Violin shop, Opera, and the "Castle"

I'm sure you were bored by the titles of my blog posts, so I decided to shake things up a little bit :)
Here's a summary of days 7~8!



Day 7 (1/25):

In the morning, we went to the violin shop of an LDS violin maker, Henriette Lersch.  She showed us the various steps of making a violin/cello, and then answered our random questions.
The violin-making process is very complex and I don't remember very much, but for those of you that are interested, Zach has a more in-depth report on this violin shop trip.


This is Henriette explaining how a violin works, not Emma and I trying to slice Christina in half!

Her beautiful workshop.

Notice anything different about this cello?

Count the strings!!!

Christina got to play on the amazing 5-string cello!

Julia also got to play on one of Henriette's violins, and also an old, old, gut string violin that she showed us.  She showed us the difference in craftsmanship between older violins and more modern ones, which was pretty interesting.  Yes, now we're all experts ;)

Vielen danke Henriette, for an amazing experience!

Later in the day, 8 of us went to the Staatsoper for our first opera, the Barber of Seville by Rossini!
If you want stehplatz (standing room) tickets, going to the opera is an all-evening ordeal.  In general, people usually start lining up for a 19:30 opera around 17:00 or 17:30.  You line up to get a ticket, buy your ticket, and then line up again in front of your section until the building is "cleared" as safe, by the local officials, fire fighters, etc.  Once you get in to your section, you mark your spot by tying a scarf, and wait around for the next 45 minutes or so until the opera begins.


Waiting in line for tickets.  Everyone is reading, or doing homework.

The crowd behind us.

Waiting to get into the balkon.

Telling ghost stories.   ………actually, Aly reading the story of the Barber of Seville to us, since no one knew it :P

The opera house!!!

It's a long way down………

This is what waiting around for too long does to you.

Waiting in our stehplatz area.  Notice the scarves on the railing!

Our first opera experience was great!  Rossini isn't my favorite composer, but I still enjoyed the music a lot, and the story was entertaining (although we all got lost right before the intermission……something weird was going on).
Standing for a whole opera isn't easy, but considering that we got to see a world class opera for a mere 3 euro, I think it was worth it.

Julia found out that you can go get autographs of the singers after the opera, so of course, we hung around in the blistering cold for 30 minutes or so to see the amazing singers.


We even got a picture with the soprano!

Apparently she's from NY, and she told us both to come to the Met to listen to her when we're back in America again.
I guess we could go if we could find $3 standing room tickets! :P





Day 8 (1/26):

Nothing too exciting--we went shopping and practiced.
Actually, grocery shopping is really exciting here ("Hey, does this meat look cooked to you?  I can't read what it says" --Julia), but I don't have any pictures yet, so I'll save that for another day.
When we got back from shopping, though, there was nobody at home, so we took pictures of the "Castle"!

Now, just so that you don't get confused, the "Castle" isn't big at all.  It's just an ordinary flat.  However, it houses pictures/furniture/dishes, etc. from formerly aristocratic families, and sometimes even from the Hapsburgs, which is why we call it the Castle.

Basically, everything has a history, and if they put a name and description on everything in the house, it could be a museum.  I don't know why they haven't thought of it yet!  :)


This is what we see when we leave our room.

Cool portraits of probably famous people.

The view up from the tiny courtyard.

Now this little chair, was the chair of Rudolph, son of Franz Joseph, related in some way to Hannah's first husband.

That's an imperial family tree right above Julia.

The children's room.

This is only half of the flat, so I will get more pictures of the rest of the Castle sometime soon!

In the mean time………Auf wiedersehen!

Days 5 & 6

Oh my……I just came to a sudden realization that it's already been 1 month since I've come here.

Time goes by so fast here, and I feel like I haven't even seen a fourth of Vienna yet.  And even worse, I'm still trying to catch up blogging on my first week here!

Well, hopefully I can finish this blog post quickly so I can catch up soon!

Day #5 (1/23)

First day of class!  Technically, I only had Deutschkurs (German class) today, although Julia and I are both auditing the European Fine Arts class, which is right after German.

A note on German class, since my mother keeps on asking me ;)

………It is……interesting.  Well see……we haven't actually done any grammar yet.

OK, that might be exaggerating a bit, but we haven't even talked about cases, verb tenses (just present tense), adjectives/adverbs, etc.  We just barely coaxed accusative and dative pronouns out of her, the other day.

Yes, Julia would get mad at me if she saw this post (we are learning a lot of vocabulary, I guess), but the lack of grammar instruction is a little annoying nonetheless

After class, we went with Markus, one of the amazing people from the Austro-American Institute of Education (AAIE), to register in Vienna.

Here are some cool things we saw on the way there/back.

The Spanish Riding School!

The Michaelerkirche, I think?  I love this statue.

These are the amazing Monet steps of the Albertina museum.  Ich liebe Monet!

Somehow, it's easier to be excited about homework when you're in Vienna.

Day 6 (1/24):

We went to the Wien museum as part of our European Fine Arts class, and later in the evening, we went to the Sacher cafe to get some Sacher torte :)

We passed this on our way to the Wien museum.  You have to pay to use this toilet, but it plays pretty waltzes :)

Some of my favorites from the museums……

These statues are apparently important for the "S-curve," typical of Gothic sculpture.

The gargoyle that was supposed to be really terrifying, but was actually super cute because it had been so weathered.

Lucy and I have these horrified expressions on our faces, because the guy on the left of the picture (I don't remember his name) had a very painful life.  e.g. he was hung upside down in order to cure an illness, which resulted in him being blind in one eye and paralyzed in one arm.

Well, maybe the paralyzation part was false, but you get the point.

Just a cool table.

In the evening, we went to the Sacher cafe to eat some of the famous Sacher Torte.

This is me trying to be discreet, not wanting to look too touristy.

This is me (and others) being not-so discreet.

So, a note on the Sacher cafe……

It's a major tourist trap that advertises the "original sacher torte."  It's also a very elegant cafe, so we all felt like celebrities while we were in there, but we had to pay to check our coats and the torte was over-priced.

Also, I wasn't too happy with my sacher torte.  It was very dry (I guess it's supposed to be like that), and sometimes almost stale.  The frosting wasn't chocolatey enough, either.

That being said, I liked that it wasn't too sweet, and the apricot jam in between the layers was amazing.

Interpret that as you may, but if you ever go to Vienna, I wouldn't recommend going to get Sacher torte there.  (A lot of the people I went with loved it, though.)

Here are some beautiful people in our group :)

Sacher cafe may not have been the best, but Vienna is amazing :)  The end.