Sorry, I know I have not been blogging, but that is because, honestly, the past couple of days have been pretty low key. We are in the home stretch before returning to the USA, and I think Kim and I are getting a little tired. Living in a little tiny dorm room, sleeping on a little tiny dorm bed, and constantly focusing in trying to understand a new language gets pretty tiring after a while. Plus, its the week before finals, so just like everyone in the states, we are just swamped with schoolwork. We have had some great experiences despite all the homework though! Here are a few highlights...
Breakfast and class with Mr. Dunn at the fabulous home of the Canadian Ambassador and his wife.
My big psychology presentation on Bullying.
Exploring at Doblinger. Finding an amazing CD and DVD shop with every opera imaginable.
Discovering the Staatsoper Gift shop, getting gifts for teachers, and purchasing a kick ass poster for my room for 50 cent.
Mahler, all day, everyday.
Girls night out with Rita and Isabella!
The donaucentrum, the enormous shopping mall.
Thats about it, lots of coffee, and writing papers, final projects, and for me, getting to know Ballo in Maschera, which UAO is performing this summer. I am so exhausted I don't want to write anymore, I just felt weird not continuing to blog, even though times are overshadowed by school-work. Kim's family gets in soon, I think I am almost as excited as she is!! Tomorrow, we go on a tour of Schoenbrun palace!
Goodnight!
E
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Don Carlos
10:00 a.m. Wake up to an email from Diana. We had called her the night before because we have to reschedule our voice lessons, because Don Carlos starts so early.
10:30 a.m. Kim is already at class, I had been emailing back and forth with Diana when I get a call from her. She suggested I come directly and have a lesson from eleven thirty to twelve thirty, so I clean up and go!
11:50 a.m. Lesson time!
12:30 p.m. Get to school to meet briefly with my project group for psychology class, and grab Kim and Celia for Chinese Tuesdays!
After our favorite chinese food, Kim and I head back to Diana's for Kim's lesson!
4:00 p.m. We head to the opera!
On the way to the opera, we both were having trouble getting motivated to stand through the five hour performance. We just wanted to go home and sleep. And also not stand for five hours. We almost just went home. Then I had the idea that we shop around outside and see if there is anyone selling cheap seats. So we head there and see what they have to offer. The first guy that offers us tickets has good spots for 25 Euro. I am ready to settle, but Kim wisely turns him down. The next guy offers us seats for 15 Euro. Sold! We are instantly ecstatic, we can't wait to go see our seats. When the time comes we arrive at our box. There are three chairs near the edge. There are two chairs behind them, a little taller, slightly blocked by the wall which seperates this box from the next. Then there is a lone chair behind those, tucked away in the dark corner of the box, and elevated slightly higher than the two in front of it.
We could barely see anything from our seats! Then we realized we could stand, and had plenty of wall space to lean on, and when we were standing, we could see everything. And we were in the fifth box from the stage, close enough to see facial features, sweat beads, details in the costumes, etc.
Yes, we stood the whole time, but it was not hard. Don Carlos quickly shot to the very top of my list of favorite operas. It is a masterpiece. Five hours felt more like one. The characters and their relationships completely consume you.
So the three seats in front were bought by a woman, for herself, her mother and her father. Her father got sick, and could not come. The daughter turned around before the opera began and said something along the lines of "Would you like to sit in this seat?" Then she realized that we had paid 15 Euros for our tickets, and that she had paid 115 Euros a ticket for her front row of box 5. Her offer of the great seat turned from a free spot, to "for 50 Euro?" We sadly went from "Oh my gosh, yes!" to "Oh, sorry, we can't afford that..." So long story short, we stood the whole time, even though there was a great seat right there which remained empty for the entire opera. The guy sitting directly in front of me (yes, I got the back corner chair) told us that this was unusual, and that open seats above the parterre are up for grabs if their patrons don't show up.
During intermission, the old guy felt sorry for us, since we had been standing the whole time, and invited us to his reserved table for a drink! It sounds creepy, but it was completely innocent. Apparently he comes to the opera all the time, and was just happy to see young people excited about music. He told us stories about famous conductors, and names we should know as musicians that we need to google. :) We told him we were singers and said if he ever saw us onstage at the Staatsoper he would yell out "bravo!" for us.
Don Carlos was fantastic. Still thinking about some of the production choices. Like the fifties American house wife dream sequence in the middle, and also the paparazzi scene, where the stage is filled with modern socialites drinking champagne while the paparazzi snap photos or arriving royalty.
11:15 p.m. Get home. Blog. Sleep.
1:30 a.m. Goodnight!
10:30 a.m. Kim is already at class, I had been emailing back and forth with Diana when I get a call from her. She suggested I come directly and have a lesson from eleven thirty to twelve thirty, so I clean up and go!
11:50 a.m. Lesson time!
12:30 p.m. Get to school to meet briefly with my project group for psychology class, and grab Kim and Celia for Chinese Tuesdays!
After our favorite chinese food, Kim and I head back to Diana's for Kim's lesson!
4:00 p.m. We head to the opera!
On the way to the opera, we both were having trouble getting motivated to stand through the five hour performance. We just wanted to go home and sleep. And also not stand for five hours. We almost just went home. Then I had the idea that we shop around outside and see if there is anyone selling cheap seats. So we head there and see what they have to offer. The first guy that offers us tickets has good spots for 25 Euro. I am ready to settle, but Kim wisely turns him down. The next guy offers us seats for 15 Euro. Sold! We are instantly ecstatic, we can't wait to go see our seats. When the time comes we arrive at our box. There are three chairs near the edge. There are two chairs behind them, a little taller, slightly blocked by the wall which seperates this box from the next. Then there is a lone chair behind those, tucked away in the dark corner of the box, and elevated slightly higher than the two in front of it.
We could barely see anything from our seats! Then we realized we could stand, and had plenty of wall space to lean on, and when we were standing, we could see everything. And we were in the fifth box from the stage, close enough to see facial features, sweat beads, details in the costumes, etc.
Yes, we stood the whole time, but it was not hard. Don Carlos quickly shot to the very top of my list of favorite operas. It is a masterpiece. Five hours felt more like one. The characters and their relationships completely consume you.
So the three seats in front were bought by a woman, for herself, her mother and her father. Her father got sick, and could not come. The daughter turned around before the opera began and said something along the lines of "Would you like to sit in this seat?" Then she realized that we had paid 15 Euros for our tickets, and that she had paid 115 Euros a ticket for her front row of box 5. Her offer of the great seat turned from a free spot, to "for 50 Euro?" We sadly went from "Oh my gosh, yes!" to "Oh, sorry, we can't afford that..." So long story short, we stood the whole time, even though there was a great seat right there which remained empty for the entire opera. The guy sitting directly in front of me (yes, I got the back corner chair) told us that this was unusual, and that open seats above the parterre are up for grabs if their patrons don't show up.
During intermission, the old guy felt sorry for us, since we had been standing the whole time, and invited us to his reserved table for a drink! It sounds creepy, but it was completely innocent. Apparently he comes to the opera all the time, and was just happy to see young people excited about music. He told us stories about famous conductors, and names we should know as musicians that we need to google. :) We told him we were singers and said if he ever saw us onstage at the Staatsoper he would yell out "bravo!" for us.
Don Carlos was fantastic. Still thinking about some of the production choices. Like the fifties American house wife dream sequence in the middle, and also the paparazzi scene, where the stage is filled with modern socialites drinking champagne while the paparazzi snap photos or arriving royalty.
11:15 p.m. Get home. Blog. Sleep.
1:30 a.m. Goodnight!
Monday, April 30, 2012
Boris Godunov
10:00 a.m. Wake up!
11:00 a.m. I take a trip to BIPA before we catch our tram to school so I can get moisturizer and sunscreen...our biking adventures left my shoulders with a little burn. No, Mom, its not serious, and I got the sensitive skin kind that doesn't make me break out, spf 50. :) Then Kim and I head out to school!
We go early, Kim works on her painting in the art room, and I watch most of a documentary on Wagner that Mr. Dunn had given us. I have to stop it after about forty minutes because I could not take any more. I am a very emotional person, and as an artist I believe it is our job to be as fully well-rounded of a human being as possible in order to bring substance and integrity to our art. Wagner was manipulative and egocentric, he lied about things in order to gain favor (he started a rumor himself that he had self-taught his own compositional education by reading, when in actuality he had formal training), and stabbed people in the back who had helped him rise to success (mostly Jews that he later he no longer wanted to be associated with because of his anti-Semitic views.) So, while he was a brilliant composer, and pioneered so many innovative ideas in orchestration, musical symbolism, etc, but I have a problem where once I know about a composer as a person, I see their work in a completely different way. In this case, everything I already disliked about Wagner, suddenly seemed 2,684 times worse. :( So when (and I quote) a british Wagner fanatic said that "Beethoven plus Shakespeare equals Wagner" I got a little sick of it. Just need a break, then I will tackle the ring cycle with gusto!
1:30 p.m. Class time! Today we covered Mahler 4, 5, and some of 9. We also watched clips of 2001 Space Odyssey which is always awesome. I was kind of in a bad mood from all the Wagner stuff. Plus I was anticipating a disscussion on Parsifal afterward at our independent study...a production that I was less than fond of.
3:30 p.m. Independent study time. We meet with Mr. Dunn. I tell him what is on my mind. Lately I have been having stronger opinions about music, mainly because I really do feel much more knowledgeable than the average person. (I am sure that I passed that mark after my freshman year as a music student, but sometimes when you are surrounded by other opinionated musicians all the time, you start to feel like you are constantly behind the curve) So, anyway, it was very helpful to get all my emotions regarding Wagner out in the open, and Mr. Dunn wisely encouraged me to try to keep and open mind. I told him I just needed a little break, and he was totally fine with that, especially since we moved on to Boris Godunov for tonight!
4:30 p.m. Off to the opera!
5:15 p.m. We get great spots in line! Despite myself I read part of "Turning the Sky Round" a breif book on the Ring Cycle, and before we knew it we had our spots in the Balcony!
7:00 p.m. Boris Godunov was wonderful. It was a modern production, but in all the right ways. The music was just what I needed to break the Germanic Music funk I had been in all day. A heavey dose of Russian, please! The role of the Boris' son particularly interested me, the end scene between father and son was heart-wrenching. One word of warning: we got excited when we saw the Spielplan because we saw that the opera was only 2 and a quarter hours long, but we did not realize that there is no intermission. You don't realize how much intermission means to you until you are standing for exactly 2 and a quarter hours without stretching or peeing, or sitting down. Honestly though, the effect was great. You don't get a chance to break the suspension of reality, you are in their world the whole time, which makes their struggles so much more real in the end.
Quite the experience!
10:30 p.m. We get home, facebook, skyping, catching up on some major blogging.
1:30 a.m. Goodnight!
E
11:00 a.m. I take a trip to BIPA before we catch our tram to school so I can get moisturizer and sunscreen...our biking adventures left my shoulders with a little burn. No, Mom, its not serious, and I got the sensitive skin kind that doesn't make me break out, spf 50. :) Then Kim and I head out to school!
We go early, Kim works on her painting in the art room, and I watch most of a documentary on Wagner that Mr. Dunn had given us. I have to stop it after about forty minutes because I could not take any more. I am a very emotional person, and as an artist I believe it is our job to be as fully well-rounded of a human being as possible in order to bring substance and integrity to our art. Wagner was manipulative and egocentric, he lied about things in order to gain favor (he started a rumor himself that he had self-taught his own compositional education by reading, when in actuality he had formal training), and stabbed people in the back who had helped him rise to success (mostly Jews that he later he no longer wanted to be associated with because of his anti-Semitic views.) So, while he was a brilliant composer, and pioneered so many innovative ideas in orchestration, musical symbolism, etc, but I have a problem where once I know about a composer as a person, I see their work in a completely different way. In this case, everything I already disliked about Wagner, suddenly seemed 2,684 times worse. :( So when (and I quote) a british Wagner fanatic said that "Beethoven plus Shakespeare equals Wagner" I got a little sick of it. Just need a break, then I will tackle the ring cycle with gusto!
1:30 p.m. Class time! Today we covered Mahler 4, 5, and some of 9. We also watched clips of 2001 Space Odyssey which is always awesome. I was kind of in a bad mood from all the Wagner stuff. Plus I was anticipating a disscussion on Parsifal afterward at our independent study...a production that I was less than fond of.
3:30 p.m. Independent study time. We meet with Mr. Dunn. I tell him what is on my mind. Lately I have been having stronger opinions about music, mainly because I really do feel much more knowledgeable than the average person. (I am sure that I passed that mark after my freshman year as a music student, but sometimes when you are surrounded by other opinionated musicians all the time, you start to feel like you are constantly behind the curve) So, anyway, it was very helpful to get all my emotions regarding Wagner out in the open, and Mr. Dunn wisely encouraged me to try to keep and open mind. I told him I just needed a little break, and he was totally fine with that, especially since we moved on to Boris Godunov for tonight!
4:30 p.m. Off to the opera!
5:15 p.m. We get great spots in line! Despite myself I read part of "Turning the Sky Round" a breif book on the Ring Cycle, and before we knew it we had our spots in the Balcony!
7:00 p.m. Boris Godunov was wonderful. It was a modern production, but in all the right ways. The music was just what I needed to break the Germanic Music funk I had been in all day. A heavey dose of Russian, please! The role of the Boris' son particularly interested me, the end scene between father and son was heart-wrenching. One word of warning: we got excited when we saw the Spielplan because we saw that the opera was only 2 and a quarter hours long, but we did not realize that there is no intermission. You don't realize how much intermission means to you until you are standing for exactly 2 and a quarter hours without stretching or peeing, or sitting down. Honestly though, the effect was great. You don't get a chance to break the suspension of reality, you are in their world the whole time, which makes their struggles so much more real in the end.
Quite the experience!
10:30 p.m. We get home, facebook, skyping, catching up on some major blogging.
1:30 a.m. Goodnight!
E
Saturday: The Zoo!
9:30 a.m. Yes, its early for a Saturday, especially after being out late, but its for a good reason... we are going to the Zoo!
10:15 a.m. We meet up with Colin downstairs and off we go!
We meet Anar and Isabella at the Schoenbrunn! We then walk as a group to the zoo, which is beyond the palace and the vast gardens. It looks beautiful in pictures, and it really does look just like the pictures... but it is so much bigger! The size of these gardens is shocking and the giant waterfall makes you squint because of its magnitude.
We get to the zoo, and immediately start seeing the coolest animals ever. From then on it was animal mania, with so many exciting and cute animals. It is pretty hard to describe how fun the zoo was so I will give a brief bullet-point list of some highlights:
10:15 a.m. We meet up with Colin downstairs and off we go!
We meet Anar and Isabella at the Schoenbrunn! We then walk as a group to the zoo, which is beyond the palace and the vast gardens. It looks beautiful in pictures, and it really does look just like the pictures... but it is so much bigger! The size of these gardens is shocking and the giant waterfall makes you squint because of its magnitude.
We get to the zoo, and immediately start seeing the coolest animals ever. From then on it was animal mania, with so many exciting and cute animals. It is pretty hard to describe how fun the zoo was so I will give a brief bullet-point list of some highlights:
- OTTERS: otters playing, otters making cute otter sounds, otters kissing, otters chasing birds, otters.
- fish
- seals!
- sleepy anteaters :D
- zaboomafoo the leaping lemur
- zebras
- elephants and a baby elephant!
- bats, where you literally walk through a dark area where bats zoom around you, touching you with the tips of their wings...I was too scared, but Kim totally braved it!
- lots of different types of goats?
- giant Pelicans
- etc
2:00 p.m. Despite our best efforts, we were running late to Kim's 2:00 hair appointment. We had never been to the location before, and since we could not find it right away, the stylist said she had to reschedule. :( That's ok! She now has an appointment for this coming Wednesday. I also tried to schedule a nail appointment, but they handed me their spa menu, and their basic manicure was, wait for it, 40 Euro. Blammo. Not going there for my nails any time soon!
So we ended up going to get much needed food at the Naschtmarkt, salads at that awesome salad place we found, and before we knew it, it was time to go wait in line at the opera!
4:30 p.m. We get in line fore Don Carlos, but almost immediately after getting there, we are told that we cannot stay because we were wearing shorts! What! Apparently that is a thing, so we spend the rest of the afternoon perusing the shops at Stephansplatz.
8:30 p.m. Pooped out from our big day, we head home for some How I Met Your Mother and early bedtimes!!
12:00 a.m. Goodnight!
E
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Friday: The Bigger Picture, Bricks, etc.
7:30 a.m. I get up early for psychology class!
9:00 a.m. I had a lot of trouble stressing out in class because all we talk about is how you can blame everything on your childhood, even if you had a decent childhood, about how adjustment is so hard, and how marriages never work. It just all gets on my last nerve sometimes. I am a very positive person, and talking about all the terrible things in life for four hours once a week really makes me anxious. Also it was gorgeous outside, which makes things ten times worse.
1:00 p.m. I ran out of that classroom and grabbed Kim, who was waiting for me outside in the lobby. We decide to go outside to the Volksgarten for lunch! It was so beautiful, the first day like this in a very long time. I wore a dress! It was crazy! So we laid around in the sun, talking and munching on our sack lunch, people watching, until we decided to walk around the ring...we wanted city bikes!
2:00 p.m. We tried to get registered for city bikes. Despite trying two different cards, and a lovely british fellow trying to help us out, it just did not like my card, so we set off to try to find the next station.
We end up walking around half of the ring. It was incredible! Since we always take the U-bahn everywhere, we never really got a full picture of how everything in the city was connected. Today, we got the bigger picture. We were having such an amazing time walking and talking that soon we ended up all the way at Praterstern! We decided to leave the ferris wheel for another day, and went to find our concert of the night: our friend Aurelia, a piano student here in Vienna, was giving a small recital at a private residence!
We got there really too early, so we hung out at a nearby McDonalds and I got myself a HappyMeal, which I guess is weird if you are not a child, because I got some funny looks when I ordered it.
7:00 p.m. We are still about fifteen minutes too early for the concert, so we decide to walk down the street and back for a bit.
Halfway down, we hear the funniest music. Of course we decide to follow it.
It was an Austrian band! Complete with tuba polka music! It was hilarious, and Kim and I walked around the plaza, I guess it was a small festival: there were tables with beer and food, the awesome, brass-heavy marching band, and face-painted kids running amok. Oh, Austria!
7:15 p.m. We settle in at the recital, it is in the sitting room of a private apartment: the owner of which reminded us both of our beloved Carole Gaspar! She was just so excited about hosting, and about Aurelia, and food, and was just precious.
The recital was an inspiration!
Schubert, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann. She plays with so much soul and passion. It was really wonderful.
8:30 p.m. Afterward there was a reception where I met several musicians and non-musicans. A pianist, a violinist, a lawyer, and a guy who played the piano, but who did not want to be called a pianist. There was also a very interesting character, I think it was the husband of the hostess, he is a BBC actor! He had been up late the night before doing voice over recordings for something I didn't quite catch, and he had to shuffle off quickly. He did manage to invite me to another private recital by a vocalist next week and give me his business card so that I could let him know how many friends I am bringing! He was awesome!
9:15 p.m. Afterward, we met Rita at Bricks Lazy Dance bar, a place that we had heard so much about from our friends who had traveled to Vienna last year. It was really cool looking, and it played the best music! We were there for a while, and as the evening grew a little later, the bar started getting more and more crowded. The thing was... everyone was significantly younger than us. Not sure if this is what it was like when our friends last year went, but we started to feel like we were at junior prom. The bar was actually split down the middle, because none of the boys wanted to ask the girls to dance, they remained segregated, males on one side, females on the other.
Anar joined us, and after a few minutes he convinces us that going to a different bar with some of his friends would be a better idea. We have a great time getting there, but once we are there, I was not really feeling the whole bar situation, so Kim and I head out almost as soon as we get there.
12:00 a.m. The two of us decide to go next door to a less crowded, less smokey, less loud restaurant that specializes in glasses of wine, and flatbread pizza things! We ordered one, and shared it over a heart-to-heart. :) We said it was good while we were eating it, but we both agreed the next morning that it actually wasn't that great... too many onions.
1:00 a.m. Homeward bound!
2:00 a.m. Goodnight!
E
9:00 a.m. I had a lot of trouble stressing out in class because all we talk about is how you can blame everything on your childhood, even if you had a decent childhood, about how adjustment is so hard, and how marriages never work. It just all gets on my last nerve sometimes. I am a very positive person, and talking about all the terrible things in life for four hours once a week really makes me anxious. Also it was gorgeous outside, which makes things ten times worse.
1:00 p.m. I ran out of that classroom and grabbed Kim, who was waiting for me outside in the lobby. We decide to go outside to the Volksgarten for lunch! It was so beautiful, the first day like this in a very long time. I wore a dress! It was crazy! So we laid around in the sun, talking and munching on our sack lunch, people watching, until we decided to walk around the ring...we wanted city bikes!
2:00 p.m. We tried to get registered for city bikes. Despite trying two different cards, and a lovely british fellow trying to help us out, it just did not like my card, so we set off to try to find the next station.
We end up walking around half of the ring. It was incredible! Since we always take the U-bahn everywhere, we never really got a full picture of how everything in the city was connected. Today, we got the bigger picture. We were having such an amazing time walking and talking that soon we ended up all the way at Praterstern! We decided to leave the ferris wheel for another day, and went to find our concert of the night: our friend Aurelia, a piano student here in Vienna, was giving a small recital at a private residence!
We got there really too early, so we hung out at a nearby McDonalds and I got myself a HappyMeal, which I guess is weird if you are not a child, because I got some funny looks when I ordered it.
7:00 p.m. We are still about fifteen minutes too early for the concert, so we decide to walk down the street and back for a bit.
Halfway down, we hear the funniest music. Of course we decide to follow it.
It was an Austrian band! Complete with tuba polka music! It was hilarious, and Kim and I walked around the plaza, I guess it was a small festival: there were tables with beer and food, the awesome, brass-heavy marching band, and face-painted kids running amok. Oh, Austria!
7:15 p.m. We settle in at the recital, it is in the sitting room of a private apartment: the owner of which reminded us both of our beloved Carole Gaspar! She was just so excited about hosting, and about Aurelia, and food, and was just precious.
The recital was an inspiration!
Schubert, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann. She plays with so much soul and passion. It was really wonderful.
8:30 p.m. Afterward there was a reception where I met several musicians and non-musicans. A pianist, a violinist, a lawyer, and a guy who played the piano, but who did not want to be called a pianist. There was also a very interesting character, I think it was the husband of the hostess, he is a BBC actor! He had been up late the night before doing voice over recordings for something I didn't quite catch, and he had to shuffle off quickly. He did manage to invite me to another private recital by a vocalist next week and give me his business card so that I could let him know how many friends I am bringing! He was awesome!
9:15 p.m. Afterward, we met Rita at Bricks Lazy Dance bar, a place that we had heard so much about from our friends who had traveled to Vienna last year. It was really cool looking, and it played the best music! We were there for a while, and as the evening grew a little later, the bar started getting more and more crowded. The thing was... everyone was significantly younger than us. Not sure if this is what it was like when our friends last year went, but we started to feel like we were at junior prom. The bar was actually split down the middle, because none of the boys wanted to ask the girls to dance, they remained segregated, males on one side, females on the other.
Anar joined us, and after a few minutes he convinces us that going to a different bar with some of his friends would be a better idea. We have a great time getting there, but once we are there, I was not really feeling the whole bar situation, so Kim and I head out almost as soon as we get there.
12:00 a.m. The two of us decide to go next door to a less crowded, less smokey, less loud restaurant that specializes in glasses of wine, and flatbread pizza things! We ordered one, and shared it over a heart-to-heart. :) We said it was good while we were eating it, but we both agreed the next morning that it actually wasn't that great... too many onions.
1:00 a.m. Homeward bound!
2:00 a.m. Goodnight!
E
Thursday: Museum's Quartier
7:00 a.m. We wake up very early on Thursdays for class at Mr. Dunn's apartment.
10:00 a.m. We arrive to find Mr. Dunn with two other students, both musicians. The first we have met before, Stan, a retired violinist who loves Obama. He is very nice, and we get along very easily with each other. The other's name I do not remember, but he was a musician as well, and also very nice!
We finished watching Sleeping Beauty, then continued with the documentary about Shostakovich and Stalin, and the finished with Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto.
After that, we got some toothpaste from a nearby store, and then we decided to go see the museums!
1:00 p.m. We had a snack in Museums Quartier, and then got duo passes to the Leopold and the Mumok.
2:15 p.m. We then spent the next several hours exploring these museums!
2:30 p.m. The exhibits on Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt were amazing. I learned a lot about who they were as people, and I feel enlightened about art in Vienna. We saw so many famous paintings, and one great part of the exhibit on Klimt was that they had collected over 400 of his post cards to his life-long friend, Emily. They were intertwined throughout the exhibit as his life progressed, like a timeline that you walked through. I think my favorite paintings were the lake paintings, and the stormy sky with birch tree paintings that he completed while with Emily's family on Holiday.
4:00 p.m. After that, we went to the Mumok. It was three floors of Claes Olderburg. I saw some pieces of art that I read about in my Art History textbook in High school!
There was the giant fluffy piece of cake, the giant soft electric plugs and outlets... I think it was meant to make me question everyday objects I take for granted, and it definitely did, but it also made me smile. Seeing a vacuum cleaner in an art museum just made me giggle. A lot of the art was very grim and edgy, but some of it made me see everyday objects with humor, and that I loved. On the top floor, there was a main visual theme: Mickey Mouse. An all-American symbol, he used it over and over in his artwork, culminating in a giant walk-in exhibit. It is an oddly shaped black box which has lit display cases filled with strange Americana, fake foods, old products, and also random stuff that doesn't really make sense. There is a second black box you walk into, in which the shape of a ray-gun: basically a sideways "L" is explored, with all kinds of different objects in this shape, also in lit display cases. In your mind, all of these things really could represent guns, but they weren't. They were pieces of wood, toys, metal, a dried-up old gardening glove etc, but any of these could be used by children to play "ray-gun," a long American tradition. When you emerge from the black boxes, you discover that from above, you just walked through an outline of mickey mouse's head, and a ray-gun pointed at it. It was a strange feeling to have that realization. Another strange feeling happened when we saw what appeared to be KKK hoods in the shape of mickey mouse heads, complete with ears.
5:00 p.m. Then the day took a bad turn, Kim starting feeling bad. :( We head home, and had a great nap and watch American Tv shows for the rest of the day, and I actually did my laundry!
So Kim will hopefully sleep and feel better in the morning!
Goodnight!
E
10:00 a.m. We arrive to find Mr. Dunn with two other students, both musicians. The first we have met before, Stan, a retired violinist who loves Obama. He is very nice, and we get along very easily with each other. The other's name I do not remember, but he was a musician as well, and also very nice!
We finished watching Sleeping Beauty, then continued with the documentary about Shostakovich and Stalin, and the finished with Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto.
After that, we got some toothpaste from a nearby store, and then we decided to go see the museums!
1:00 p.m. We had a snack in Museums Quartier, and then got duo passes to the Leopold and the Mumok.
2:15 p.m. We then spent the next several hours exploring these museums!
2:30 p.m. The exhibits on Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt were amazing. I learned a lot about who they were as people, and I feel enlightened about art in Vienna. We saw so many famous paintings, and one great part of the exhibit on Klimt was that they had collected over 400 of his post cards to his life-long friend, Emily. They were intertwined throughout the exhibit as his life progressed, like a timeline that you walked through. I think my favorite paintings were the lake paintings, and the stormy sky with birch tree paintings that he completed while with Emily's family on Holiday.
4:00 p.m. After that, we went to the Mumok. It was three floors of Claes Olderburg. I saw some pieces of art that I read about in my Art History textbook in High school!
There was the giant fluffy piece of cake, the giant soft electric plugs and outlets... I think it was meant to make me question everyday objects I take for granted, and it definitely did, but it also made me smile. Seeing a vacuum cleaner in an art museum just made me giggle. A lot of the art was very grim and edgy, but some of it made me see everyday objects with humor, and that I loved. On the top floor, there was a main visual theme: Mickey Mouse. An all-American symbol, he used it over and over in his artwork, culminating in a giant walk-in exhibit. It is an oddly shaped black box which has lit display cases filled with strange Americana, fake foods, old products, and also random stuff that doesn't really make sense. There is a second black box you walk into, in which the shape of a ray-gun: basically a sideways "L" is explored, with all kinds of different objects in this shape, also in lit display cases. In your mind, all of these things really could represent guns, but they weren't. They were pieces of wood, toys, metal, a dried-up old gardening glove etc, but any of these could be used by children to play "ray-gun," a long American tradition. When you emerge from the black boxes, you discover that from above, you just walked through an outline of mickey mouse's head, and a ray-gun pointed at it. It was a strange feeling to have that realization. Another strange feeling happened when we saw what appeared to be KKK hoods in the shape of mickey mouse heads, complete with ears.
5:00 p.m. Then the day took a bad turn, Kim starting feeling bad. :( We head home, and had a great nap and watch American Tv shows for the rest of the day, and I actually did my laundry!
So Kim will hopefully sleep and feel better in the morning!
Goodnight!
E
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Funk
10:00 a.m. Wake up! Finish writing a paper, send to Mr. Dunn. Finally, our Parsifal papers are done, now to finish Der Rosenkavalier and Werther before we see Don Carlos!
12:50 p.m. Time to go to class! Today we focused on Mahler 4, a little of Beethoven's ninth, and ended with some Piezolla!
After that we have our independent study, where we learned about the ring cycle with Mr. Dunn. Still getting to know Wagner.
After that, we kept trying to stuff, and things just were not working out!
For example:
We were going to see Renee Fleming...she postponed her concert to December due to illness.
We wanted to go to a jazz club...we youtubed the performer, and didn't like them.
We then decided to go to Hamlet...after going to get student tickets, they had no show tonight.
We wanted a healthy dinner...we tried a new restaurant and hated it.
We wanted to get strawberries from the market...all the fresh air parts had shut down.
We were walking...Kim stepped in gum!
We had officially been effected by: THE FUNK. They funk gets to us all, it is a condition when nothing goes your way, and you feel like you are in a haze. The funk is contagious, and if left untreated could lead to whining and a flakey scalp.
So we decided to treat the funk with fresh strawberries and hot chocolate. We go to one of our favorite coffee shops, Cafe Museum. I get something called Oma's Schokolade. Basically it was a double portion of the most amazing hot coco I have ever had, served in a big mug, with schlagobers. That means the most delicious fresh whipped cream ever. Ever. That cream is topped with chocolate shavings. As you drink it the cream slowly mixes with the hot coco making it even more delicious.
So even though our night turned out a little lamer than planned it had a happy ending. And I had time to do my laundry.
Also on the ride home we made a list of pros and cons about Vienna vs the States
Cons:
-you can't eavesdrop on people speaking a language totally unknown to you
-its not the states
-our friends don't live here
-the 30 minutes from everywhere at least rule
-laundry costs TWO EUROS for just washing machine
-things close on sundays...even though sundays are the best days for shopping slash everything
Pros:
-great public transportation
-strong coffee
-music
-food...except the food we ate tonight.
-cafes!
-opera.
AND TO ALL A GOODNIGHT!
E
12:50 p.m. Time to go to class! Today we focused on Mahler 4, a little of Beethoven's ninth, and ended with some Piezolla!
After that we have our independent study, where we learned about the ring cycle with Mr. Dunn. Still getting to know Wagner.
After that, we kept trying to stuff, and things just were not working out!
For example:
We were going to see Renee Fleming...she postponed her concert to December due to illness.
We wanted to go to a jazz club...we youtubed the performer, and didn't like them.
We then decided to go to Hamlet...after going to get student tickets, they had no show tonight.
We wanted a healthy dinner...we tried a new restaurant and hated it.
We wanted to get strawberries from the market...all the fresh air parts had shut down.
We were walking...Kim stepped in gum!
We had officially been effected by: THE FUNK. They funk gets to us all, it is a condition when nothing goes your way, and you feel like you are in a haze. The funk is contagious, and if left untreated could lead to whining and a flakey scalp.
So we decided to treat the funk with fresh strawberries and hot chocolate. We go to one of our favorite coffee shops, Cafe Museum. I get something called Oma's Schokolade. Basically it was a double portion of the most amazing hot coco I have ever had, served in a big mug, with schlagobers. That means the most delicious fresh whipped cream ever. Ever. That cream is topped with chocolate shavings. As you drink it the cream slowly mixes with the hot coco making it even more delicious.
So even though our night turned out a little lamer than planned it had a happy ending. And I had time to do my laundry.
Also on the ride home we made a list of pros and cons about Vienna vs the States
Cons:
-you can't eavesdrop on people speaking a language totally unknown to you
-its not the states
-our friends don't live here
-the 30 minutes from everywhere at least rule
-laundry costs TWO EUROS for just washing machine
-things close on sundays...even though sundays are the best days for shopping slash everything
Pros:
-great public transportation
-strong coffee
-music
-food...except the food we ate tonight.
-cafes!
-opera.
AND TO ALL A GOODNIGHT!
E
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