So, quite frankly, I am absolutely in love with Vienna. The people are wonderful and friendly, the food is incredible, and the city has a nice balance of an old-European and new-city feel (it’s also very clean, which is nice). I’m actually kind of relieved to have left Italy, to be quite frank—one can only put up with throngs of tourists and overpriced food for so long.
So where to begin? On our first morning we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (a ridiculous name, I know), which was nice, although I’m getting kind of sick of museums. After that we had a break before our second activity of the day, so a bunch of us just laid out in a park and napped and played cards. After that we got a tour of the Vienna Opera House, which although not as beautiful as the Opera Garnier in Paris, was impressive nonetheless.
For one thing, the stage at the Vienna Opera House is over 1,000 square METERS big!. It has a depth of 100 meters (50 for the stage and then 50 for the backstage), and then another 50 meter by 50 meter area stage right that used to be dressing rooms. The tops of the flys go up to a height of sixty meters as well, which just creates this ridiculous cavern effect. The really impressive part is that they put on a new opera EVERY SINGLE NIGHT—it’s theater policy that they never do anything 2 nights in a row. This means that they have ½ day strikes and builds every single day…they apparently load up 25 trucks with sets across town, drive them over while they’re striking from the previous night, put all the old sets in the trucks, and then do a quick build to finish by show time. It’s not as if these are dinky sets, either; the vertical framed screens they had for “Faust” had to be at least 50 foot squares. Wow.
After the Opera House, we went to the Hotel Sacher for their famous sacher torte (apparently they invented chocolate cake there), and then wandered around for a bit. We ended up at a great restaurant for dinner where they brewed their beer on premises, and I had a delicious (and filling) dinner of a traditional Viennese pasta dish and a house-brewed cider. Amazing. After dinner Amy and I worked out at the gym in our hotel and then used the steam room and sauna. This is the life, not gonna lie…
Yesterday we had two events for class—the Upper Belvedere Museum for art and the Esterhazy Palace for music. The Belvedere had an amazing Gustav Klimpt collection; the best part was definitely seeing “The Kiss” in person. There’s so much more texture in the painting than can ever be reproduced in a print, and I think it’s something that every art buff should try to see at some point. The Esterhazy was slightly less awesome…it’s the residence where Joseph Haydn composed most of his music (which is cool), but the audio tour was really long and really monotonic. Oh well.
After we got back to the hotel, we had dinner at another beer garden at the Prater, this area near our hotel that’s supposedly one of the oldest carnivals in the world. There are tons of rides and funhouses and games and such there, and although unbelievably expensive, we rode a small roller coaster, the spinny swings, and one of the ferris wheels. The ferris wheel was the best part—you could see the entire Vienna skyline from the top.
Today we started our day with a walking tour of Vienna for art class where we saw the Stephansdom, another large church here, and the Secession Building, which has the beautiful Beethoven mural by Klimt. After our picnic lunch, Bryan and I went to the Haus der Musik together, which was definitely the trippiest museum I’ve ever visited. Two of the floors were devoted to sound manipulation and the technical aspects of sound (a PAT major’s dream), and the other was dedicated to major Viennese composers. Pretty darn sweet, and I’d definitely recommend it. After the museum we went to a coffee house, which is apparently another important thing to do when visiting Vienna.
After a dinner of Kebab (yum), we bought standing room tickets for 3 euro at the Opera House with one of our professors and about eight people from our group. We stayed for the whole opera, even though it was really obscure—“Die Schweigsame Frau” by Strauss—and it was actually really fun. Most of the people we went with had never seen a real opera before, and I’m really glad we got to experience it together.
Now it is definitely time to go to bed, though! Free day tomorrow, which is going to be AMAZING.
Lots of love,
Dara
PS: I realized that I never posted a link to Venice pictures, so here it is: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015004&id=1326450024&l=4c56b5298a
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