The Music City: Vienna

WOW! I have a lot of updating to do, so bare with me. I might cut the details short because I'll probably have trouble remembering some....We left Wednesday around 2 for our respective study tours (everyone is in a mini field study tour). Mine is music, and our class went to Vienna (you probably already figured that out). We took a bus to Cologne, Germany, and then flew to Vienna. It was weird to get on a plane again because I felt like I should be flying home or something. We arrived in the evening to our hotel...let me just say how nice it was to stay in a hotel! It had clean compfy beds, a nice bathroom in every room, and I only had to share a room with one other girl. We got to pick roommates, so that wasn't a big deal either. We had a reservation at a restaurant that night that we walked to through alleys and darker streets, so I knew it was authentic. It was cute and small, and the waitresses didn't speak English. We were all served potato soup, goulash (beef with a spiced red sauce...kinda like beef stew) with these weird lumpy noodles. For dessert we had apple strudel. These dishes are all typical of Austria food.

The next morning we were surprised to learn that the free continental breakfast was quite a feast. There was fresh bread, jams, cheese and meats, coffee, fruit, and even scrambled eggs. I miss eggs a lot, I hadn't had them really since I've been here so I was pretty excited about that. There was even champagne that was free! We left after breakfast adn went to a small town outside of Vienna called Rohrau where Josheph Hayden was born. We went to his birth house which was small and had a few pictures and pieces of this music. Honestly it wasn't that exciting, and our "tour guide" was our professor, Mr. Backes. Next we stopped in a small village called Rust that is right on the Austrian-Hungarian boarder. I wanted to walk to Hungry, but there was a marsh/lake in my way. We ate at a small restaurant and I ordered fish from the lake that is common in Austria. It was delicious, and I later learned that its some breed of perch. Our next stop was a castle called Esterhazy in a town called Eisenstadt. Hayden worked at this castle composing music for the royalty that lived there. We went to see Hayden's house where he lived when he worked there, but it was closed because they're preparing for the 200th anniversary of his death (which apparently is a huge deal). We walked around the shopping area briefly, and took a short break in a tea house. Later that night we attended a concert at the Musikverein, the Philharmonie concert hall in Vienna. We got standing room tickets, so we were in the back packed in with everyone trying to see the concert. It was interesting to see those people who paid 100 euro or more for seats in their long fur coats and hats. They were so rich, and I could tell that they thrive on these concerts like social events. Where we stood we were blocked off from the seats by a railing so it felt like we were peasants being kept away from the royalty...a funny feeling. The concert was long and I honestly had trouble paying attention because it was so hot and I was wearing heals and standing in them. I did enjoy watch a guy whose head was shaved all but one strand dig in his nose for a booger. The music was really good, but slow at times. There were soloist and a choir, and my favorite parts were when the music was loud and the choir was singing. After the concert I went with four of my friends to a lounge restaurant and enjoyed pesto, tomato, and mozzarella toast. We also tried the Sacher torte, which is chocolate cake with marmalade in the middle. This torte is famous in Europe, and is made originially in Vienna at the Sacher Hotel. Around 360,000 are sold in Austria and exported each year! It was good, but not as good as I expected. The cake was a little dry and dense, but it seems that thats how cake in Europe is usually.

The next morning we got a tour of the city by Mr. Backes. We went to a huge castle that only one prince lived in by himself. We also saw the city hall and Marie Theresa's old palace that is now the city's library. It was freezing cold, so we eventually split off for lunch. I went with a group of girls and we relaxed in the restaurant for a while to avoid the cold. Restaurants in Europe don't rush you out, and actually it's sometimes hard to eat quickly because they expect you to stay a while. After lunch we walked to Mozart's house, which is right in the city. This house was way more interesting becuase it was actually a museum. We also had an actual tour guide who was very informative. Of the houses of the composers that we saw, this was my favorite because I actually learned something there. The house was pretty large, and there was more information to read on the walls than just little captions for pictures writen in German like the other houses. The night we were free for the evening, so I shopped around. I went to the Sacher Hotel I mentioned ealier with two other girls. They each tried the cake and we sat in a cute cafe area that was fancy. We had to check our coats even, and had to pay for it too. You'd think that if they force you to check your coat they wouldn't force you to pay for it...but I guess not.

Saturday morning...Valentines day (which is celebrated here, too), we had some free time in the morning. I shopped around with two other girls and then we went into one of the many coffee houses in the city. Unlike in Amsterdam, they actually serve coffee at these and they're very popular. I also tried roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. I've never had these before, but they were soo good...warm and soft, which I didn't expect. We also saw St. Stephans Cathedral, which is Gothic style but was actually built in the 19th century. We met up with the whole class and walked/took the metro to Franz Schubert's birth house. It was like Hayden's...uninformative and kind of boring (but still a nice break from the cold). Our next stop was Beethoven's house, which wasn't his actual house. The museum was in the area of the city where Beethoven came to get work done on his ears when he started to become deaf. Again, his house was boring like the others. This house did have a cast of his face. Apparently they used to mold dead people’s faces if they were famous so they could keep it and remember what they looked like. We had some time to spare until our dinner reservation, so we took a bus to the top of a mountain and saw a gorgeous view of the city. It was freezing cold up there and windy and snowy too, so we wasted time by sitting in this skyline restaurant that was all romantic and set up for valentines day. After sitting in there for almost two hours we went to our restaurant. It was a winery restaurant, and we got to sit in a part of the restaurant that opened up that day. We basically took up an entire room, and got a buffet to ourselves. We had typical Austrian food that included soup (broth and a liver meat ball) and Wiener schnitzel (fried pork). Everything was delicious as usual. We had unlimited amounts of wine. I tried the red wine, and I’m not a big fan, but the white wine was good. We spent the evening (until 11) at the restaurant being loud, obnoxious Americans interrupting many people’s Valentines dinner. There was even an accordion player there. After a few hours things started to get crazy and a few girls were dancing with our professor (waltzing or something) and then he had a sing off with a student to see who could hit the highest note. The night was pretty crazy, and definitely my favorite part of Vienna.
Sunday morning we got to sleep in. The only thing we did was visit Vienna’s huge cemetery where Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms (another composer) are buried. Mozart has a statue there, but they actually don’t know where his body is because it was buried in a mass grave. The graves were impressive along with the other graves there. Graves in Europe are on the outside of the earth so the cemeteries look more crowded. They have headstones, but also stone coverings I guess where the body is buried. The composers’ graves were all pretty big with lots of flowers people brought. Once we were done there (we didn’t last long because it was so cold again) we drove to the airport and arrive very early. Not surprisingly we wasted more time there by shopping around.

Overall I liked Vienna, but was disappointed with the organization of the activities. There seemed to be way too much time in between each activity where we would wander in the cold. If all the spare time was put together we could have done some entirely new activity or museum. I think my professor just overestimated the amount of time we needed at each place. Vienna would be a great place to visit in the summer or fall because that’s the time when they make the wine. Each year they have the “wine of the year”…one red and one white. This is the wine that we had at the restaurant the last night. I can’t think of anything else to say, but I’m sure I’m missing something we did. Sorry this is so long!! I have two midterms this week and a paper to try to finish before Carnival break (which starts after class on Friday). Hopefully everyone is doing well. I miss everyone!

---

---

---