Sep 23, 2007

Il Barbiere di Siviglia and the Kahlenberg

On Saturday I wandered around Mariahifestraße with Cora, looking for a new pair of shoes and a jacket. I didn't find either, but picked up some stuff that I needed, like some new shirts to add to the 7 shirt rotation. Living with the contents of a suitcase for 12 months can get a bit repetative, I feel like I have my Monday clothes, Tuesday clothes, etc..

We decided to see Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) on Saturday at the Staastoper. I figured, if it was boring we could just leave at intermission, but it was really really good, especially considering that we payed 2€. I definitely think that the first opera I saw 'Otello' gave me the wrong impression of operas. The two I've seen since have been funny, with slap-stick comedy, jokes, an easy-to-follow plot, and many moments where the music is so recognisable you could hum along.
Sunday I went to the Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg with Cora, Szilvia, and her brother Laslo. On the way to the tram I passed a marching band just wandering down the street, I wonder where they were going?Laslo drove us from his residence to the Kahlenberg which is a monastery on a mountain that looks out over the city. It was nice, but the sky was so hazy that you really couldn't see much. From the Kahlenberg we walked the 20min to Leopoldsberg, a fortress-monastery, more rustic and medieval looking than the Kahlenberg.

Szilvia and Cora tried out the kids ride, a random thing to find in a medieval fortress/church. Well worth the 50 cents, it even played music.Here's a picture of me in front of the church overlooking Vienna, further proof that I actually am still alive and healthy.Szilvia, Laslo, and I taking time to contemplate life, love, and how happy we were that Cora finally got rid of her walking stick.After taking what seemed like hundreds of photos at Leopoldsberg, we walked back to the car and drove to a restaurant called 'Centimeter III'. There are seven Centimeter restaurants in Vienna (all numbered I-VII). They are inexpensive restaurants where you can buy many things by the length ex. sausages, bread, pasta, beer (1m of beer is a long board with 8 different pint glasses on it), etc.. While sitting at the restaurant we decided that the next time Szilvia goes home to Novi Sad, Serbia, Cora and I will go too. Laslo's visa runs out in two weeks, so this way we'll be able to hang out without Laslo sneaking back into Austria in a truck hidden under bags of potatoes. We'll also take a day trip to Belgrade. The only downside of visiting Serbia is the 7h bus ride, on a smoking bus...

Thursday night I move into my new apartment and then leave for Munich, so there'll be plenty to post about later next week.

Sep 15, 2007

Harvest Festival, Sisi Museum, and Spanish Riding School

Last weekend we stayed in Vienna, but still had a lot of fun.
Cora's mom and sister were in Vienna for the weekend, so I spent Friday night and Saturday with them.
On Saturday we planned to go on a tour at the Spanish Riding School. On the way there from the subway we passed the front of the Hofburg, which was swarming with people. It was a harvest festival with booths selling traditional foods, jams, honey, and crafts. There was a large stage setup with a big band playing a polka. On the lawn between the booths there were bails of hay decorated with vegetables, a little random, but they looked cool.
When we got the the riding school, we were told we would have to wait about 3 hours for the next tour. So, we decided to go to the Sisi (Empress Elizabeth) museum. I'm sure I've told you about Sisi before. She's basically the Austrian Princess Di. She was an the Empress of Austria-Hungary about 100 years ago and was famous for being very obsessed with beauty. She had a 51cm waist (20"), slept with a leather and raw-veal beauty mask, washed her hair in bourbon and eggs, identified with Titania Queen of the Fairies from Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream, refused to have any portrait painted of her after she turned 30, and was stabbed to death in Geneva with a nail file. After her death her life she became a symbol of beauty and opulence. We weren't allowed to take photos in the museum or in the royal apartments, so, sadly I have nothing to show you.

Some things about the royal apartments that stood out to me:
- The Emperor and Empress slept in extremely simple twin sized iron beds which appeared to be afterthoughts in their lavish bedrooms. They looked really out of place.
- All the rooms were connected to one another in a row, with no separate hallway. So, to get from the conference room to the grand salon, you had to walk through both the Emperor and Empresses bedrooms and studies. I assume people would have gone outside and come back in at another entrance, but it seems odd.
- There were secret doors everywhere, visible only by their hinges, handles and the (not always obvious) rectangular seam. These were servants doors which also lead to the heating hallways where servants filled the large ceramic stoves from behind to avoid making a mess in the royal rooms.
- Sisi had a gym in her study (to stay fit, skinny, and young) which was very very odd at that time. She had parallel bars, a pull-up bar and rings screwed into one of the doorways.
- On the tour, the audio-guide talked about the habits of the emperor. For instance, he woke up every morning at 3:30! sleeping in until 4:30 if he had a late night. Also, the palace was kept at 14-15°C, as anything more was 'wasteful' (sounds like my dad).

The museum also contained the royal dinner service museum. Basically, a whole lot of old dishes. Apparently the royal service was able to serve 5000 people at once, and one of the many elaborate centrepieces made out of mirror and gold, was able to extend to 15m! Finally a table that can hold all of my family for Christmas. Here are some of the candelabras from the collection, towers of molded and carved gold.
There was also an extensive collection of Oriental ceramics brought over from representatives from China and Japan, then incorporated into useful objects by Austrian silversmiths. I thought the candlestick guy below was pretty cool, and really random.
This centrepiece just looked like something from Dr.Seus. At one time, all the ceramic fruits held scented potpourris, and the central silver trunk held burning incense.
The Spanish Riding School is also located in the Hofburg, and is the home of the famous Lipizzan stallions. Picture also weren't allowed in the SRS, but before I learned that I got a good picture of the arena where the shows take place.
The School is almost 500 years old, making it the oldest in the world, and is very steeped in tradition. Only Lipizzan stallions born in Piba, Austria from talented paternal lineages can be trained, and they can only be sat upon by a few dozen men educated at the riding school.

We also crossed the street to the stables where the 69 stallions are kept. The stables take up the entire first floor of an old palace, and are literally in the centre of Vienna. I've been walking by the stables dozens of times and never knew they were there. The stables have carved plaster ceilings and marble troughs, it's a bit over the top, but so is everything else in Vienna. We saw all of the horses, and the various harnesses and saddles custom made for every horse. I swear, these horses have a much better life than anyone I know. They live in a palace in the centre of the old city, have their rooms cleaned every hour, do two shows a month, only really train for an hour a day, have a three month vacation every summer in Piba, retire to the Austrian countryside, and have life expectancies that exceed most other horses.


On Sunday MA and I went back to the harvest festival. It was really packed, but we discovered a parade in progress, so it was fun.After the parade we went to Leopoldsberg to meet up with some other people for the walk up a ~400m mountain (Leopoldsberg) to the fortress-church/Heurigen at the top. At the Heurigen we drank some wine, ate some traditional salt bread, and MA and I had some homemade zucchini soup because it had gotten much colder, and we were wearing shorts. Unfortunately I stopped off at my room before going and left my camera behind. However, I might be going back this Sunday to show Cora, if so, I'll be sure to bring my camera along.

For those of you who care but don't already know, I'm moving one week today to an apartment in the 17th district, which is actually a little (4min) closer to work. Then later that night I leave for Munich. So, this weekend will probably be a very cheap one, we'll probably go to the opera on Saturday, who knows.

Last night we were supposed to go to a swimming pool/disco on a boat in the Danube, but it was too expensive, so instead we went to a nice restaurant. There we decided to plan a trip to Croatia/Bosnia in mid-October, hopefully it works out, I'll keep you informed.

Sep 10, 2007

Medieval Festival and Heiligenkreuz

First things first, we finally had a nice day on Saturday, so here is a photo of the front of my residence, which sadly, I have to move out of at the end of the month.
I'm not sure where they're moving me yet, but I should know by tomorrow, hopefully.

Saturday was the final day that our Summery tickets were valid, so we decided to go to a medieval festival in a small town about one hour north of Vienna towards the Czech Republic. The majority of the inner city within the old city walls was closed to cars, and swarming with people, most of whom got the decreased entrance fee by dressing in period costume. The streets were littered with straw and occasionally cabbage (thrown at the prisoner wagon on the way to and from re-enacted trials). There was a ton of delicious foods ranging from a lamb cooking on a spit, to home made potato chips and desserts. To drink there was to met (mead, wine made from honey) and met bier (honey beer), both of which were good, although the beer was very sweet.
The entertainment included Gypsy magicians, tight-rope walkers, fire breathers, a cool medieval bag-pipe and drum band, sword fights, witch trials, traditional dancing, and a lot of skits performed in German.
The town itself was the perfect backdrop for the festival because it too was medieval. It was odd to think that everything being portrayed at the fair actually once happened there, within those city walls.
Between the inner and outer city walls we happened upon this man stoking this oven. We were going to get a closer look and ask him about it but were asked to move out of the way. Apparently we were between an amateur axe-thrower and his target...
On Sunday Laslo (who is the younger brother of my coworker Szilvia from Serbia/Hungary, and who also worked in Wiener Neustadt, but downstairs with Cora) drove Cora and I to Heiligenkreuz because he wanted to check it out, and we thought a road-trip would be fun.

On the way there we got lost in Baden, but found this cool castle crumbling away on top of a hill.
Driving into Heiligenkreuz we noticed hundreds of cars parked along the street. Apparently the Pope (who had been in Vienna Thursday-Saturday) was at the monastery we had planned to visit, but had just left a few minutes before we arrived. When we walked in there were hundreds and hundreds of people, many of whom were priests, bishops, monks, and nuns wearing all sorts of robes all in different colours and styles.
We went into the main church. It was eerily beautiful because the architecture was simple but stunning, the windows were meticulously patterned with stained glass, and there was a choir of nuns singing softly in Latin(?).On the drive out I snapped a photo of Heiligenkreutz in the valley below.

Sep 5, 2007

Quick Update

So, I haven't really done anything exciting since my last post, but I figured I'd fill you in on the little things and my plans for the next few months.

- Last Tuesday I went to the birthday party of Helena, a Czech trainee at ECHEM who lives in Wiener Neustadt. It ended up being lots of fun, and there was so much delicious food. I wowed a group of people with my Aunt Kate's vomiting cherry tomato trick which she would always do for us when we were little (you cut a small mouth-like slit into the tomato then tell a little story which inevitably ends with the tomato puking which you achieve by squeezing it to make all the seeds spew out). The Serbians thought it was hilarious and I was asked to repeat it so many times I used up all the cherry tomatoes at the party. I also ran into Helena's old German teacher who I will likely be taking lessons from for a fraction of the price that I'd pay in Vienna.

- Last Wednesday a large group of people from ECHEM went to a traditional Heurigen in a little village half way back towards Vienna called Guntramsdorf. Heurigens are restaurants which serve their own wines and are set up almost like a deli. You go up to the counter and pick out ready made salads and other small dishes, and order whatever else you want. The company paid for all the wine and platters of sliced bread with a bunch of different spreads. Most of us got a traditional heurigen meal of surschnitzel and some form of potato salad. Surschnitzel is a pork schnitzel which had been soaked in brine for a few days before being fried. It was really good, but describing it right now I realise how unhealthy a big chunk of salty fried pork and a bowl of potato salad was. Oh well, when in Rome...

- Last Thursday there was an IAESTE international foods party at our residence. We were thinking about making poutine, but I couldn't find curd or gravy. That didn't deter Andrew, who just made cheese-fries with a big blob of ketchup in the corner as the "Canadian dish". Highlights of the party were Russian/Lithuanian/Bosnian/Croatian hashbrowns, a hand-made Viennese sachertorte, a Portuguese version of pigs in a blanket made of sausages wrapped in some kind of thick lettuce, then soaked in red wine and cooked in the oven, and a 'low fat' Uzbekistani salad that contained egg, corn, shrimp, rice, and enough mayo to hold it all together. A new trainee from the US arrived that day. She's working in the same building as me and unfortunately I had to tell her how long it takes to get to Wiener Neustadt every day. Her name is Cora, and she'll be here for 10 months. We're already making plans to visit Greece in the spring when most of the other trainees will have left. Also, her Grandmother has a house in the south of France, so we're all going to go and check that out sometime between now and May.

- The building we live in (for now) which I showed you a photo of in July is finally (almost) finished. At least the facade is uncovered, I'll take a photo when I get home and add it. [Just got home, its really rainy and dark, so the photo will have to wait until tomorrow]

- On the night of September 27th MA and I are leaving for Munich. On Friday we'll spend the entire day at Oktoberfest, hopefully meeting up with Henrik (Vienna trainee from Sweden) who moved there a week or two ago and Andrew (the other Vienna trainee from Canada). On Saturday we're going to the village of Füssen to see Neuschwanstein, the castle that inspired the Walt Disney castle. Finally, on Sunday we'll just be hanging out around Munich. Thankfully Henrik has said we can sleep on his floor because hostels were booked up months ago (when I first looked) and any single hotel rooms that are still left are starting at 400€/night.

- On Halloween MA and I are flying to Paris for 6 days. We booked a really great hostel in Montmatre recommended to us by the Columbians, and I'm really excited. We may take a bus to Belgium for a day, but that's all still to be decided.

- Right now it's rainy and 9°C, apparently that's not too odd for September in Austria. Also, there's a big storm warning so the trains are sure to be off schedule. Tonight we're going to an old restaurant the cellar of a building in the old part of the city. Should be fun. Tomorrow is MA's birthday, so I'm sure we'll do something, and on Friday we're all going to see The Bourne Ultimatum, which is just premiering now.

OK, gtg do some work, I wrote a lot more than I expected.