

the barracks

another view of the barracks

Then on Tuesday I experienced what is probably one of my favorite things I've done so far...I got to see the Vienna Philharmonic!!!!!  There is a 6 year long waiting list for a concert during the week and a 13 year waiting list to see a concert on the weekend.  But somehow, someone on my program found some special student tickets (for only 10 euro!) because it was a holiday.  We didn't even have to stand!  (A welcome change from the opera!)  The philharmonic played two Brahms pieces, a trombone concerto, and Dvorak's Ninth Symphony.  The trombone concerto was a little strange, but I had never heard one before so it was still pretty cool.  Dvorak was AMAZING though!!! So dramatic and intense!  And I've never had so much fun watching a conductor before.  He was literally jumping up and down on his podium and dancing the whole time.  I have no idea how any of the symphony members followed him.  I though he was going to need the bar behind him on the podium!  Also, before Dvorak started the conductor was having the symphony wait a long time before it started and nobody could figure out why. All of a sudden the stage doors opened again and the principal bassoonist ran on stage...I have no idea what he was doing but he was definitely in big trouble for being late!  Then if that wasn't bad enough, they still weren't starting, and the bassoonist got up AGAIN, knocking things off of other people's stands as he went offstage.  He came back about 20 seconds later with a folder with his music!  I cannot even imagine the scolding he got from the conductor after the concert!  It was pretty funny though.  The concert was in the Musikverein, which was absolutely gorgeous.  It is right in front of Karlskuche (St. Charles' Church), which is one of my favorite churches, so we saw a beautiful view of the city before the  concert.

the beautiful Musikverein!

THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC!!!! (notice it's almost all men)

in front of the stage!

Before the concert, I met up with the 2 girls I was going with down in the U-bahn outside of the opera bathrooms.  This was an experience in itself!  I had never stopped to look at the bathrooms before, but I always noticed the music playing outside.  But I spent a good 15 minutes waiting outside of them on Tuesday, so I got quite the tour of them.  The Danube Waltz is BLASTED from the bathrooms on repeat...the song never changes!  The men's bathroom is designed like an old piano bar with an actual old piano and the urinals look like bar stools...it is extremely strange.  (There are pictures outside of the bathrooms, that's how I know what they look like!!)  The women's bathroom has stalls that look like old theater boxes.  You have to pay to use them though, so I will probably never actually go in there.  It was an interesting experience to see them though!

It's started to not get above the 40's during the day...I've been wearing my coat every day!!  The trees are still beautiful with the leaves changing colors, though, so I don't quite mind the cold yet.  I have such a pretty walk to school that I even stopped and took a picture in Stadtpark today.  Other than that, I've just been cramming for midterms and scrambling to finish a paper.  Mom and Dad get in at 3:15 this afternoon, so I'm going to meet them at 4:30 at their hotel today!  I'm so excited!!  I'm sure we'll have lots of adventures that I can write about in a couple weeks. :)  Auf Wiedersehen!!

Stadtpark

my walk to school

Zwei Wochen in Wien

Guten Tag!

I know it has been a couple of weeks since I've posted, but the week before last was a pretty quiet week.  The highlight of my week (even though it was not necessarily a good thing) was probably what happened to me on my way to school on Tuesday.  I was waiting to cross the street while a Strassenbahn (Vienna's streetcars) was going by in front of me.  All of a sudden, I heard a huge thud and the Strassenbahn had gone off of the tracks!  I couldn't figure out why that would happen, so I walked around the streetcar to cross the street and saw that it had smashed straight into one of those giant tour buses!  It was crazy...there was glass everywhere and the front window and door of the tour bus were completely smashed in.  Luckily, there were lots of construction and city workers everywhere who had the door pried open and people out within minutes, and nobody was hurt.  But my German professor told me that a Strassenbahn accident happens very rarely, so I saw something that doesn't happen often in Vienna!

the Strassenbahn accident

On Friday night, I went to a brewery with a couple of my friends.  We went to the Ottakringer Brewery, which is one of Vienna's most popular local beers.  The brewery turns into a sort of night club about once a month, so there were 5 floors of dancing with a different genre of live music on each floor.  We stayed on the Rock floor, but I'm sure the other floors were really cool, too.  (There was a hip hop floor, a techno floor, and I forget what else.)  It was a really neat place to see and it was fun to go somewhere different on the weekend.  Other than that, I had a pretty uneventful week.  Even though it was somewhat quiet, I still had a fabulous week in Vienna!! :)

This week was a little more eventful.  Last Wednesday, I went on another walking tour with my Vienna: Past and Present class.  We visited St. Stephan's Cathedral, which is probably the most famous church in Vienna.  We also saw the Jesuit University, which is still located in the city center by St. Stephan's.  It was one of the most beautiful places I have seen here yet.  After that, we went inside the oldest pub in Vienna, which is a cute little restaurant that has signatures on the ceiling of famous people who have eaten there, including Mozart!!  It was pretty cool to stand in a pub where Mozart had eaten!

the inside of St. Stephan's

This is my professor...Dad wanted me to take pictures of my crazy professors!

the inside of the Jesuit University

On Friday night, I went to The Barber of Seville at the Opera House.  I went with about 10 other people from my program at 5:00 to wait for standing tickets to the 8:00 show.  It was totally worth it though!!!  We got standing spots in about the 20th row (in a HUGE opera house) and had an incredible view!  Once you tie a scarf around your seats, you are free to leave, so we went to the grocery store and bought food and chocolate and ate a yummy dinner before going back to the opera house.  The actual opera was amazing!  It is one of the few that I learned about in my opera class, so it was nice to know what was going on and recognize some of the arias.  It was definitely one of my most memorable nights here so far...it felt like a typical Viennese night!  After the opera, we went over to someone from my program's apartment instead of going out to a club.  We all had so much fun because it felt more like we were at home at a friend's apartment instead of struggling to brave a foreign city and foreign nightclubs.  We all agreed that a quiet night of hanging out was a nice break from the crowded nightlife of the city.

the inside of the Opera House...we were so close to the front!

This morning (Saturday morning), I went on an all-day excursion with my Vienna: Past and Present class.  We took a charter bus to Klosterneuburg, which is one of the most famous monasteries in Austria.  The bus ride took us about 45 minutes outside of Vienna, so we got a beautiful view of the mountains.  We went on a 3 hour tour of then entire monastery and then drove about 15 more minutes to Castle Kreuzenstein where my professor gave us a tour of all the rooms of the castle, its courtyard, and its weapons room.  That castle was used in the movie The Three Muskateers and now makes most of its money by being used as a movie set.  After the castle, we went to a Heurigen, which has traditional Austrian food and Austrian wine.  Everyone was required to order a drink and something to eat, so I had a piece of bread with this delicious orange cheese spread (I can't remember what it's called!) that tasted kind of like the Hawaiin cheese dip that Mom and Grandma Sandy make and a glass of white wine.  The wine was super bitter, but it was apparently really fancy Viennese wine, so I felt very authentic. :)

one of the areas of Klosterneuburg

the outside of the monestary...it was so pretty!

the outside of Castle Kreuzenstein

the courtyard in the castle

Other than that, I'm just going to be working on a 45 minute presentation that I have to give on Thursday and I haven't even started...gotta love studying abroad!  And my foot is almost back to normal, so no more hobbling around Vienna!  All in all, it's been a good couple of weeks :)  Auf Wiedersehen!

Lange Nacht der Museen

Hallo!

It has gotten so cold in the past week!  I am sitting in my kitchen with the tea kettle on while wearing a fleece, a sweatshirt, a scarf, and sweatpants!  On Friday (October 1st), the gelato shops closed and pretty much the whole city turned the heat on.  But lucky for me, the gelato shop by my apartment is open through the end of October.  The main event of my week was probably my Vienna: Past and Present class on Wednesday.  My teacher took us to a couple of main places in the city center that I hadn't seen before.  We saw some of the oldest churches in Vienna, the Jewish Square, and even the building where Mozart gave his first concert!  I think that class is going to be my favorite because we just walk around the city most of the time.  My professor even bought us all chocolate at one of the museums!

a square in the city center

where Mozart performed his first concert!

a cool church where some Viennese monks are buried

The most exciting part of the weekend was definitely Saturday night, which was die Lange Nacht der Museen.  From 6 p.m. until 1 a.m. there were 105 museums open all over the city.  We paid one fee at the first museum we saw and then had a ticket to almost every museum in Vienna!  The whole city was insanely busy until about 2 in the morning.  I went to the Albertina Museum and saw the huge Picasso exhibit, which was AMAZING.  I would guess there were about 30 original Picasso drawings and paintings.  The exhibit was all about Picasso during the war, so there were a lot of interesting paintings and things to read.  We also went to one of the old libraries in the city center, which was absolutely beautiful and reminded me of something from Harry Potter.  Then we waited about an hour to get into the Museum of Chocolate where we got to sample some Viennese chocolates and got a wafer to put either milk chocolate, white chocolate, or dark chocolate on.  Our last stop was the Alt-Wiener Schnapsmuseum, which is a famous Schnapps Museum in Vienna.  We waited about an hour there, too, only to find that the entire tour was in German.  But everybody got to try a little sip of whatever kind of Schnapps they wanted, so I tried a flavor of my favorite type of Viennese cookie...not as pleasant as you would think!

the library...so pretty!

two of the mini chocolate fountains at the Museum of Chocolate

chocolate statues

part of the Schnapps Museum

another part of the Schnapps Museum

The night of the museums was a little difficult because I hurt my foot pretty badly on Friday night, so I was kind of hobbling all over the city.  But I'm going to keep sightseeing anyways even though I look a little ridiculous!  We will see how it goes...

Hope everything is going well at home!  Auf Wiedersehen!