March... where did it go?

The month of March was filled with many memorable moments, but flew by so fast that it's hard to believe it was even there.

Near the beginning of the month I noticed that my hair was getting a little long. As I've mentioned before, haircuts in Vienna are expensive, painful, and bad, therefore I really wasn't looking forward to getting one. So, I figured I'd do what most other guys do, and cut it myself. How hard could it be? I borrowed a pair of electric clippers from Daniel and decided to do it myself without any help. As I didn't want to get hair everywhere and I don't own a broom, I stepped into my shower, plugged the clippers in above my mirror, set it to the longest length and started with the back. It went pretty smoothly and felt about the right length, so I took a leap and went right down the center of my head, a reverse mohawk. To my horror, I discovered that "8" was much shorter than I had expected, but what was done was done. After what seemed like much too long, I was done, with a pile of hair on the floor, and far too little on my head.
The next few days were spent finding small patches of long hair and snipping them whenever I tracked down a pair of scissors. Now that it's begun to grow out, it's becoming a mullet dangerously fast, so, I might have to give in and get it cut properly, but not for a while.

On Saturday the 15th (the "official" St.Patrick's Day) I met up with Nicole, Ali's friend whom I had met a few weeks before, and went to see Carmen at the Volksoper. The Volksoper (the people's opera) only performs shows in German, meaning two things, Carmen was performed in German instead of the original French, and there were no subtitles. So, we didn't understand much, including the entire first half of the second act. However, one thing that amused me throughout most of the show was how poorly German lends itself to seductive arias like the famous song by Carmen. Instead of lightly trailing off the notes, as can be done in French where they leave out half of the word anyways, the propriety of German pronunciation occasionally requires harsh consonants at the end of words, which sound more like someone prepping for a spittoon than a seductress. Afterwards we met up with Andres, Daniel, Gabi, and Szilvia and went to a pub, which was pretty dead for "St.Patrick's Day", but we made the best of it.

When I returned from Canada after Christmas I brought back real maple syrup, and when Ali visited in February she brought me a box of pancake mix from home. Since Christmas, Cora and I had been talking about making a big pancake breakfast. Finally, the weekend before Easter, Sziszi offered to host a pancake brunch.

In the photo below (Going around the table clockwise from the bottom) are Gabi, Andres, Daniel, Carolina, me, Cora, Raphael, and Sziszi. Karin, Sziszi's roommate, was taking the photo.
Cora and I thought we'd get creative and make all the girls teddy bear pancakes with banana faces. We also made some x-rated pancakes for the guys, which they thought were funny. People were shocked that Cora and I were so talented at making things out of pancakes; we didn't tell anyone how easy it is.
After stuffing ourselves with far too many pancakes, we decided to go on a walk. Most people decided to go home, as it was already mid-afternoon, but Cora, Szilvia, Karin, and I went to Schönbrunn to wander through the Easter market. The Easter markets are a lot like the Christmas markets except on a smaller scale. There were a few booths overflowing with hand-painted eggs.
There were also a few spots where kids could play with some simple, old-fashioned toys, like stilts. Karin, Sziszi, and Cora tried out the tandem-walking boards, which were fun, for about 30 seconds...
On the Wednesday of the next week there was a talk by Dr. Frank Wilczek at the Fachhochschule (technical college) in Wiener Neustadt which is only a few minutes away from our offices. José, Szilvia, and I went from ECHEM and met up with Cora, Stefan, and a few others from AC2T. Dr.Wilczek is an American physicist from MIT who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction (quantum physics). His talk, which was entirely in English!, titled "The Universe is a Strange Place" was actually very entertaining and easy to follow. He talked all about quarks, gluons, dark energy, dark matter, and everything in between. If you're keen and look carefully at the photo below, you'll see I didn't actually take it, it's from 2005, but it's the same lecture. A few times in his presentation Cora and I were the only people who laughed at a joke because everyone else got a little lost in translation. For example, he made the (rather nerdy) joke of "so, it turns out you can have your quarks and eat them too!", which just confused all the non-native English speakers, but made us laugh awkwardly.On Easter Sunday I went with Nicole, her brother, and her brother's friend (all from Canada) to see the ballet Swan Lake at the Staatsoper. It turned out to be the premier, meaning the line for cheap tickets was long by the time we arrived, so we got crappy spots where you could only see half the stage at once. The ballet was interesting, better than most operas, and had a pretty cool ending, where the lead guy drowns on stage in a stormy lake. As it was the premier, during the bows people chucked bouquets of roses onto the stage from the boxes along the sides, like in the movies.

On Easter Monday, I was supposed to see the opera Tristan and Isolde by Wagner with Cora and Ariana, but thankfully Ariana had to cancel on us. I say thankfully because it is 4:45 long, a bit too long for my liking. Instead, I went with Caren and Ariana that Thursday to see Ariadne auf Naxos, a funny opera written by Richard Strauss where the first act, which is set backstage, shows everyone arguing when they find out that the serious opera and the comical dance show the Duke ordered for his party must both be performed simultaneously. The second act shows the performance on the stage, which has been flipped 180 degrees to the audience's perspective. The show was funny, and had a good elaborate set, so I enjoyed it. I find the minimalist modern adaptations a lot less entertaining.

The last weekend of March was very warm (~18C) so Szilvia, Gabor (Szilvia's boyfriend who was in town last weekend), Andres, and I decided to go to the Lainzer Tiergarten for a hike. Andres forgot about the time change, so it ended up being just the three of us.

The Lainzer Tiergaren is a 25 square kilometer wildlife preserve in the southwest corner of Vienna. The route we selected was about 7km long and wound through the "hills". We had only been walking along the path for a few minutes when a large wild boar came walking towards us in the other direction. It was pretty tame, so Gabor got as close as Szilvia would allow, to get a photo.
There still aren't many leaves on many of the trees here. Lots of buds, and leaves on bushes though, so it's only a matter of a few more weeks.
At the top of one path there is a sloping lawn which looks out over all of Vienna. We stopped for a bit and ate some pears that Sziszi had brought along.
From the lawn we walked another few kilometers down to the old royal hunting lodge and gardens. In the more sheltered gardens, many of the trees already had leaves.

Hard to believe this was a weekend hunting lodge.

I really like this photo with the dormers, chimneys, and clock tower all jumbled in together.
The main house is connected to the stables on either side by these verandas which Szilvia fell in low with.
A little ways down from the house there is a small "zoo" with some deer and mouflons like the one below.
After the hike, I went back to Haus Döbling and signed into Skype for a phone interview. The interview was for a job at Queen's as an "iCon" during the school year. I found out today that I got the job, so that's some good news, now all I need is a summer job. If anyone knows of anyone hiring for jobs in Brockville starting after June 9th, the please let me know.

So, as I said, March was an interesting month, I just don't know where it went, it was over so quickly. April is my last full month of work, and hopefully the nice weather will bring some adventure with it.

Speaking of adventure, I leave for my next one on Friday morning. I'll be meeting up with my friend Henrik who's living in Munich, but I won't tell you where until I return. Should be fun, but apparently the weather is supposed to be crappy, c'est la vie!

Vienna through Ali's cold, wet eyes

I meant to do this post (the last of the Ali trilogy) justice, but I have too many other things to tell you, and not nearly enough free time. (Actually, once I got started I couldn't stop and fleshed it out pretty well)

As I said in the last post, we arrived in Bratislava with the intension of touring the city before heading back to Vienna. However, the bus to Vienna was coming soon, it was cheaper than we were expecting, and we were tried and hungry. So, plans of seeing Bratislava were quickly replaced with plans to relax in Vienna and cook supper. By the time we got to Vienna we were starving and our supper plans turned into McDonald's while waiting for the tram. Good start.

On Thursday and Friday I had to work, so Ali toured the city by herself with her little Vienna City Guide. Thursday night when I got back from work we made pasta (well, Ali made it while I "helped"). One funny thing is that Ali attempted to make an alfredo sauce, which is exactly what Pat tried to make when he visited in August, and both of the sauces inexplicably ended up separating into a curdy-oily sauce. It must be the milk here, maybe the preparation and pasteurization methods are different. Anyone have any idea?

After our delicious pasta (it doesn't matter what it looks like, just what it tastes like), we went out to one of my favourite breweries with Cora and her sister's (now-ex) boyfriend. The reason I picked this place was because they let you buy beer by the Maß (1L), like Oktoberfest, which is something different and kinda cool.
After work on Friday we went to the Staatsoper to see "Nabucco" an opera by Verdi. It was a modern adaptation and was pretty good, although we hadn't looked up the plot online first and were pretty confused for most of it. "Is she a princess or a slave? or both?" After the opera we went across the street to Hotel Sacher which is the nicest hotel in the city, and is world famous for the chocolate cake invented there, the Sachertorte.
After our cake and coffee we wandered down Kärtner Straße, past all the expensive stores, like Swarovski.
On Saturday it looked nice out, so I took Ali to the Zentralfriedhof, the huge cemetery in Vienna where all the composers are buried. However, while we were there, walking through the cemetery, the storm-of-the-century started within a matter of minutes. We were drenched, but only on one side of our bodies as the rain was horizontal.
We darted to the tram and headed into the city center where the rain would hopefully be finished. It mostly was, so we wandered around, stopping into some of the big landmarks which I have mentioned many times before. In the mid-afternoon we met up with Ali's friend Nicole who goes to McGill with Ali and had just recently arrived in Vienna on a semester abroad. We sat at an Aida, a Viennese coffee and dessert café and talked over some pastries and coffee. As we were leaving, Nicole invited us to her house-warming party that night.

For supper we met up with Szilvia and Gabi, co-workers of mine, for running sushi. It was a lot of fun, a first for Ali and I, and I ate far too much. There was just too much there to pick from and it was all-you-can-eat so my normal gluttony/frugality balance, which keeps me from being 300lbs, was upset.
After stuffing ourselves with sushi we walked to Nicole's place, which was just a few minutes around the corner. At first the party looked a little lame, a bunch of people sitting around a small table playing their own version of "Hedbanz" in German. Ali and I joined in, I was James Bond, she was Falco. At least we didn't lose, guessing our identities well before some others. Ali tried to play in German and did very well, copying questions asked by others or making half-English half-German sentences.

From Nicole's apartment we went out to a club, actually a first for me, at least in Vienna.
On Sunday we had planned to take the train to Salzburg, but bad weather and non-existent funds led to us just relaxing all day.

Ali's flight back to Montreal was to leave early Monday morning, so early that we thought the first airport-train wouldn't give her enough time. So, we planned for her to catch the last train Sunday night a little after 11pm. However, due to the windstorm (which blew trees onto the tracks, and toppled a crane onto Südbahnhof, Vienna's main train station) the train never came...

I freaked out a bit, thinking that Ali would miss her flight, and phoned my friend Stefan to try and figure out what I should do. He phoned the airport-taxi company, but they were booked solid. Finally, we decided that the only realistic option would be to go back to my place, and order a cab which could take Ali to the main airport-train station (which would hopefully still be open and running) in time for the first airport-train. She would have to rush, but would get there. It ended up working out, and Ali avoided an uncomfortable night in the airport, so it wasn't all that bad.

Overall Ali's visit was a lot of fun; expensive, but worth it. It's too bad that more of my friends couldn't visit, but the $1000 trans-Atlantic plane ticket is a harsh reality. The next post will cover the entire month of March (which felt 8 days long), and should be done soon, as I'm leaving on Friday for a spur-of-the-moment trip, which I will tell you all about when I get back.

Barcelona: Tapas, Tapas, Tapas

This post is part 2 of 3 chronicling my trip to Venice and Barcelona with my Canadian friend Allison.
We landed in Girona and took a hour long bus to the center of Barcelona. By the time we arrived it was already dark out, so we found the subway, and took it directly to our hostel. When we arrived at the front door to our hostel the front gate was locked and none of the buzzers on the door listed the name of the hostel. There was a sign though, with an arrow pointing over to another door, so we tried the buzzer there and got a really angry reply in Catalan, not what we wanted. Eventually a group of American girls walked right up to the door and unlocked it, they said we could follow them in.

The hostel was pretty nice, with big common areas including a kitchenette and a TV room with a whole pile of DVDs. That night we went out to a restaurant around the corner and sat outside drinking wine and eating tapas. Tapas are basically small appetizers meant to be bought in groups and shared around. As a rule they are delicious, and interesting. However, their cheap price and deliciousness forces you to order much more than you really should, as we were to learn...

The firs morning (Monday) we headed straight for the most iconic tourist attraction in Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia. The Sagrada Familia is the only modern church of this scale currently under construction in the world. The church was designed by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi who also designed many other buildings, and a park, in Barcelona, and construction began in 1882. Almost every piece of stone in the building is uniquely shaped based on complex geometries or natural forms, so construction was expected to take hundreds of years. However, due to modern advances in computer modeling, the expected date of completion is 2026.

The Nativity facade was the first portion to be completed and is therefore more or less true to the original Gaudi designs. If you click on the picture to see it in a larger version you'll notice the detail and rich colours of the steeples and the tree covered in white doves. Every inch of this building is covered in layer upon layer of detail and symbolism.
The addition of modern cranes and techniques to the construction of the church has taken centuries off of the construction, and created an odd mix of ancient stone craft and modern technology.
The Sagrada Familia is a unique site, attracting millions of visitors a year, who's admission fees help pay for the cost of construction. One thing that makes visiting the site so special is the organic character of the building; it is constantly growing and changing, making each visit unique and unrepeatable.
The Nativity facade features scenes from the birth of Jesus from the classics which would be expected to odd things like the killing of the innocents (a statue of a roman soldier killing an infant).
During the Spanish civil war, most of Gaudi's sketches, designs, and plaster models were destroyed. The remaining pieces were compiled, and the plaster models are still being reconstructed from the fragments today. As detailed images of the original design have been lost, and out of respect for Gaudi, subsequent architects haven't attempted to pass-off their work as Gaudi-esque, instead using their own styles inspired by their own era. The Passion facade illustrates this perfectly, with its simplicity starkly contrasting the organic detail of the Nativity facade.The statues on the Passion facade portray events from the Passion (the final days of Jesus' life), such as the last supper.
The square on the wall between the Roman soldier and Judas betraying Jesus is called a "Magic Square" and is included because the numbers in all rows and diagonals of the square can be added up to 33 (the age of Jesus during the Passion).
The simplicity of the sculptures directly contrasted with the complexity of the large bronze doors which are covered in religious words from the Bible.

Peter denying Jesus.

Close-up of the door

The columns which support the roof and the massive towers still to be built really show Gaudi's genius. First, the cross section of the columns is continuously changing, starting as a square then becoming am 8-pointed star, then shifting into a circle. The square to star pattern is generated by rotating two squares in opposite directions and looking at the overlapped area. You may also notice that the large columns are also different colours, this is because they are built from different types of stone depending on the weight they are required to carry. Instead of changing the size or spacing of columns, as is done in all other buildings, Gaudi simply chose to build the columns which support more weight out of a stronger and stronger stone.
The vaulted ceiling is meant to resemble a tree canopy, notice the light pouring in from the section where the roof is not yet complete, and the complete lack of windows.
After spending a long time touring the Sagrada Familia we decided to tour the historical city center. This courtyard is the old rector's house by the main medieval cathedral, the palm tree is 115 years old, and the walls of the house include parts of the city walls built by the Romans over 2000 years ago. Across the street from this house a woman sat singing in a doorway to the church, her song sounded very eerie and added a whole different calming mood to the courtyard.If you lived to be 115, you'd need some help standing up too.
The cathedral, originally built between the 13th and 15th centuries was under extensive exterior renovation, so this is the only portion I could get a photo of without scaffolding.
The woman who was singing the eerie song was sitting in the doorway below this facade.
From the cathedral we decided to walk towards La Rambla, a large boulevard and shopping district in Barcelona. Walking through the narrow streets we passed some unique stores. One had this statue holding a blue neon tube out front, giving Ali and I the opportunity to take cool colour-select photos.
When we finally got to La Rambla, there wasn't much to see, likely because it was a cool Monday afternoon in February. One of the highlights was La Boqueria, a huge covered market.

From the market we took the subway down to the end of La Rambla to the Arc de Triomf, built in 1888 for the Universal Exhibition.

The Barcelonan Arc de Triomf is much smaller than the Parisian one, but just as detailed.

I especially liked the bats holding up the arches.

The Arc de Triomf is located within a large park, which had palm trees, and working fountains, a rare sight in February, even in Barcelona.

The central fountain and pavilion was under renovation.

After the park, we decided to do as the Barcelonans do, and go back for a siesta. The subway exit closest to our hostel was directly in front of a famous Gaudi house, Casa Batllo, which also shows his organic, almost skeletal, style of architecture.
That night we went out to another Tapas restaurant which had a placemat covered in photos of the 60+ different tapas selections to chose from. We just kept ordering, as everything was amazing, which resulted in the bill being far higher than either of us would have ever expected... but it was definitely worth every penny.

The weather on the Tuesday was much nicer, so we decided to visit Park Güell, a large public park designed by Gaudi. The way from the subway to the park was up a very steep still, with outdoor escalators!
Even though it was warm enough to walk around in short sleeves in February, seeing the cacti growing wild in the park was what really made me realize how nice and warm Barcelona was.
In the center of the park there is a large pavilion designed by Gaudi as a location for a public market.

Many of the surfaces are covered with broken tile mosaics in cool patterns. From the top of the pavilion you can look down on the park, which was already in bloom and filled with birds chirping away.

This photo, taken by Ali, makes the trumpet player look all alone. In reality, there were crowds of people all around selling cheap souvenirs and sitting around taking in the atmosphere. The entire edge of the plaza was lined with a continuous bench covered in the same broken tile mosaics in organic and creative patterns.Gaudi's designs are inspired by nature; this colonnade is a wave of stone.
If you look closely or enlarge this (slightly fuzzy) photo you can see the family of small green parrots living in the palm tree (in the upper right corner). They reminded Ali and I of our friend Seanna's pet parrot Squeak. We kept on hearing the parrots, but it took us a while to actually find them, hidden away in the palm tree.
From Park Güell, built up on a large hill, you can look down on Barcelona and out to the Mediterranean. By far the most recognizable sight on the skyline is the Sagrada Familia surrounded by cranes. This view will change as the other facades are built and the central steeples grow to their full height which will be taller than the highest crane. There's a model of the finished design showing the same angle as this photo here.
From the top of Park Güell we took the subway down to the sea.
The Barcelonans were bundled up against the "cold", but the dumb Canadians decided to roll up their jeans and walk right in. Surprisingly, it wasn't even that cold, about the same temperature as the St.Lawrence in June (which we voluntarily swim in).
While walking down the beach we passed kids playing on this play structure. I found the red geometrical structure set against the horizontal bands of light sand, aqua sea, and blue sky punctuated by playing children fascinating. This is definitely my favourite photo from the whole trip, and possibly from my entire time in Europe.
We walked around the harbour and decided to find the monument to Christopher Columbus.
It was 22C, but the wind coming off the water cooled it down, making it feel like ~12C. I think this is the first time in my entire life that I have felt temperatures this warm in February, -22C plenty of times, but never +22C.
The monument to Christopher Columbus it placed right at the end of La Rambla by the harbour.
From La Rambla, we walked around, stopped into a little bar for a drink, and then went back for a siesta. For supper we went back to the beach and found a little tapas restaurant suggested to us by a woman who worked at the hostel. No one in the restaurant spoke English, and being a true tapas restaurant there was no menu (or listed prices...) so, Ali used her caveman communication skills to order us a little bit of everything and a bottle of wine. When we got back to our table, it had been taken by someone else, but we managed to find a seat inside. The wine came first, in a chilled bottle with two ice-cold frosty wine glasses. The only reason I could think of for serving chilled red wine in frosted glasses was to make a cheap home-made wine taste better. Anyone have any other ideas? It tasted fine. Then the food arrived, dish after dish. It's hard to remember everything but it was all amazing, the best food of the trip, by far. We had shrimp, pork, mussels, potatoes, olives, and many more delicious things. It's too bad we were too concerned with devouring the food to stop and take photos of it. When the bill came, we were a little shocked, but our stomachs were full and we were content.

From the tapas restaurant we walked off the meal then took the subway to "Manhattan" a jazz club in the old city center. It was really cool, I had never really seen live jazz before, but we only stayed for a while because we wanted to catch the last subway and we were dead tired.

The next morning we caught our bus to the airport and flew back to Bratislava, Slovakia which is the closest Ryan Air airport to Vienna, about 90min away by bus. Our initial plan was to tour the city before going back, but we were hungry and poor, so we decide to go straight back and make supper.

Ali's few days in Vienna will be covered in the third, last, and shortest post of this series on our trip which will hopefully follow very soon as I have other things I want to get to.