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To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.
Freya Stark
Yesterday morning it was twenty degrees cooler (in Fahrenheit, I haven’t gotten the hang of Celsius yet) and rainy. After the extreme heat of the past week, it was quite nice. And with that change in weather, it sort of feels like I’ve passed some sort of invisible monumental point in my time here. I haven’t been in my appartment quite a week yet, but it’s starting to feel more like home. Getting to the Innere Stadt now requires very little thought - I almost feel like a real commuter when I’m standing on the street waiting for the Strassenbahn at 8:15.
I’m getting more of a sense of the city - or at least the Innere Stadt and surrounding areas. I’m starting to learn where good shops are, what the pretty streets are, where there are nice parks. I’m unfortunately far behind in learning anything much about the ninth district, where I live. I only discovered this afternoon that Schubert’s birthplace is right in back of my apartment, which is seriously cool, and also seriously bad that I didn’t discover this myself. But in typical tourist fashion, my German is still ashamedly basic (except for “danke schonen,” which I have been told I say with a good accent), I take lots of pictures, and I am racking up a long list of places I have to visit over the course of the semester.
I had my first experience with real Viennese the other day. Except, in the weird fashion that my life seems to go, they were also Vietnamese. One of the girls I have been hanging out with here (because, let’s face it, I tend to have female friends wherever I go) named Trang, is from Taiwan, and came to the States for college, at Whitman in Eastern Washington state. We went to the Naschmarkt yesterday after German, this big outdoor market (and I mean really big, it’s blocks long) with everything from clothes to food to restaurant stalls, and found a Vietnamese woman who ran a stall. Before I knew what was happening, they were talking a mile a minute, and we got invited to their apartment for lunch. Despite the fact that I didn’t understand most of what was said (Trang occasionally translated for me, and the woman spoke some English in addition to German), it was one of the best experiences I’ve had here. It was a really good meal of rice and shrimp and unknown but delicious dishes, with our host telling me eat up, I was too skinny. It was the most welcoming and friendly feeling, and it was funny that my first real interaction with residents of the city besides IES people happened in a totally different setting than I expected. Which just goes to show that you never really know what the universe will throw at you.
There are still things that despite my determination to be open-minded and accepting of cultural differences, I just find weird. Such as the fact that the Austrians, so careful to conserve energy and seperately recycle in every house and restaurant, make life ten times harder on themselves and the environment by imitating the rest of Europe and only believing in water when it comes from a bottle, despite the fact that there’s nothing wrong with tap water here. Or that they drive wicked fast and crazy, but will slow down or stop for pedestrians. But even so, they don’t jaywalk. At all. Everyone walks to the crosswalk, and patiently waits for the light. Or maybe this is just weird to a Chicagoan.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get into the Music Performance Workshop, which was disappointing, but I’ll admit that I sort of saw it coming before I even opened my mouth to audition, and I have no one to blame but myself. Hopefully I’ll find some way to sing anyway.
When I saw what the Lyric Opera of Chicago had lined up for this season (Tosca, Faust, Faust, Figaro, Elixir of Love, Merry Widow), I immediately thought “Blockbuster!” and was really sad I couldn’t be here. And then I saw half an hour of an amazing production of Don Giovanni screened outside at the Rathausplatz, and will be seeing Eugene Onegin in the same place tonight. But may I remark on September’s productions at the Staatsoper? Manon Lescaut, Faust, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Die Zauberflote. Beat that, Chicago.
Freya Stark
Yesterday morning it was twenty degrees cooler (in Fahrenheit, I haven’t gotten the hang of Celsius yet) and rainy. After the extreme heat of the past week, it was quite nice. And with that change in weather, it sort of feels like I’ve passed some sort of invisible monumental point in my time here. I haven’t been in my appartment quite a week yet, but it’s starting to feel more like home. Getting to the Innere Stadt now requires very little thought - I almost feel like a real commuter when I’m standing on the street waiting for the Strassenbahn at 8:15.
I’m getting more of a sense of the city - or at least the Innere Stadt and surrounding areas. I’m starting to learn where good shops are, what the pretty streets are, where there are nice parks. I’m unfortunately far behind in learning anything much about the ninth district, where I live. I only discovered this afternoon that Schubert’s birthplace is right in back of my apartment, which is seriously cool, and also seriously bad that I didn’t discover this myself. But in typical tourist fashion, my German is still ashamedly basic (except for “danke schonen,” which I have been told I say with a good accent), I take lots of pictures, and I am racking up a long list of places I have to visit over the course of the semester.
I had my first experience with real Viennese the other day. Except, in the weird fashion that my life seems to go, they were also Vietnamese. One of the girls I have been hanging out with here (because, let’s face it, I tend to have female friends wherever I go) named Trang, is from Taiwan, and came to the States for college, at Whitman in Eastern Washington state. We went to the Naschmarkt yesterday after German, this big outdoor market (and I mean really big, it’s blocks long) with everything from clothes to food to restaurant stalls, and found a Vietnamese woman who ran a stall. Before I knew what was happening, they were talking a mile a minute, and we got invited to their apartment for lunch. Despite the fact that I didn’t understand most of what was said (Trang occasionally translated for me, and the woman spoke some English in addition to German), it was one of the best experiences I’ve had here. It was a really good meal of rice and shrimp and unknown but delicious dishes, with our host telling me eat up, I was too skinny. It was the most welcoming and friendly feeling, and it was funny that my first real interaction with residents of the city besides IES people happened in a totally different setting than I expected. Which just goes to show that you never really know what the universe will throw at you.
There are still things that despite my determination to be open-minded and accepting of cultural differences, I just find weird. Such as the fact that the Austrians, so careful to conserve energy and seperately recycle in every house and restaurant, make life ten times harder on themselves and the environment by imitating the rest of Europe and only believing in water when it comes from a bottle, despite the fact that there’s nothing wrong with tap water here. Or that they drive wicked fast and crazy, but will slow down or stop for pedestrians. But even so, they don’t jaywalk. At all. Everyone walks to the crosswalk, and patiently waits for the light. Or maybe this is just weird to a Chicagoan.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get into the Music Performance Workshop, which was disappointing, but I’ll admit that I sort of saw it coming before I even opened my mouth to audition, and I have no one to blame but myself. Hopefully I’ll find some way to sing anyway.
When I saw what the Lyric Opera of Chicago had lined up for this season (Tosca, Faust, Faust, Figaro, Elixir of Love, Merry Widow), I immediately thought “Blockbuster!” and was really sad I couldn’t be here. And then I saw half an hour of an amazing production of Don Giovanni screened outside at the Rathausplatz, and will be seeing Eugene Onegin in the same place tonight. But may I remark on September’s productions at the Staatsoper? Manon Lescaut, Faust, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Die Zauberflote. Beat that, Chicago.