Today in class we talked about Vienna art and architecture and the Jugendstil movement. Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner and those blokes. We are to see more of them during our walking tour of the city on Monday. We also talked a bit more about Viennese coffee houses. They were sometimes referred to as “the penny university” because intellectual discourse was so frequent that one learned a great deal about a vast array of subjects in the coffee houses. Apparently Sidney and Diane have been hitting up all the historical coffee houses in Vienna without me. I need to get in on this, as that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do.
After class we decided to go to Budapest. Martha and I decided to leave that afternoon to have more time in Budapest, so we went to the grocery store then home and made sandwiches and she booked the hostel. We caught the 15:50 from Westbahnhof to Budapest-Keleti. It was a 3-hour train ride, but we had beer and sandwiches, theological discourse, and fairly comfortable seats, so we weren’t too bored.
Once again (as in Bratislava) it was overcast when I arrived in this eastern European country, but I know not to judge the country by the sky (Bratislava proved delightful). On the way to our hostel, we exchanged some currency in a Best Western. However, sensing that we were not getting the best possible rate (there was an 8% commission) we exchanged only small amounts here so as to have some cash. I exchanged Euros but I should have followed Martha’s example and brought along U.S. currency, because as she said, you lose each time you exchange. Perhaps I’ll have a chance to follow her lead in Switzerland if I go. In any case our instinct proved useful; we found currency exchange booths all over Budapest (so near to the Eurozone). I think the best rate we saw was at a chain called Northline (highest rates and no commission). In the Northline booth we went to, the guy was playing some online game (possibly World of Warcraft?) on his laptop to pass the time. (Side note: I also saw an old man who looked like he may have been homeless reading on a sidewalk to pass the time. This encouraged me.)
Regarding Hungarian currency: the Forint is very inflated. 274 Ft. = €1, 214 Ft. = $1 USD. Wikipedia said the bills go up to 20.000, which is under $100 U.S. The smallest cash piece is 5 Ft. 1 Ft. pieces do not exist, and in commercial exchanged in Hungary they round up your bill to the nearest 5 Ft. The concept of a Forint cent is of course ridiculous, as it would be worth nothing. Even more than in Vienna and Bratislava, the storekeepers here are reluctant to make change. They frown when you pull out a bill for small purchases (the smallest banknote is 500 Ft.); the grocery store clerk asked me, “Cois, perhaps?” when I flashed a 1.000 Ft. note for water and coffee. So in that sense I get more excited about 100- and 200-Ft. coins than about 5.000 Ft. banknotes. The Hungarians are happier to see coins. In general things are pretty cheap in Budapest. The tourist shops have prices as high as Vienna, but it pays to shop around as everything can be had pretty cheaply; there are little stands everywhere. Lots of places sell bunches of paprika, an item traditionally associated with Hungary, it seems.
Martha and I were EXTREMELY fortunate to have decided to come Friday night rather than Saturday morning, like the others. After we checked in at our hostel (there were some complications with our online registration, but they were worked out), we went to the main street to see what was around. Dozens of people were walking on both sides of the street in the same direction. We joined the crowd to see where they were going. The farther we walked, the more people there were until literally hundreds of people, from the very old to little children, filled the street. Some people had set up tables and were selling giant pretzel-looking things, pastries, beer, water, and the like. Finally we followed the people to one of the several bridges stretching across the Danube to link Buda and Pest. There the people stopped. We soon discovered why; fireworks erupted over the river for a while! Clearly this was some sort of festival. After the pyrotechnical display, we followed the crowed in dispersing along the Danube, where dozens of little tables and stands offered snacks, beads, electrical light toys, etc. It was a sort of carnival; we saw ponies for children to ride and a couple fairground-type mechanical attractions. One sign outside a club answered our question: we had arrived, to our great delight, on St. Stephan’s Day. There were some very good live Hungarian bands, both electro-rock and acoustic folk. Eventually (after this awesome Hungarian cheesy street bread) we returned to the hostel. Budapest has many buskers and beggars.
Today I got up at 6:30 to take Monica to the CAT station (my wallet wasn’t willing to cough up the €18 for a round trip ticket to take her all the way to the airport). I got back around 8:00 and set my alarm for 9:15, intending to take an hour nap and just get a pastry on my way to class. I woke up at noon. Hopefully nothing super interesting happened in class?
I ended up doing nothing interesting the entire day. The only times I went out were to the grocery store. I made dinner and uploaded a lot of photos to Facebook. Read Still Alive a bit. That’s really it. I guess this was my day to recharge the batteries, so to speak.
Today in lecture we talked about Turks. Lots of names and dates, but if you’re looking for legitimate sources of old facts, you should not be reading a blog. However, of interest, we spoke of the Turks bringing coffee to Vienna. Legend has it the Viennese ventured out into the Turkish camps once they were driven from the city and found coffee beans. They knew not what to do with them, tried feeding them to their horses, and eventually hit on grinding them and pouring hot water through them, I guess. Though apparently adding milk to coffee was a Viennese invention; the Turks only drank it black. The Melange was born. Kathy said that the founder of the Viennese coffee house (the man who founded the first coffee house in Vienna {and perhaps the first in the world? I don’t know}) was named Kulczycki. His coffee house was called Hof zur Blauen Flasche – The House of the Blue Bottle. Supposedly there is a statue of the great man on Kolschitzkygasse, formerly Schlossergasse. Kathy said she couldn’t find this statue, but offered “extra credit” to whomever could. Of course the offers of extra credit are so numerous and vague that I doubt they mean anything, especially for someone taking the class P/NP (as I am) but I am determined to find this statue and pay my respects to the man, as I am enamored of the Viennese coffee house. It is wonderful and I love it. After experiencing the Vienna coffee house, I do not look forward to returning to American coffee. American coffee culture sucks. I feel I’ll never enjoy a coffee outside of Vienna for the rest of my life, after experiencing the best of the best. Maybe I’ll get an espresso machine and make my own. I’d have to find out how to make real Schlagobers though to make a legit Einspänner. And espresso machines are expensive. It might be worth it though. In any case I want to find this statue. I Googled Kolschitzkygasse and it’s near the Südtiroler U-Bahn stop, so it wouldn’t be too inconvenient to go there and look for it. I will do this some time soon, hopefully.
Kathy tried but failed to talk about Biedermeier. Instead we talked about the Enlightenment, Maria Theresia, Joseph II, the French Revolution, and Napoleon. Running out of time, Kathy said she would leave it to Dr. O to talk about Biedermeier, which she did. After class we went to the Naschmarkt for lunch. We got falafel, hummus, and beer. After that we headed to the Belvedere for our museum tour with Dr. O. They have quite an art collection there. We first hit up some of the famous stuff there, like the painting of Napoleon. If you Google “Napoleon painting” it’s the first image that comes up. He’s on this rearing horse, pointing his troops forward, with his cloak flowing about him. He is made to look taller than he was. Dr. O also described the Biedermeier painting and period, which seems to have come about largely because of Metternich, who repressed any kind of change, revolution, or intellectual discussion (the French Revolution was scaring the hell out of all the other European monarchs) and Austrians were encouraged to live a lifestyle of Gemütlichkeit, comfortably home living, raising children, being successful suburbanites, and all the things that I want to run far and fast away from. She said Austrian women were encouraged to abide by the “three Ks”: Kinder, Küche, und Kirche, or children, kitchen and church. I guess some girls who are raised too religiously still want that. Dr. O and I and most of the people in the group seem to agree that there’s nothing wrong with Biedermeier, but it’s not for us. Biedermeier seems like the antithesis of all the goals I’ve ever had (adventurous young student doesn’t want to settle down?) but I agree there’s nothing wrong with people who are drawn to that. I just won’t spend too much time talking to them.
Next we hit up the Jugendstil, or Vienna’s art nouveau. The leader of Jugendstil was Gustav Klimt, who made a career decorating Ringstraße buildings. As it happens Monica and I have been discussing art ever since she got here. She likes Picasso and raves about Guernica. I think Guernica is stupid and that cubism is a waste of paint. Do they even use paint or just pencils and crayons in cubism? Whatever, it’s ugly. Monica says that I like “realist” art, in other words art that looks like something. For instance I like old Renaissance stuff, when art reached its height and artists really knew how to represent scenes accurately. They’d mastered use of light and shadow, da Vinci had illegally dissected corpses in order to learn how to accurately represent the human form, Dürer showed off his ability to paint anything, and art was beautiful. After this point painters realized that art had reached its height (it couldn’t get any better) and started painting ****. They invented new styles and painted things that look very unlike what they should. Most of the new styles are so vague that interpretation of what the hell the artist was trying to show is open to the viewer. So some things can be representative, but only if you have someone explain it to you. For the most part artists of these new styles are just lazy (Monica expressed her intent to kill me when I mentioned this). They can paint something (and not well) and the worse they paint it, in other words the more it looks like a formless blob, the more it is open to interpretation, and any intellectual can come along and say that for them it represents some emotion, or sex, or progress, or politics, or something in the artist’s life, and in any case that it’s a masterpiece. Well, more power to ‘em. The artists make money and the appreciators of the art get to feel artsy and intellectual because they can enjoy something that the lay-viewer can’t. I’d rather have something that actually looks like it does in nature. In the Belvedere today Ben (Adams, Bio-man) and I noticed this painting that was amazingly good. It was some market scene in Africa, but it was so freaking good that it was almost a photograph. The artist had serious talent. However, this doesn’t mean that photography has made painting obsolete, because the painter has the same advantage over the photographer that the novelist has over the journalist: the former can express something in his or her imagination, that is, something that has not necessarily happened yet, maybe a possibility, maybe an impossibility, but in any case can give form to his or her thoughts. So I like realist art, where it looks like something, the artist has skill, and I can tell what the hell the painting is saying.
So needless to say I am not impressed by Gustav Klimt or Egon Schiele. Dr. O says we’ll see lots of Schiele at the Leopold Museum on Monday, but we saw a few in the Belvedere. There is a lot of Klimt in the Belvedere. His famous painting Der Kuss, The Kiss is in a giant glass frame box thing in one room. Dr. O talked about it for a while, and we discussed whether the woman in the painting is enjoying the kiss. I think it would be much clearer if Klimt had painted the figures to actually look like people. Then I could more clearly read their emotions. As is, the painting is open to interpretation by the viewer, which means it means everything and nothing and is lazy ****. There was also an unfinished work by Klimt, which made it clear that he painted his female characters naked (and anatomically correct) before “dressing them” as Dr. O put it by painting clothing on them. To each his own I guess, but it seems kind of pervy and unnecessary to me. And Dr. O talked for a while about how Klimt was a womanizer and had at least 18 illegitimate children on account of all his affairs. Anyway Dr. O likes Klimt and Schiele, and I guess as a lifelong art historian she knows better than me, but she can keep her Klimt. He bores and frustrates me.
One thing that I really DID like in the Belvedere was a large collection of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s famous “character heads” busts of heads making various faces. Most of them are contorted into odd visages. Messerschmidt was the Maria Theresia’s court sculptor. He is a good sculptor and his works actually look like people! Much much better than Klimt or Schiele. Anyway he was court sculptor, but eventually kind of fell out of favor of everyone he knew, fellow artists and critics and the court and everyone like that. Being a little daft and unable to deal with this rejection by society, Messerschmidt retired to some cabin by a lake, where he reputedly tortured himself with by clamping his arms into bruised jelly and horrible things like that in order to inflict pain upon himself. He’d then study his grim visage in a mirror and sculpt the contorted face. Most of the character heads, therefore, show people with twisted faces. Some say that Messerschmidt was exploring the possibilities of sculpting, and trying to sculpt expressions that others had not attempted. Some say he was simply off his rocker. I think both are true. The Messerschmidt character heads collection was my favorite thing in the Belvedere. Messerschmidt, I guess near the end of his life, tried to destroy his character heads by throwing as many of them as he could carry into the river. I don’t know the full story, I guess he was just daft. Anyway he did like 69 total, people think. Some curator came along and sorted all the remaining ones, and he named them all. Most people disagree with the names he gave them. Since Messerschmidt never named any of them, all the official names of the character heads are things this curator thought of when he saw them. Most are them are inaccurate, and the names hardly correspond to the faces, for the most part. Anyway, I really, really enjoyed Messerschmidt and it was pretty much the only thing I liked in the Belvedere, except for this one painting called The Last Contingent which shows a rural village, and all of the old men with their makeshift weapons going off to war. The village (women and children, all the young men presumably have already gone off to war) are seeing them off. The old men are the last possible warriors left, and are going off to save their village where the young men have failed. I liked it a lot. It would never have worked in the art nouveau styles, by the way, such as impressionism.
The Belvedere has a lot of impressionist stuff by Klimt and Monet. The Monets are impressive only because he was famous for inventing impressionism. I like The Scream, but most of impressionism is useless. It was invented as a way to paint things really really fast, so that you could capture a scene in a particular light. If you took the time to paint something well, the light would have changed. However, with photography this is no longer useful. You can capture any image instantly. So impressionism may have once been useful but now it’s useless because photography is better, and unimpressive.
They also have this awesome, famous painting of Napoleon being extremely badass.
After the Belvedere we went to an adjacent beer garden. I got a pretty good dark and some Schinkenfleckerl, which was this Austrian ham pasta thing that was pretty good. It came in a big cube. I guess the non-Austrian food it most closely resembles is lasagna, except that it was pretty much just pasta, cheese and ham. It was delicious. Monica got some Apfelstrudel mit schalg which was also pretty good. Anyway, as always I enjoyed finding good beer and food. Came back and wrote this, and now hopefully some friends and I will got out to a bar, or Martha said she was going to try to find dancing along the Donaukanal.
Also, the Belvedere was the only place I’ve seen penises. Everywhere else the naked men are tactfully covered up by a cloth or leaf or something. But in the Belvedere I saw two statues with tiny classical penises. I wonder why classical and neo-classical sculptures have such tiny penises? Anyway, the Belvedere was built and owned by a homosexual guy (Prince Eugene of Savoy) and it’s the only place the penises weren’t covered. Just an observation.
Later that night a bunch of us felt like going out, so we hit up Chelsea, a bar near our apartment. It’s named after some U.K. football team. Not many people were there but we got drinks and had some pleasant conversations. Some lone guys came in by themselves and ordered beers and watched the girls. It was kind of creepy. We danced. I tried to dance. The music was pretty bad, and for the most part the other dancers were as bad as us. I thought it was funny how the Europeans dressed and danced. Kind of like a poor imitation of Americans (who are themselves not very great). They seemed to choose their apparel specifically to try to appear “cool.” It was interesting to watch. I asked a friend who’d been traveling a lot before the program and he said most Europeans were like that. Anyway I thought it was kind of hilarious.
After the bar some of us went out to get some fresh air and ended up lying on our backs watching the clouds move across the night sky and talking about various things. A couple people came out on the catwalk between apartments to smoke and we called them down and they joined us. Religion seems to be a hot topic of conversation since coming to this Catholic country. We were talking about whether we like Vienna. I really like the city, but it seems some people do not like it very much. I can understand the unfriendly people and the priceyness and the general arrogance of Austrians, but I really enjoy Vienna. I could live here. Bratislava and Budapest, for example, are charming little towns, but I couldn’t live there. I’d get bored after a week. I feel like I could live permanently in Vienna.
Went to class and discussed Calvinism (predestination) and the Ottoman Empire, but the discussion of Turks turned to a discussion of modern day European racism and immigrant policy. It seems Turkey meets all of the EU’s requirements for joining with flying colors (strong growing economy, honest efficient government, low national debt, &c.) but the EU refuses to let it join, probably for racist reasons. Turkey would be a much stronger economic partner than, say, Greece or Romania. We also talked about the Turkish immigrants all over Europe today. Immigrants are reproducing much more rapidly than Caucasians, and perhaps soon Caucasian will not be the dominant ethnicity, or culture, in Europe. Kathy saw a political poster (and later today I noticed it myself while walking around) that says, “Mehr Mut für unser ‚Wiener Blut.‘ Zuviel Fremdes tut niemand gut.” Which translates “More courage for our “Viennese Blood.” Too much foreignness does noone good.” Disgustingly conservative. It is a slogan of the FPÖ political party, Austria’s extreme right wing party, which Beller (author of A Concise History of Austria) say is the party that all of the ex-Nazis joined after World War II. It’s got a history of disgustingly intolerant policies. After reading Beller, my favorite Austrian political party is the SPÖ, the social democrats and Austria’s left-wing party. But of course I swing liberal in the United States as well. Seems Haider, the terrible and secretly homosexual leader of the FPÖ, died in a traffic accident. So that’s nice.
After lecture Monica and I walked around and decided to visit the Peterskirche, which proved a superb idea as a pipe organ concert was occurring therein! And I mean the big pipe organ in the loft at the back of the church! It was amazing! I love pipe organs. Really a fortuitous coincidence. It was quite special, especially considering the lovely Baroque scenery we had to look at inside the church. Peterskirche is one of the plainer churches on the outside, but the most ornate within. I found it interesting that one sat in a pew facing away from the organ and couldn’t even see the organist. More glory to God, less to the musician?
Next we went to Hotel Sacher for, reputedly, the best coffee experience in the world. Sacher Torte (chocolate cake with apricot filling) is the most famous cake in Vienna, and of course Hotel Sacher has the most legitimate claim to having invented it. And what would Sacher Torte (mit schlag, it goes without saying) be without Sacher Kaffee, a coffee drink with chocolate liqueur? So perhaps the best (certainly the most renowned) coffee experience in Vienna. And as Vienna is the coffee culture capital of the world, I may have had the best coffee experience it is possible to have on this earth today. It set me back €12 plus tip, but it’s probably worth doing once if you’re in Vienna, especially if you’re a coffee fanatic. After this experience we sat and talked for a while, as befits one in Vienna. As Dom Ambros said yesterday of the Viennese coffee houses, “they never kick you out. You can literally sit there all day.”
World famous Sacher Torte and Sacher Kaffee.
After Hotel Sacher, we went to look at the Universität Wien, built in the Renaissance style (Enlightenment). There were no students but I really enjoyed walking around the building a bit. It’s beautiful inside and out. There are lots of busts of professors all around. I also snapped a photo of a Sonnenfels (advisor to Maria Theresia) bust. After the Uni we checked out the Votivkirche (adjacent to the university). I think it’s my favorite Viennese church. I really like the Gothic style, but it’s not as big and unmanageable as Stephansdom. Stephansdom just took too long to build, and it’s got different things all over the place. There’s just no motif. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Stephansdom and it takes my breath away, but every corner of the church is a little different. The Votivkirche has pleasing symmetry, still has its stained glass windows (I wish Stephansdom had retained them) and has a Gothic simplicity that appeals to me. Amazing, we got to hear yet another organ in the Votivkirche! It was not a performance on the main organ, as in Peterskirche, but a rehearsal on a smaller organ for a wedding. The organist and a trumpeter practiced the famous wedding march (think brides walking down the aisle in Hollywood films) and the Ave Maria. Beautiful. What are the odds of entering two famous, gorgeous Viennese churches in one day and hearing pipe organs in both of them? Wonderful. I am indeed fortunate.
We then took the U2 to Stadion, walked through the mall, and sat on these steps leading into the Danube for a while and talked. Some ducks and a Swan splashed about nearby. A few ships went by, creating waves in our little docklet. There is nothing quite like sitting in the non-touristy part of a European capital city, on the banks of its great river, and talking away the hours with a good friend. And it was indeed non-touristy. Stadion is the last stop on the U2, and we were sufficiently far from the historic heart of the city that I can be reasonably sure our quiet staircase was not bothered by foreigners. We only saw exercisers, dog-walkers and one giggling couple. I think they were all Viennese. It is nice to get away from the tourists and go somewhere the Viennese actually live and carry on their daily lives. Had we proceeded up or down the Danube very far I’m sure we would have seen something famous and grand, but our quiet little strip of river, opposite fishermen’s huts with their hanging nets, was quite nice.
We stopped by the exotic food store by the U-Bahn stop outside our apartment. No Austrian food! Interesting. Smelled uhm . . . different in there though. Anyway we got some naan and went home and made sandwiches and I wrote this and now I’m going to hit the bed. Tomorrow I think we tour the Belvedere, and I plan on returning to the Naschmarkt and showing Monica the inside of Stephansdom.
Met Dom Ambros (see Friday 6.8.2010) post for lunch. He was in civilian clothing (rather than his habit) which was interesting to see. Monica, Martha, Dom Ambros and I went out for lunch to a Jewish place, got these wraps which were pretty good. After that he took us to the Kapuzinerkirche crypt for a look at the imperial bodies. Dom Ambros got us in for free by saying he was a canon at Klosterneuburg and that we were students. He described it as “the only perk of being a clergyman in Vienna.” We went down to the crypt and Ambros described to us all of the Habsburgs and their adventures and lineage and things they were famous for. He said he knew so much about the Habsburgs because he has a good friend who is a Habsburg, one Moritz. Dom Ambros is a very interesting guy. Anyway many of the coffins or sarcophagi or what have you are covered in skulls and bones and crowns (sculpted of course) and one gets the impression of being in a pirate treasure cove. Maria Theresia and her husband had by far the largest sarcophagus. After learning about all the emperors and marveling at the crypt, which is in fact quite a site, we resurfaced and went to Café Tirolerhof for coffee and cake. We talked a lot and stared out the window at the rain and tried to feel depressed, in true Viennese fashion. In any case another very interesting and enjoyable day. I consider myself very fortunate to have met Dom Ambros.
After we parted ways, Monica and I wandered around the Innere Stadt. It’s the most interesting part of the city and she still hadn’t seen it. Hofburg and the like. Later I made dinner and invited some friends, and it was fun. I talked with Martha and Stephanie a lot about Ruth Klüger’s book and concentration camps. Very interesting conversation. After dinner some of us returned to the Siebenstern Brewery (I’d been there once before and we had some problems with the waiter), a local brewery near our apartment which makes its own (very good) beer. I had a Prague Dark but the Rauchbier (smoke beer) which I had the last time I went is also very good. So lots of beer and conversation. That was the end of my night.
Monica, Marielle, Daryl and I went to Schönbrunn for a picnic lunch. I made some delicious freaking sandwiches, if I say so myself. So we had sandwiches and beers and watched the squirrels and what have you in the Schönbrunn gardens. The gardens are definitely more extensive and lovelier than those of the Belvedere. They have a labyrinth of hedges. So it was very nice. After lunch we walked around the grounds. They have a few fountains decorating the grounds. One is this obelisk supported by four golden turtles, topped by a golden eagle (Habsburg eagle, most likely, though it had but a single head). There was also this fountain with these weird sort of mer-people. We found this steep hill and Daryl and I, in our infinite wisdom, though it would be a good idea to roll down it. It was pretty steep and we reached the bottom dizzy and slightly bruised, with grass-stained clothing. I had a long scratch on my leg. We were feeling a little tired, so we decided not to go take the tour; we’re saving it for another day when we have more energy. We realized then that I hadn’t brought out all the cookies during lunch, and we were craving ice cream, so we took the U-Bahn to the Stadtpark (city park/gardens), photographed the golden statue of Johann Strauss, got ice cream, and had cookies and ice cream on a lawn by a pond. There Me’Lisa joined us; she was fortuitously in the area and noticed us. Pretty cool. After lots of talk, we were feeling tired, so we went home and napped for an hour or so, then headed off to the Rathaus for the nightly film screening, stopping at a food stand on the way. I got a pizza (quarter of a pizza! they have huge portions in Vienna) which the guy put in the oven so it was very hot, and a Wieselbier in a glass bottle. Very good. Tonight the film was a performance of Handel’s Messiah, but a sort of modern version, at least in terms of costumes. I actually liken it to the version of Die Fledermaus we saw at the Theatre an der Wien. The music and lyrics were all the original stuff drawn up by the composer, but the costumes were modern. Parts of it though made us laugh, I guess the way the actors were acting. They did some pretty bizarre stuff. The songs were in English but there were German subtitles. In any case opera singing is difficult to understand so we couldn’t really follow it, and spent most of the time either laughing at the antics of the actors or trying to guess who all the characters were. During the screening this guy that looked like a gnome was walking around. He had this white short beard and this sort of beanie gnome-cap thing, and he had a pack on his pack. We were unsure whether he was homeless. In any case he’s like my favorite Viennese guy ever. He reminded me of a gnome in appearance (he was even smoking a legit-as-hell tobacco pipe!) and he clearly had an appreciation for the arts, as he appeared to be at the film screening simply to enjoy some Handel. He wasn’t doing much else; not begging or anything. A true Viennese, Also this little old lady in a little old lady dress with a little old lady dog sat by us for a few minutes. Concerning architecture, the neo-Classical Parliament, with its giant golden statue of Athena, and the neo-Gothic Rathaus with its tall clock tower look magnificent lit up at night. After the film (we didn’t stay until the end because it was getting late and the Messiah was kind of dragging on) we met some of our American friends outside the apartment building. They were on their way to the nearby strip club. They beseeched me to join them, but for one I’m kind of uncomfortable with the idea of women who strip for money, and two I have to get up early tomorrow because there’s no freaking Internet and I need to check my email because I’m supposed to be meeting Dom Ambros (mentioned previously for dinner tomorrow). I think I’ll get up early tomorrow and go to a café for the Internet.
Schönbrunn.
Marielle, Zac, Daryl.
About to roll down the hill.
Rolling down the hill.
The famous golden statue of Johann Strauss in the Stadtpark.
Went to a Libro store to get supplies to make a sign for picking my friend Monica up at the airport. She was one of my closest friends at UCSD this year, and was in Europe for a language program in Spain. We decided it’d be a good idea if we met in Europe. Yay for bonding! I got the stuff to make the sign and also spent some time cleaning the apartment in preparation for her arrival (you’re welcome, apartmentmates!). Also went to the grocery store twice, because the first time I didn’t have a €1 coin and couldn’t unlock a cart, so I couldn’t carry much in my arms. Anyway, to get to that Libro store one much walk away from the U-Bahn station, so it was a way I’ve never been before, down around Neubaugasse. It’s really bustling! Lots of people and shops. I also saw a couple cool little cafés that I want to check out. Kinga, the apartment building manager, took some of us to see DJ Tiësto, who was spinning at the Rathaus. By the time we were on our way, it was getting close to the time my friend’s plane was too arrive so we parted ways at one of the U-Bahn stops and I went to Landstraße to take the CAT (City Airport Train) to the airport to get Monica. Everything went well. We got back to the apartment and made a dinner of bowtie pasta with oregano and sauce and sliced mini Bernerwürstel, which are bacon-wrapped cheese sausages, and the best thing I’ve ever, ever tasted. Monica is a vegetarian at UCSD, but she’s decided to eat meat while in Europe, since it’s very difficult not to. Another friend in my program, Marielle, doesn’t eat beef or pork, so I always have to help her find someone edible on the German menus. Monica said that in Spain they couldn’t even grasp the concept of veganism, and I image it’s the same in Austria; meat is a big part of their menu. Anyway the dinner was delicious. Afterward we took the U-Bahn to the Rathaus (which is magnificent lit up at night) to see if Tiësto was still playing, but he wasn’t (it was only 23:00! What’s up with that?). Some guy was trying to get us to go to a party I think, but I couldn’t quite understand him and just said “Nein, bitte” and walked away; he seemed displeased. The area around the stage was covered in empty alcohol containers and napkins and there were lots of young people about, most of them drunk or getting there. I’ve never seen a public area like the Rathaus in Vienna like this. It was the aftermath of a party. Anyway, so the young people of Vienna. Interesting to see the change in age groups on this particular night. We decided to just take the U-Bahn back to the apartment and go to bed.
