With a free morning, a few of us went with Dr. Powell to an instrument shop with brass instruments and a few woodwinds. Austin and I, being such prepared saxophone players, brought our mouthpieces and reeds on the trip with intent on keeping our chops up a little bit so the transition back to full speed music major after 26 days off could go as smooth as possible (and we came running at the confirmation that the shop had saxophones that we could try!) While Dr. Powell, Kristi, and Claire checked out the rotary trumpets, we scoped out the saxophone cabinet, eying the Selmers. We both tried out the same two saxophones, the Selmer Series III (which is the saxophone that our instructor plays), and a Silver Adolph Sax Limited edition saxophone (price tag of 6,000 Euro).The series III was great, but the more expensive horn played superbly! We have been missing playing our horns quite a bit on this trip, and this was a nice reprieve.
After spending so long with the same group of roommates, we have become accustomed to the different alarms in the morning. Our Favorite is Alan's groovy alarm, and we established in Salzburg that we would try to quote the intro to the tune in our improve solos. We took this opportunity to practice our new "lick" while testing out the horns! Austin and I tried to convince Dr. Powell (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) to buy the saxophone for PLU.
After grabbing some lunch, we went on a quest to find a fountain pen for Austin, and on the way, I found a 2016 calendar with dogs on it! (Das Hund). I had seen a few electric city busses driving around the city center for the first few days in Wien, and after getting the fountain pen, we waited at a bus stop to ride the electric bus. One stark difference in the bus schedules here vs. in Seattle or Tacoma is that the buses come very frequently. There were two buses that serviced our stop, and the 1A came every 6 minutes, and the 2A every 10. After a few minutes, the cute little electric bus pulled up, and we hopped on. One more awesome perk to the transit system is that one pass allows unlimited rides on all of the city transit (the underground system, the street cars, and busses). This also means that time is not wasted paying a fare at each bus or train or having to tap an electronic card. Just for some context, our week long pass cost 16.50 euro, and we rode about 5 trains or more per day.
We rode the bus just a stop, but made sure to document our travel, both inside and out! There was standing room and 13 seats on the bus, and it was extremely quite. I am a big fan of public transit, as well as electric power, and I cant wait for America to hurry up and make mass transit a reality. Today was another spectacular day in a wonderful city! Sara Martin was right when she talked up Vienna!
Side note: At the SeaTac Airport, I made the goal to find something that represents the metric system on our trip, and I found it the other day! It was quite the search that took us on a adventure all over town, but finally, Claire spotted the perfect one. It was a wooden ruler (not plastic!) with only centimeters on it (no inches!). The metric system makes so much sense, and I was very excited to find this artifact as a personal souvenir!
I would upload pictures, but the hostel computer is not allowing me to.
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