soon to be home

So far this trip has been absolutely stunning and unfortunately tomorrow is our last day. We left with no plan beyond what city we were going to be in when and we knew next to nothing about any of the places on the itinerary and still the largest mishap has been me leaving my backpack on a train tonight with absolutely nothing of real importance in it, and that is in switzerland where I at least have a good shot of retrieving it.

Switzerland has been unbelievably stunning...as if from a fairy tale. We have been staying in Bern and spent today in Interlaken where I hiked and we all went on a tour of caves in the mountain. Tomorrow is going to be spent in Zurich where we catch a night train back to Vienna. Details on the trip coming then

Rome

With my remaining four minutes of internet cafe time here's a little of the last few days.

3 of my rooomates and I headed for the West Bahnhof and realized we were supposed to be at the Sud Bahnhof...a little panicked we still made it to our train with time to spare, we then took off on a night train and woke up in Italy. Over the last few days we have seen as much as one can possibly see in 3 days time and the only thing we have spent money on is food, an "interesting" hostel and (today) the vatican museums-sisten chapel. Tomorrow early we head off to florence. details to come

and we're off

Intensive german has just ended and tonight I head out to Italy and then Switzerland for 10 days of being an American Tourist. Last weekend I did in fact see the opera, friday, saturday sunday and monday...The Magic Flute twice, Simon Bocanegra and Carmen. So four operas for a total of 11 euro. The opera hause is suprisingly small with LOTS of box seats...there's the orchestra seating, behind which is the best of the standing room options then 2 or three levels of box seating that wrap all around the theater, each with their individual curtain, and the 2 balconies (each with standing spots). Each seat or standing spot also has its own translator that you can choose german or english to follow subtitles, and each standing spot has a bar to lean up against...that is of course unless you don't get there earl enough for a real spot and get stuck in the aisle (that happened on monday).

We recieved chamber assignments this week for the Music Performace Workshop, Ill be playing the Mendelssohn Octet, Schubert Double Cello Quintet (again), a Dvorak piano trio and either the Brahms Clarinet Quintet or A minor Quartet...there's questions about if we'll have the clarinetist. Needless to say, I am certainly excited for all of these although i'm sure itll take a lot of work and could be quite dificult scheduling. There were no violists in the program this semester so for all of the groups we have either violinists posing as violists or (in the case of the schubert) we're bringing in a ringer. Apart from those I'm going to take a class on Mahler and the Turn of the Cetury a seminar on the Classical Symphony and (of course) german and lessons.

3 of my roommates and I leave tonight at 8 on a night train to rome, spend a few days there then head to florence and then Bern and Zurich. We have our train tickets ad hostels but other than that we're going to make it up as we go along. I'm certainly excited for whatever advetures come as I've never been to either of these countries and none of us speak italian.

Unfortunately my computer is not currently workign so there is a hold up on getting pictures posted. Hopefully I will get it workign again, and if not I'll find another way to get pictures online.

Ich wohne jetz in Wien

I've been with IES for some time now. I met the group at the West Banhof (a train station) wondering if showing up 3 hours before we were supposed to was going to mean sitting in the train station alone for 2 hours or so...I could not have been more mistaken. When I went up the escalator there was a group of about 100 students already sitting there...I was tipped off that they were IES by the fact that they were speaking English and had IES tags on their luggage (and yes, Meghan was among them). We were then Bussed off to the alps for the weekend. The trip in the alps let us get to know each other, gave a gorgeous spot for a first impression of Austria and gave them and us a chance to figure out housing. The first night, Friday, we were given a lot of information about the program and Mariazell, the town in which we stayed, a presentation by dancers in lederhosen…this is one of the most non traditional ice breakers I’ve yet encountered… and a free drink ticket. Part of the information we were given was that we do get to choose roommates, but you had less than 24 hours to do so, this also seemed a more effective way of making people meet each other than the traditional relay race. Somehow I did manage to find roommates in that time and after that first weekend we returned to Vienna (or Wien as it is called locally) and I moved into a beautiful and large apartment with 5 other girls: Ann (whom I share an actual room with) Esther, Katy, Leslie and Christina.

After Mariazell, the first 3 weeks are Intensive German. This is 3 hours every day and in the last two weeks I’ve learned probably about ½ a semesters worth of German. Apart from German there have been various tours and information sessions, particularly in the first week. These have ranged how to find what you need to how to get into the Vienna State Opera for 2 euro to seeing all the pretty touristy sights in Vienna.

There is always something to do here. Over the summer they had an open air film festival outside the Rathaus, which is the parliament house with a huge screen set up with lots of seating-both chairs and bleachers and food stands of all sorts. The most interesting thing about this film festival however was that the films they were showing were mostly Operas. Over the last weekend I saw both Rigoletto and Nozze di Figaro. The state Opera opens this week and they have a performance every night--at that theater you have your own personal translator in whatever language you pick. There is also the Volksoper which performs always in German and the Musikverein which is a concert hall with unbelievable acoustics (this is where the Vienna Philharmonic performs). I haven’t been in any of these big halls for shows yet but I can’t wait too.

Tomorrow morning I have my second German test which will be followed by a field trip to a Heurige (including a paid for lunch). A Heurige is a restaurant that has its own vineyard in the back and (as is obvious by the vineyard) specializes in wine and serves the house wine or a variety of other wines from that and previous years. I went to one of these already for the Birthday of one of my roommates, and it was very nice with homemade food and a nice but quaint atmosphere.

I believe those are the big highlights so far, but I plan on keeping these posts more frequent and possibly somewhat shorter from now on.

Also, pictures coming soon.

Vienna at Last

Alright, so I've been in Vienna for over a week now but just now got this Blog set up. Following is the post I wrote on my first night in the city.

Vienna-Day one 8/23/07 11:15pm

So here I am in Vienna. Kinda tired, but not really feeling like sleeping yet. Yesterday I left with my parents for JFK, a bit later than intended but we got to the airport with enough time. Security at JFK was bout the quickest international security I’ve ever gone through, it took maybe 10 minutes and then I hung out in the terminal for a bit. The trip went relatively uneventfully took off pretty promptly hit a little but not much turbulence. With all the icky weather we’ve had I expected delays and turbulence but it wasn’t bad enough for delays and through the flight we were far above the clouds which meant you couldn’t see a damn thing so it was a good thing I got an aisle rather than a window. Both the flight to London and Vienna I was sitting next to families with small children, that was rather interesting to watch but not overly obnoxious as I thought it might get. The layover felt really long given how exhausted I was at that point but I got my german/English dictionary and ate breakfast at actually a rather nice airport restaurant-a croissant, coffee, orange juice and a pastry filled with chocolate that I saved and just ate.

I got a taxi at the airport that took me to the IES center. I managed broken conversation with the taxi driver in very broken german…but I did manage somehow. The autobahn was under construction so we went through town. It felt like a very long ride but that’s probably again because I wanted to find a bed. I left my cello at the IES center and then took the U-Bahn to the hostel. From the U-bahn it took a bit of work to find the hostel, I met up with another confused traveler looking for the hostel, a Japanese medical student with a picture of a naked woman on his shirt. It turned out to be a bit of a hike up a hill…I was very glad how “light” I had packed and was drenched with sweat and out of breath by the time I reached Hostel Hutteldorf. Once checked in I collapsed on my bed for about 20 minutes before taking a numbingly cold shower. I think the directions of hot/cold might be opposite here, since someone else said they had no problem, if anything it was too hot. I then took a 3 hour nap, played foosball and talked withother people staying in the hostel.

There’s certainly a wide variety of people staying here. In my room there’s a dietician here for training of some sort from about 300k from Vienna and 2 girls from Australia backpacking across Europe “the typical Australian thing.” I’ve also met 2 sisters traveling to a techno festival in Hungary, an Iranian who just finished studies in England and is now on vacation and someone who grew up in Pittsburgh, now lives in Texas and is going to Law school in Netherlands.

Tomorrow I meet up with IES and go to Mariazel in the Alps for the weekend orientation. I’m excited to make some connections and get started with the real program, though a little apprehensive as I don’t know what to expect or who I’ll meet. As of last spring Meghan Gerrity was coming too, if she is it’ll be nice to see a familiar face.