The Maturaball
January - Maturaball 001, originally uploaded by phloxyloxy.
I know I mentioned that my school in Laa had their Oktavanerball, otherwise known as a Maturaball (because the Matura is the test they have to take to graduate), a couple weekends ago.
Since Laa is at least an hour and a half outside of Vienna, and the trains don't run in the middle of the night, one of my students was kind enough to offer her parents' house as a place for me to crash overnight.
In a way, it was really funny - I met her and her father at a hair salon in Vienna, and we drove back to their house, where we proceeded to get ready. I totally felt like I was in high school again (but, as I told Emily "with way better makeup), especially as her mom took pictures of us before we left (see above).
As for the ball itself - it was very different than in the US, and also different than other balls in the area (apparently). I was going to test out this second theory by going to the one in Stockerau this past weekend, but the same housing/transportation problems arose, and I didn't feel like trying to solve them again. ANYWAY - first off, it was held in the school itself, in all of the hallways, with different bands playing different music at the stairway landings. The 8th forms (seniors/Oktavaner) did their really formal, traditional Austrian dances in the auditorium. You can watch them here if you want: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_umw2gELFs Apparently some of my 6th and 7th form students were dancing, too. Weird.
The other important part of the ball for the 8th forms was the midnight show. They did a bunch of short dance skits centered around the theme "Carnival", which are also shown in the video above. They start halfway through, but my favorite is at 8:25, when some of the boys came out in tutus and danced to Swan Lake. That was amusing.
Other than that, the whole concept of the ball was different. Parents and community members were encouraged to attend, unlike my prom, which was students-only (and official chaperones). Also, there was no central dancing area. The auditorium played traditional waltzes all night, which meant it was mostly old people in there, and there was just one classroom where pop/clubbing music was playing. And even so, the students were waaaay too awkward to actually *dance* in there, preferring instead to pack in tightly, stand around, and talk. Lame. Apparently this is different at other balls, though, since most of them are held in big rented-out halls.
The gym was turned into a restaurant, so I had some Wiener Schnitzel and Erdapfelsalat (of course!), with some of my students. In addition to this, there were tables set up in the hallways and classrooms, with bars in other rooms. They definitely weren't carding anyone for alcohol, and people were smoking all over - *in school*. It was really weird.
One other difference is the whole idea of a date. I asked some of my students how that worked here, if they met up beforehand, did the embarrassing photo session with the parents, went out for dinner, got a corsage, etc - and they looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently you're just supposed to meet up at the dance and not make a big deal out of it. ....which is funny to me, because this is their ONLY dance (that I know of), but whatever.
Soooo yeah. That was that. Objectively, I would say that it wasn't as much fun as my own high school dances, largely due to the setup. But, since it wasn't MY high school prom, I didn't really care and enjoyed myself nonetheless.