"So, here I am in a very smoky cafe in Vienna - my legs hurt - I jogged all morning to see what I could see.
Mariahilferstrasse - a young lady girl woman, probably 19 - approached me clipboard in hand singing 'Help I need somebody, help not just anybody. I need you!' My first thought was: 'She knew that I'm an English speaker.' But, of course, her little Beatles rendition spilled into very German pleas for help with the World Health Organization (?) I think...or was it something to do with animals? What's the AARP? ARP? So, I said, in a deeper more gruff tone than I had expected: "Actually, I'm American. I don't speak German." (I was shy about not speaking German when expected to.) "Oh!" She laughed and smiled (she was cute), I think in recognition that her little song fell on an English speaker's ears. And now I'm trying not to inhale. It's a good thing that I took Claritin D this morning. But, this food looks so good. 1/23/09
And now I'm waiting for opera tickets. My knees would be hurting but the bar on this second aisle of the standing room line is compatibly low. Some of the obvious old timers at the front of the line - and one young asian looking girl - have stools, collapsible, - they take them to work, I'm sure - but one man has a homemade wooden stool. He is very fun so far, saying things to his Austrian brother, on his collapsible metal stool, from different languages: 'Qu'est-ce que c'est?!' And I'm pretty sure he just said "Awesome!" I'm earlier than even they said to be at the ticket booth - there is only one curl to the line so far and I'm not at the end. I think I'll make it.
And now I'm in the Staatsoper Cafe. There is this strange ritual- People with standing tickets, after buying them, line up to claim their place in the hall by tying scarves or leaving something to the lower bar of the leaning bar. All this is administered by an authoritarian little woman with white cropped hair. I left my hat and now I have fifty minutes in the cafe to drink some peppermint tea and write in my 'drawing' book. The pies and mousses are tempting. 1/23
Well, this has been an evening of confusion. Here I am at the Volkstheatre, not the Volksoper, about to watch Die Fledermaus the play, neither of which I wanted to see. What substantial is there about Die Fledermaus other than Strauss's music?
I read on Wikipedia that Vienna is more than 99/98% Austrian. At one point, it had had numbers of Hungarians and Yugoslavians up to 12% or something like that - I'm making this up now.
I thought this would be a small attendance. When I first sat down, there were very few. The theatre will be filled!
Well, I got the last standing ticket, it would have been the first, but, in a communication deficient interchange with a sales lady earlier, I had been led to believe the standing room ticket door was outside. The hour and a half of waiting by myself was when I drew the Natural History Museum at the end of the book. Naturalisch. Wait, I'm hearing a trumpet! Maybe this is Strauss's opera after all?!
So far, it's an arrangement for band instruments - cabaret style. IS that a tango version of his music? 1/24
And now I'm in my host family's house - the Bernthaler-Garzuly's of Austro-Hungarian Imperial Descent. Large portraits of noblemen and noblewomen line the halls of this tall celing antique laden home - Franz Josef's childhood rocker sits next to the front door. He was Hannah's deceased husband's great-grandfather - so, that's big. They are a ball going family and very orderly and kind." 1/25
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
An American in Vienna
Sorry for the cheesy title, but I am in Vienna! For half a day now. Well, really a quarter day.
Vienna! Everything is placed: Billboards off the highway coming in from the airport were low and in the brush and trees. Tall tall industrial things: smokestacks and factories were married in village clusters with pastel colored tall European edifices and churches and such.
I got to the Westbanhauf station by bus and checked in to the Do Step Inn Hostel just around the corner. Alexandra, a lovely Romanian, welcomed me and spent quite a while showing me maps. In the bunk room I met a young Polish fellow dropping by Vienna on his way back to England where he works and an Australian college student backpacking around Europe during her summer break.
I felt stinky and tired so I decided to...run! I only saw one other jogger and he looked American - as I ran first to the address of the residence where I am to stay for the three months that I am here starting Sunday night. The street: Mariahilferstraße! This is like Canal Street in New York, in that it is a hip shopping district (have I told you that I don't know Manhattan that well?), with the big beautiful exception that the white ornately ornamented building in which I am to live is old and beautiful.
These two pictures came up when I googled my address for images. I think my residence was completely white, so these may not be right, but you get the idea.
Another picture of Mariahilferstraße.
This is very exciting. I ran around to the State Opera House - the Staatsoper - which is beautiful and around the corner and across the street from the school where must of my classes will be held. I returned from running to shower to enter my bunk room to four gruff looking, but jolly, Romanian men who asked me first for a cigarette and then asked me questions about where I come from and New York. I'm glad that I will be there to mitigate the fact that the sixth roommate is a helpless young Aussie girl.
The Staatsoper.
The city feels real to me. The lighting is different - I'm telling myself this to explain why I can't seem to orient myself coordinally. Much of what I ran through feels like a denser Washington D.C. maybe until I got to almost the very center with its cobblestones, churches, columns, and pubs. There is shadiness side by side with the beauty and interest and quaintness that I could see during my jog, but I can tell that the Viennese are careful and design oriented, smart and lyrical. All this from a first morning jog! And it is only noon. And I heard someone doing lip trills through her scarf and ear-muffed head as she entered the Staatsoper.
The city is more condensed than I thought, but still expansive enough to feel monumental and full. I think that I will be able to walk or jog most of the streets of downtown Vienna by the end of my stay here. Maybe I'll be able to show you my progress. Maybe I'll be boy-scoutish and mark off with a sharpie on my cool little tourist map all the streets I've explored. If I had a camera (!) I would already have uploaded pictoral details of my quarter-day adventure: my blue and yellow painted stucco hostel, my warm clean bed and shower, my Romanian bunkmates, my beautiful palacial residence starting this Sunday, the Staatsoper, and everything. I would have just kept clicking and then animated it stop-animation style. It would have been quick, because I was running.
Stephansplatz. That is Stephan's Place, not Stephan splatzes - a faux verb pronounced shpl-ah-ts. Du splatzt?
From here: I need to go exchange money, get a weeklong train pass, and then I am going to wander. I'll probably eat a mid-afternoon meal out somewhere and then try and get standing room tickets to Verdi's La Forza del Destino at the Staatsoper. Then I will come back to my little room at the Do Step Inn and sleep.
More to come!
Vienna! Everything is placed: Billboards off the highway coming in from the airport were low and in the brush and trees. Tall tall industrial things: smokestacks and factories were married in village clusters with pastel colored tall European edifices and churches and such.
I got to the Westbanhauf station by bus and checked in to the Do Step Inn Hostel just around the corner. Alexandra, a lovely Romanian, welcomed me and spent quite a while showing me maps. In the bunk room I met a young Polish fellow dropping by Vienna on his way back to England where he works and an Australian college student backpacking around Europe during her summer break.
I felt stinky and tired so I decided to...run! I only saw one other jogger and he looked American - as I ran first to the address of the residence where I am to stay for the three months that I am here starting Sunday night. The street: Mariahilferstraße! This is like Canal Street in New York, in that it is a hip shopping district (have I told you that I don't know Manhattan that well?), with the big beautiful exception that the white ornately ornamented building in which I am to live is old and beautiful.
These two pictures came up when I googled my address for images. I think my residence was completely white, so these may not be right, but you get the idea.
Another picture of Mariahilferstraße.
This is very exciting. I ran around to the State Opera House - the Staatsoper - which is beautiful and around the corner and across the street from the school where must of my classes will be held. I returned from running to shower to enter my bunk room to four gruff looking, but jolly, Romanian men who asked me first for a cigarette and then asked me questions about where I come from and New York. I'm glad that I will be there to mitigate the fact that the sixth roommate is a helpless young Aussie girl.
The Staatsoper.
The city feels real to me. The lighting is different - I'm telling myself this to explain why I can't seem to orient myself coordinally. Much of what I ran through feels like a denser Washington D.C. maybe until I got to almost the very center with its cobblestones, churches, columns, and pubs. There is shadiness side by side with the beauty and interest and quaintness that I could see during my jog, but I can tell that the Viennese are careful and design oriented, smart and lyrical. All this from a first morning jog! And it is only noon. And I heard someone doing lip trills through her scarf and ear-muffed head as she entered the Staatsoper.
The city is more condensed than I thought, but still expansive enough to feel monumental and full. I think that I will be able to walk or jog most of the streets of downtown Vienna by the end of my stay here. Maybe I'll be able to show you my progress. Maybe I'll be boy-scoutish and mark off with a sharpie on my cool little tourist map all the streets I've explored. If I had a camera (!) I would already have uploaded pictoral details of my quarter-day adventure: my blue and yellow painted stucco hostel, my warm clean bed and shower, my Romanian bunkmates, my beautiful palacial residence starting this Sunday, the Staatsoper, and everything. I would have just kept clicking and then animated it stop-animation style. It would have been quick, because I was running.
Stephansplatz. That is Stephan's Place, not Stephan splatzes - a faux verb pronounced shpl-ah-ts. Du splatzt?
From here: I need to go exchange money, get a weeklong train pass, and then I am going to wander. I'll probably eat a mid-afternoon meal out somewhere and then try and get standing room tickets to Verdi's La Forza del Destino at the Staatsoper. Then I will come back to my little room at the Do Step Inn and sleep.
More to come!
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