Budapest

When I heard that our group would be traveling to Budapest, I honestly had no idea what to expect. I have never been to Hungary before...but I was pleasantly surprised! The city was very different from Salzburg and Prague, but beautiful nonetheless.

On Friday night when we arrived, we immediately met our tour guide Elizabeth and took a night tour of Buda (the old half of the city). We then went to one of the highest lookout points in Buda, and were able to take pictures of the night view. It was beautiful!

The next morning, we had another tour. Incase you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not a huge fan of the city tours. We've had so many of them already, and they are honestly very tiring. It's hard to be in a huge group, too--I sort of feel like they're herding a group of sheep around. But anyway, after the tour, we had seven hours of free time (too much...). A couple of us decided to look around the festival that was going on, rather than spending our afternoon and the Buda spa. I was starting to feel stressed out at this point--a lot of the girls had gone to get massages (which sounded nice), but I thought they were too expensive. I was nervous about being separated from them, even though I was hungry and needed lunch. *Side note: new word for being angry while hungry: hangry.* Needless to say, we soon found Doc and Dr. Gibbs, who were sitting at a table in the middle of the festival eating amazingly appealing food. My stress was lifted, and I went over to the stand to get a huge heaping pile of roasted vegetables and potatoes. It was by far the best meal I've had on this trip!

View of the city during the day.

Heroes Square

Our group eating lunch with Doc and Gibbs!

After lunch, we weren't sure what to do with our remaining six hours. Doc and Dr. Gibbs had left us, and so we were on our own. After wandering around the festival for awhile, we ran into Gibbs and Doc again, this time holding wine! They explained to us that you could buy a wine glass and a row of tickets for 5 Euro, and then go to all of the stands at the festival to taste-test their wine. We took their advice, and spent the next couple of hours walking around with our glasses. It was a lot of fun!

With our wine glasses at the festival.

For dinner on Saturday, we went on a boat cruise on the Danube. The view of Budapest was really cool, and the food was wonderful! We had goulash soup--very good. Later in the night it started raining, so after dinner we stuck around for ice cream and then went back to our hotel in Pest. On Sunday, we left the city and headed for a small town called Szendendre. It reminded me a lot of Saugatuck--small, with a lot of cute art shops. The weather was great, so we really enjoyed ourselves. We made it home just in time for dinner downtown Vienna, and then headed home for some needed sleep. 

All in all, Budapest was great! I would recommend it for any traveler...but beware, you won't be able to understand a thing! :) 

Saying Goodbye to Session One

This week has been incredibly hectic. Yesterday (Wednesday), twenty-six new students arrived for second session, while thirty-two from first session left today (Thursday). Unfortunately, that overlap was completely nuts. We all went out to dinner on Wednesday night, and it was honestly a disaster. There were almost 60 people in this small upstairs room--let me remind you, no air conditioning. One open window. Ahhhh!

Some 1st session people, some 2nd session, some both!

I will really miss some of our new friends from first session! We all bonded really well, and we didn't have any problems! I'm very proud of our entire group, and I wish so many people were staying! The new people from second session have a lot to live up to now!

Besides all the switching craziness, not much has happened this week. I went out to a heuliger with Caitlin, Brent and Mike one night, which was a lot of fun. We enjoyed our time just the four of us--we don't get that much here. A bunch of us also went to go see this huge outdoor summer concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at Schonbrunn castle on Tuesday night, which was wonderful. Over 100,000 people attended! We had great seats near the front, too, but unfortunately it rained! :( We got free ponchos though, which at least kept me try. All in all--great cultural and musical experience!

Brent and Lama

Me and Michael

Wearing our rain jackets before the concert!

View from our seats.

Tomorrow (I can't believe it), we head to Budapest! I'm not sure what to think about Budapest, mostly because I honestly have never heard anyone talk about it. I'll fill you in on Monday though! Enjoy the wonderful weekend! 

Prague

I can't believe I'm finally getting to this post the day before we leave for another weekend trip. This week has been crazy! I'll tell you about that after all of the Prague stuff, though. First things first.

So Prague...was great! We did so many fun things--we had a couple of walking tours of the city, a great boat ride which included a lunch buffet, and a tour of the Jewish ghetto. We also had a fair amount of free time for shopping and wandering around the city. 

Standing by the bridge during our free time.

Boys on the boat cruise!

Wearing yarmulkes at the Jewish museum.

Having a beer with Hillary on our night out!

I really enjoyed Prague a lot. It's so different from any city I've seen before. The colors of the buildings are different, the smells are different, and the people are different. I was excited to hear the language, but when I got there I realized it was near impossible to even repeat a word in Czech once we heard it. Our tour guide, Donna, was hilariously trying to get us to repeat really complicated Czech words with a bunch of consonants in a row. She was wonderful and really cute.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but this month the Eurocup Tournament (soccer) is being held in Vienna...meaning there are tourists everywhere. We ended up seeing a lot of tourists while we were in Prague, too, which I think was one of the only downsides to the weekend. The other bad thing--money. Our dollar is doing so badly that within one year it went from $1=25 Kc to $1=16 Kc. We were expecting to buy a lot of cheap stuff, but that didn't really happen. 

Overall, Prague was wonderful! I don't know if I'll ever get back there, but if I do I would be very happy!

Great view of the city!

The main square where Michael and I ate lunch.

p.s. I almost completely forgot! On Saturday, temperatures in Prague reached the highest for May they've reached since 1870! It was ridiculous--almost 100 degrees! 

Misc.

I feel as though there have been a lot of little things I've wanted to talk about, but I can't figure out how to group them. So here they are in the Misc. group! A couple of random events:

1. The other afternoon, Brent, Lama, Koon, Mike, 2 other girls and I went to Prater park for lunch. It was a wonderful afternoon to be outdoors! Later after class, we decided to hang closer to the institute, so we bought a bottle of cheap wine and did our homework at the Mozart park behind our building. Lots of fun!

Prater Park.

Celebrating their engagement with a bottle of wine at the park!

2. Wednesday night, Dr. Reisinger had a concert to organize and needed help with publicity. Koon and I (among others) told him we would help him pass out flyers on the streets, and he offered to pay us each 15 Euro! Yay money! It was well worth it, even though lots of Austrians stared at us. :)

The concert that we passed out flyers for (St. Peter's Cathedral). 

3. After Dr. Reisinger's concert, a bunch of people went to a place called the Sunken City. Basically, it's just a bunch of bars along the river. We brought the party though--everyone wanted to hang out by the American kids! It was definitely an adventure!

Some of our group dancing at the Sunken City.

4. Tonight (Thursday), we had our annual Vienna Summer School music concert. All of our host families were invited to listen to students play/sing, and then to a reception afterwards. Dr. Reisinger played a couple pieces on the organ, a girl named Emily played the violin, and three girls sang....including me! I got roped into it by both Dr. Reisinger and Doc. It was fine though, I sang "Du bist wie eine Blume", a piece from my Jr. Recital. It was a cool experience to be able to sing in a big church, I'm glad I did it. 

What was really cool though was Dr. Reisinger's improvisation. Earlier in the day, he had asked us to sing him our alma mater. We did, and he notated it on the spot. Then at the concert, he did a 10 minute improvisation on our alma mater, adding in aaaallllll the bells and whistles. It was probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Wow. I have a video of it, I'll try to upload it.

After the concert, I saw Dr. Reisinger through a window, and I mouthed "thank you" to him for accompanying me. He put his hands together and bowed, as if I was the amazing one. Ha! What a joke. He asked me if he could give me a couple voice lessons to improve my vibrato while I'm here. At first I was skeptical, but then I realized that I should take it as a compliment that he wants to work with me. Woohoo! I'm kind of nervous, but also excited to see what he has to say.

The church where the concert was held.

The girls with Edith and Helmut!

5. Tonight, Lama, Liz and I went to a heuligen with Helmut and Edith. They bought us strawberry wine, which was really good! The Hartmanns are great, I'm glad we got to hang out with them tonight. 

Our strawberry wine!

Beautiful view!

This weekend is Prague...I'll write about it on Monday!

Opera and Dead People

As most people know, I am a Vocal Music Ed. major at Hope. Therefore, coming to Vienna has been a wonderful experience for me, to say the least. This week held a couple of really fun and interesting musical events. 

On Monday, Dr. Reisinger (our music professor) took our class to the Central Cemetery, where many famous composers are buried. It is the second largest cemetery in Europe, and holds over 3 million people. We saw the tombstones of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, J. Strauss, Schoenberg, Hugo Wolf, and a tribute to Mozart. The entire cemetery was incredibly beautiful, including the church at the end of the main road. All in all--fun field trip!

The tombstones of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert.

Front of the cemetery's church.

Tombstone of Arnold Schoenberg (known for 12-tone/modern music).

One of many streets through the cemetery.

On Tuesday night, a bunch of us decided to see the Verdi opera Falstaff at the Staatsoper. I can't say it was my favorite opera ever, but it was definitely fun! We waited in line for Standing Room tickets for about 90 minutes, which was a good idea since the tickets were only 2 Euro a piece (normal seats cost around 200 Euro...looks like we'll be standing at all of the shows we go to in Vienna!). The singers were all wonderful, of course, I just felt as though the plot was very slow-moving. At one point in Act 3, some nymphs come on stage to torment the character Falstaff. Mike, Brent, Lamade and I are standing in the lower balcony together watching this, when all of a sudden the "nymphs" come on stage in, no joke, KKK outfits. White coats with pointed hoods and masks. We all immediately looked at each other in utter shock! It was very confusing, yet also funny! Mike whispered to me, "only in Europe". 

Waiting in line for tickets!

Salzburg

This past weekend, we went our first weekend trip during our six weeks in Europe--Salzburg! The city of Salzburg is probably one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. It's set in the mountains, and is exactly what I have always pictured Austria to look like. 

We left for Salzburg on Friday afternoon after classes were over. Before arriving in Hallein (a small town outside Salzburg), we stopped by at Melk Abbey, a former monastery. It was truly amazing, especially the church. 

Melk Abbey from a distance.

The front of Melk Abbey's church.

When we finally reached our hotel, we put down our stuff and headed out to find the town. Most of the group stayed together, since we were told about a great outdoor champagne bar. Luckily, we found it pretty quickly, and all sat down for a glass of wine. At first, the locals looked skeptical about the American kids, but after awhile of talking with us, they had a good time. One guy even bought our table a bottle of wine! It was a fun night.

Saturday was a lot of fun, too. We spent the morning touring the city and the fortress, and explored during the afternoon. Michael and I accidently got separated from our friends for lunch, so we decided to go find food on our own. We went to a nearby Billa (grocery store), got some sandwiches, and sat along the river bank. It was a great lunch with great company! On our way back to our hotel, we stopped by Hellbrunn, a water palace. The emperor (not sure if that's right) that once lived there had a quirky sense of humor, and put water traps all throughout his house. It was a perfect day to get soaked, since it was so hot outside. We had a lot of laughs, too!

The view from the fortress!

The river where Michael and I ate lunch.

The Sound of Music gazebo at Hellbrunn/Michael showing his love for the movie.

Sunday, we visited two extremes. First, we took a tour of the Salt Mines. We got to wear these white jumpsuits, and take a train down into the ground. We even got to go down a couple of slides to get closer to the salt. We all enjoyed doing something different, since we've been doing a lot of city tours recently. Then, on our way back to Vienna, we stopped at Mauthausen, one of the concentration camps during WWII. The entire area was surrounded by sadness--it was a truly sobering experience.

Sweet jumpsuits.

One of many pictures from Mauthausen.

One more important thing happened this weekend. As many of you may already know, two of my closest friends, Caitlin Lamade and Brent Boersma, got engaged!! Of course I am very happy for them, and I can't wait to attend their wedding in 2009. I would tell you the story of their engagement, but I think it would be better to just hear Caitlin's account of it. 

About 10 seconds after everyone found out they got engaged.

Overall, Salzburg was wonderful! I'm really hoping I love the rest of my weekend trips as much as I loved this one. Next weekend--Prague! :)

First Full Week

Whew! It's been a long weekend. I'm sitting on my bed right now at my host home, wondering if I should update or go to bed. I think if I wait any longer though, it just won't happen. There are so many things I haven't explained yet...I doubt I'll ever get to all of it.

I think I should start by just summing up last week. Beginning on Monday, we had our first classes at the Institute. I am taking "Viennese Musical Traditions" with Professor Wolfgang Reisinger, who is the overseer of church music in Vienna. In other words, he's the best organist in the music capital of the world. Whoa. Talk about being musically intimidating! He's pretty sweet though--he has an interesting personality, sometimes funny and sometimes just genius. I'll put up a picture of him the next time I take one. Anyways, on Mondays and Fridays, our music class meets from 9:30am-12:00pm. On Tuesdays-Thursdays, we meet from 2:30pm-5pm, but everyone else from the program still has class in the morning. Kind of a downside to the music class, but oh well. Only 10 more days....yikes!

Here is a picture of Dr. Reisinger playing the organ for our class.

So on Monday we had class at the Institute for the first time, like I was saying. I didn't realize quite how small the Institute was until I spent some time up there...it only has about 6 rooms and an office. Not bad though, just the right amount of space for us. When class was over, a group went to a nearby deli for lunch, and we learned first hand how difficult the English/German language barrier can be. Luckily, next time I will know how to order so that won't happen again. We spent most of Monday afternoon after lunch wandering around town, and ended up finding a great bar called Kolar later in the night where we had strawberry wine. It was great, and the atmosphere was exactly what we were looking for.

On Tuesday, our music class took a trip to go see Mozart's apartment downtown Vienna. We walked through the museum as a class instead of meeting at the Institute. I enjoyed listening to the audio guides and seeing some of Mozart's original manuscripts, but I also felt as though a lot of the museum didn't have to do with Mozart but with the history at the time. Nevertheless, good field trip.

Original "Dies Irae" from Mozart's "Requiem"

The outside of Mozart's apartment in Vienna.

Wednesday didn't hold much excitement besides a wonderful afternoon with Michael. We realized that we hadn't spent much time together, so we decided to get dinner just the two of us. We went to an Italian restaurant on the Kartnerstrasse (main shopping street), and then headed down to Julius Meinl for coffee. It was absolutely wonderful--Michael was in heaven. :) We had a lot of fun together, and enjoyed finding a spot for later drink dates.

Thursday was a very interesting day. Earlier in the week, a sign had gone up on our group bulletin board about a makeover session that was going to be held at the Institute. The stylist did not put down their name, but said that haircuts would be free and given by a professional. So at 4pm, most of our group showed up in room 5 for the makeovers, only to find the music professor, Dr. Reisinger, standing there with a mirror already set up. Surprise! Dr. Reisinger, professional organist and overseer of church music, is also a professional hair stylist! We all got a few laughs out of that! For the next couple hours, Reisinger gave haircuts and consultations. It was a ton of fun to watch and to see what girls looked like before and after. Lamade was one of the people that cut her hair, so that was especially exciting. 

In the middle of Lamade's haircut!

Later in the night, about half of our group went to go see "The Sound of Music" at the Volksoper. Sadly, Michael and I didn't get tickets in time, so we were on our own again. Just as we were about to leave the Institute, a group of girls asked us if we wanted to join them for dinner. We decided to go with them so that we could spend time getting to know some other people on the trip. The six of us headed out to the 19th district, and we took a bus up to the highest point of the city. It was beautiful! When we had finished taking pictures, we headed back down to a wine cafe for dinner. I ordered a gold-medal winner Riesling, which was very tasty. We had a great time talking over good food and wine--it was definitely one of the better nights. 

The view from the top!

And of course...Friday, we drove to Salzburg. I have soooo much to say about Salzburg. It was amazing. I think I'm going to get some sleep now though, and write more about that tomorrow. I will also put my pictures on my computer so that you can see what I'm talking about in this post. Salzburg info coming soon!