Adventures in Vienna

Preparations for Life Ball
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More things to do in Vienna:

Take a Danube River cruise

So to the Staatsoper like EVERY night!

Visit the ancient instrument museum, Belvedere Palace, Fine Arts Museum, Mozarteum, the Albertina (Mozart exhibit), Museum of Arts and Crafts and the Royal Treasury (by the Royal Apartments), and St. Ruprecht

Beethoven's grave
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Today, tour of Vienna. Everything we drive by seems involve music. We drove by the Music Verreihn and the Wiener Konzert Haus... There's a concert house on about every corner.

Ringstrasse is the traditional center of the city. On it are many galleries and restaurants, as well as the Staatsoper, the Fine Arts Academy, the Mozart monument, and the Fine Arts Museum. We saw preparations for the Life Ball, an AIDS benefit that Sharon Stone and Naomi Campbell attended. The Votive Church was next, with many scaffolds. I guess it was under construction. So many things to come back to! This is the year of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, so they are doing Mozart stuff all year long. Mark, Emily, Bethany, and I bought tickets for a Mozart thing on Monday night.

Interior of St. Peter's, Vienna
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St. Ruprecht is Vienna’s oldest church. It is on the side of the Danube that wasn’t destroyed when the Nazis retreated there in WWII. So the buildings there look a lot like the Soviet buildings did in Prague.

There is an island on the Danube. It's man-made for flood control, but it looks like there's joggers. I would like to run by the Danube. It's not blue, like the song, but it's brown because of the sediments in the water. According to our guide, it can look blue on a bright day.

Organ at St. Peter's, Vienna
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We just went to Friedhöfe, the cemetery. Here Beethoven, Brahms, Wolf, Schubert, and Schumann are buried. Mozart's memorial marker is here, but we don't know if his bones are actually there because he was originally buried in a mass grave, as was the custom at the time. I'm not a huge fan of cemeteries, but the composers' grave were pretty neat. There is also a large art-noveau style church. We sang the first (short) movement of Di Lasso's Magnicat.

Here's a really horrible joke I just found that I thought I'd share with you:

Exterior of the Musik Verreihn, a performing center established by the middle class for the middle class
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A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears some music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source. He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827. Then he realizes that the music is the Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him. By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backward. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backward. The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed, the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th. By the next day the word has spread and a crowd has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group. Someone in the crowd asks him if he has an explanation for the music. "Don't you get it?" the caretaker says incredulously. "He's decomposing!"

Breakfast this morning was delicious-I seem to habitually eat a cheese sandwich everyday. Of course, they have sausage here too, but I didn't eat any of that.

There's not many shops open on Sunday in Vienna. I'll have to see if I can do any shopping later this afternoon.

22:40pm

We gave a great concert tonight at St. Peter's. What a GORGEOUS church. I have never sung in such a beautiful space. I got to do the solo on "O Vos Omnes" and I think it made my trip! Afterwards we went to La Casa Grande (Mexican in Columbia, Italian in Vienna.) The service was horrible. We had to sit there for at least 20 minutes to get menus. We wrote our orders on a piece of paper and did not get the drinks we ordered until we wrote them down too. It went on like that... ugh... I don't even want to go into it. It got me down. Everyone, really.

Someone in our group, one of our TA's, got pickpocketed today on the same subway car as me. Apparently the guy had his hand in Claude's pocket and then Claude held on to his hand/wallet as the guy tried to leave, but the subway door closed on his hand and the guy got away with his wallet. Scary stuff. He got it back later today, but about 100 Euro was gone. He had already cancelled all the cards.

I got a call from Arpad, my grandmother's friend's.................. It was funny because I answered the phone in a very French "Allo?" He was probably pretty confused by that. I am meeting up with them on the 25th. Cool!

It's neat to be in a country where I semi-know the language. I went to an Internet cafe with Casey and Bethany today and was able to talk to the owner. Whoa!

Now Bethany, Tracy, Casey, and I are in my room and gossiping. I love these girls!