FINALLY IN VIENNA

We finished out our stay in Mörbisch today. Yesterday we had our first class in the hotel and I am so excited about the class I am taking. It's called Vienna's Musical Traditions and the professor is so great. He's lived in Vienna almost all his life except for a few years when he was studying in Kansas (why...?) where he learned to speak English. His English is really good and he knows SO MUCH about music and the impact that Vienna has had on music history,and he also has a really great dry sense of humor which he says is an Austrian thing. He is an organist and vocalist who teaches at the conservatory here and he knows the stories behind so many things about composers and the pieces that they've written, not just the dry fact which makes his lectures so much more interesting. Between yesterday and today we've basically gone over the whole of Haydn's life and his impact on music. This class might be a lot of work because before the end of three weeks we have to give an oral presentation, write a 5 page paper, and write 5 journal entries.But I am so excited to experience what our professor knows in the place that it really happened and get really into the musical culture around here, so I am really pumped to get going on this class.

After our first class, we got to go on a dinner boat ride around the lake that is right next to Mörbisch. This lake separates Austria from Hungary and one of the professors pointed out some of the watchtowers on the Hungarian side that used to be used to keep people from escaping Hungary during the days of the Iron Curtain.The driver of the boat was on the phone the entire boat ride and ran us right into some weeds and said that this was where we were having dinner. We weren't sure if he meant to do that or if it was an accident and he just decided that this was where he was going to stop but it didn't matter because dinner ended up being really good. Our dinner was barbequed beef and brats with sauerkraut and bread (these people really love their meat...) and a couple of us pitched in to buy a bottle of local wine for only 10 euros. It was really delicious and the scenery was beautiful. After dinner was over and we were back at the hotel most of us left again and walked around the town. We ended up getting some gelato and sat around talking in one of the restaurants and then headed back to the hotel.

This morning we had another class in the hotel and then we had lunch and then we were off to Vienna! Coming into the city was a very interesting experience because the outskirts of Vienna was built more recently and really didn't look very nice. But even when you're in the outskirts you can see bits and pieces of Gothic towers or old parts of buildings just sprinkled around. As you get farther into the city the buildings get older and more beautiful until we got to the Institute where our program is headquartered which is right in the middle of the city and in the most busy and beautiful part. It is right next door to the Vienna Opera House which is STUNNING. We were told that you can get standing room tickets to the Opera for only three euros, so obviously I am going there ALL THE TIME. We had about 20 minutes to walk around the city so we wandered around the block and found a statue of Goethe and a beautiful park that we spent a couple minutes in. After that we had to go back to the Institute to get picked up by our host family. Our host mom's name is Barbara and her family has a long history of hosting American students. She has lived in Vienna her whole life but has very good English and told us how to get around Vienna and told us of some good spots we have to visit. She took us to her apartment where we dropped off our bags and then we went to get dinner. We ate at a sushi restaurant not far from her house, which was like culture shock inside culture shock because the menu was in Japanese and German and I could read literally nothing on the menu. But with Barbara's help I got some tempura sushi and cucumber sushi and now I am stuffed.

Tomorrow we're taking a walking tour around Vienna and going to see Carmen at a small opera company, so stay tuned! Auf wiedersehen!