End of Session 1

This week marks the end of the first session of the Vienna Summer School, which meant a lot of hard work but a lot of fun times too. I spent a lot of Monday and Tuesday working on papers and homework, but still had time for going out for Audrey's birthday dinner and spending time at the Belevedere gardens with some lovely ladies. On Wednesday our class got to go to the House of Music Museum, which is probably the coolest museum I've visited so far. We spent the majority of our time on the 3rd floor, which was supposed to serve as a review for our final, which was happening the next day. Each room on this floor is dedicated to a different composer who was lived in or was strongly influenced by Vienna, and we had talked about each of them throughout our class. Each room was designed differently to reflect the composer's personality or music and it was a really great capstone to our class. After we finished that floor we were free to explore more or leave. Many of us went down to the second floor, which was so interesting and very modern. It was all about how sound is created and you could create your own sound as well, but it is definitely very influenced by 20th/21st century music.I geeked out like crazy and wish I could have spent more time there. That night, Kelsey and I did standing room at the opera to see the ballet Don Quixote.Kelsey hadn't been to the opera yet, so we needed to get her to the opera! While standing in line for tickets we met a really cool couple from Australia who has been traveling for more than 3 months now and will just keep traveling until they run out of money. We had some really great conversations, and I am so jealous of their freedom to just go where they want! The ballet was absolutely amazing, I had never really seen a ballet before and it was even better than I expected. The music combined with the dancing was so spectacular and I absolutely loved it.
Thursday was a national holiday for Austrians, so our class got to go see our professor play organ for a mass and hear the baritone that come into our class earlier sing. The music was beautiful and I was really fun to see Wolfgang in his element playing the organ. After the mass we only had an hour and a half to take our final, which probably wasn't enough time but I barely made it. After the final was over we had a farewell dinner for the end of session one, since almost 40 people are leaving after this session. The lunch was full of nice words said about all the professors and full of goodbyes, and it was a great way to end the session. We made plans with Meredith, Allison, Kelsey, and Audrey at 8 pm at Schönbrunn palace, because that night was the annual summer concert put on by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by guest conductor Lorin Maazel, who Kelsey and I saw earlier with the Munich Philharmonic. This concert usually has 150,000-200,000 people attend it every year, so we were pretty excited to go down there and see what it's all about. Jessie and I got to the subway station first, which was surprising for us, but soon Meredith and Allison plus Rebekah arrived too. We were just waiting on Kelsey and Audrey, and I had thought that they would have been the first to get there, so I started getting worried that something had happened to them! We waited 15 more minutes and finally we saw them getting off the subway. I was just so relieved that nothing had happened to them that we screamed and ran to them and gave them huge hugs like we hadn't seen them for years. It was a pretty adorable moment.
But after that, we went up to the palace. We weren't sure how long we were going to stay since it had been raining on and off all day, but we pushed into the crowd and tried to get a good spot. We saw the first piece, and then the rain started coming down hard so we decided to leave. The music was wonderful, of course! We left and went back to Schwedenplatz, where I had read about a karaoke bar being near there. We weren't able to find it though, so we went back to one of our favorite bars, Cafe Bloom, and had a few drinks and some really nice conversations. That ended up being the place where I had to say goodbye to Meredith, Allison, Kelsey, and Audrey, and it was not the easiest moment. I am so glad I got close to these girl over the past few weeks and Vienna will definitely not be the same without them. Meredith, Kelsey, and Audrey had to leave first, and after they left Jessie, Allison, and I went over to the Zanoni and Zanoni gelato shop and had another drink with some dessert as well. After that we said goodbye to Allison and headed home.
What an amazing three weeks it has been so far in this beautiful city. Here's to three more being just as amazing!