At Last, Vienna!

I have been waiting to arrive in Vienna since the beginning of the trip. Last time I was in Europe I had the opportunity to visit Vienna, but for only an afternoon. That trip consisted of going down the main shopping street and riding the "Hop On Hop Off" bus tour of the city. After our tour here and a couple of days just exploring on our own, I realize now that I barely even touched the surface of Vienna the last time I was here.

The tour mostly took place around the St. Stephan's Church. Our tour guide was great. We learned all about the church and then went through the neighboring streets to one of Mozart's apartments, a coffee house that many composers frequented, an open court yard that demonstrated how people traveled throughout the city without actually going on the major roads, and then ending at the Imperial Palace. When the tour concluded a small group of us went to a great chocolate shop and then returned to the hostel to get ready for our concert.

I love the Wombat Hostel that we are staying at here in Vienna. It feels very home-y and clean. The wifi can be spotty at times, but the location is great, it's clean, and breakfast is delightful.

Conquering your fears and all that jazz

Today is the day I conquered my fears of caves and small spaces! With a group of my fellow travelers, I climbed all 343 steps to reach the top of St. Stephans! 

It was worth it! The stairs just kept going and going and you couldn't see where you were going! It was kinda intense, on our way down, the bell started ringing and you could feel the vibrations through the entire building! 

After we made the climb to the top we decided to descend into the catacombs! This is where I got a little hesitant... I don't normally do caves. They make me nervous! I conquered my fear and decided to go for the experience. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but you'lol have to take my word for it, that it was really cool. They had a bone room, where the walls were literally stacked with bones. It was a little creepy but also very cool. 

Later that night, we went to a jazz orchestra concert, with Kurt Rosenwinkel as a guitar soloist! It was really awesome. Some smooth jazz vibes! I really enjoyed the concert

Mozart's Birthday Celebrations

Happy Birthday Mozart! Salzburg could not be anymore proud that Mozart was born in their city. I felt that our celebration of his birthday really began when we attended a Mozart dinner concert. This concert consisted of a full course meal and three different opera acts from The Magic Flute. The male leading role was outstanding in his performance. He really engaged the audience and made it a full interactive experience. The music was very enjoyable and the food was delicious. The dessert even had a cinnamon Mozart on the plate.

On January 27th, Mozart's birthday, the real festivities began. We all made it over to the house where Mozart was born, just in time to celebrate with birthday cake! That was an experience in itself. The ceremony to cut the cake took about thirty minutes involving a quintet performance and a children's choir performance. Once time to cut the cake, everyone was pushing and shoving to get their piece. It felt like a riot! We all managed a slice and enjoyed.

Free tours of his birth house were given after the cake ceremony however we had a concert to attend and had went through the house the day before. Overall it was a lot of fun to be apart of the celebration and experience the pride that Salzburg has for Mozart.

The Royal Treatment

This trip has sadly begun to come to a close with our last scheduled group event (other getting on the the lovely 3am shuttle to the airport) last evening. Luckily, we really made our second to final evening unforgettable with a private tour, dinner, and concert all at Schönbrunn Palace. 

Walking through this palace felt like walking through the pages of a history book because, as we discovered, so many important events took place in those very rooms. Mozart sat on a young Marie Antoinette's lap and had his famous piano battle with Salieri (familiar to anyone who has seen the movie Amadeus), Napoleon Bonaparte's son lived and died there, and the allies once bombed the palace during WWI, destroying a fresco that was, ironically, a commentary on war itself. The palace is not just a place of importance to Austria but a living backdrop for history itself. 

I cannot fathom what it must have been like to actually live in this magnificent building, least of all as a summer home. We were told that each of the Hapsburgs (Schönbrunn's residents) had five whole rooms to themselves. This is incredible to imagine when you consider that Empress Maria Theresa had 10 children that survived to adulthood. Thats 50 rooms used to house just one generation! It's crazy to imagine a family living with so much decadence yet having such little control over other parts of their lives. We talked a lot about how virtually non of these royal residents were aloud to marry for love. They instead had marriages arranged for political gains, some happy and some not. Even though living in a palace would be incredible, I can't imagine having little control over such important areas of your life because each of your choices has a political consequence. It may sound crazy, but I don't envy the life's of the Hapsburgs. 

See you soon,

Megan Cummings

Salzburg and The Vienna Philharmonic

First off, the hostel in Salzburg is awesome. Being an education major I love that it is also a high school. Every morning the students come in all excited (or anxious rather) for school. To get up to our rooms we have to pass two major entrances to their high school hallways. My last J-term in Hungary was all education based. Staying at a school really reminded me of my experiences there and peeked my interest. I walked one of the hallways and found similar decorations and skills sets that are used in Hungary. It was a lot of fun to walk down memory lane and make a strong connection between my two trips.


Although we traveled to Vienna on our music excursion, the Vienna Philharmonic is on a traveling tour and was playing in Salzburg during our stay. This orchestra was by far the best performance, sound, tone, and articulation I have ever witnessed. Multiple times I had to check and see if a solo was being played. The strings were so together that it sounded as if only one violinist was playing. It was outstanding. Nothing will compare to this performance ever again. The richness and strong emotion that presented itself was unbelievable. After this performance the Vienna Philharmonic is number one on my list.

We could literally touch the conductor if we wanted to!

 

Between those two experiences, Salzburg couldn't get any better. Pairing education with music and art was amazing. Great impressions of Salzburg all around.

Vienna Reflections and The Magic Flute

For my final blog post I’m going to reflect upon the highlights of my last few days in Vienna, starting with The Magic Flute we saw Saturday night.

After nearly every performance I thought it would be very difficult for another to match it however, fortunately almost every night I am proven wrong. The Magic Flute was another spectacular opera, or more specifically, singspiel. While each opera had its own strengths and weaknesses, The Magic Flute was excellent in almost every way. The orchestra was wonderful and the conductor had the whole piece memorized, I can’t imagine! The singers all did a beautiful job and although there was not much in the way of a set, the staging and costuming were elaborate and stunning. Overall it was funny, whimsical, and very entertaining. I thought the choices of this performance were interesting, particularly the costuming. In the singspiel, the two protagonists fall in love but must undergo certain trials before they can be together and initiated into the brotherhood of Sarastro’s temple, for the wise and pure of heart. Until they complete their quest the protagonists were dressed like fairytale characters. After they were accepted into the order they were dressed in plain, grey business attire. With the trials representing the four main natural elements and the sun banishing the night, I wondered if it symbolically represented The Enlightenment and the triumph of reason over superstition. I had also learned from our previous tours that Mozart was a member of the Free Masons in Vienna and supposedly Mozart revealed some of the order’s secrets in The Magic Flute. Perhaps that had something to do with the heavy use of symbolism in the singspiel or maybe it refers to something completely different, like an allusion to The Enlightenment. I liked how the plot of the singspiel itself seemed more complex than most operas and allowed for reflection and depth of thought as to the overall meaning of the piece. I will be thinking about it some more in the next few days!

For my last full day in Vienna some friends and I wasted no time trying to do everything we wanted to before leaving, which was of course impossible, but made for a wonderful day. We toured the catacombs and climbed the tower at St Stephen’s Cathedral, we did some shopping for antique coins and some souvenirs, and finally we visited the art exhibition at the Belvedere. Another former Habsburg residence, the Belvedere is a beautiful palace with large ornate gardens. The exhibit inside featured the artist Gustav Klimt and we saw some of his famous pieces, like The Kiss. I especially loved seeing a large, gorgeous painting by Monet of the path entering his garden in Giverny. This evening we went to our last performance at Schönburnn Palace. Beforehand, we had an excellent private tour of the palace, a nice meal, and then the concert in the Orangerie. It was neat to hear some of Mozart’s music in the same location that he visited as a child and famously asked Marie Antoinette to marry him. Overall I am taken with Vienna. I love how the Viennese have their own distinct culture and that they are very proud of it. I will miss this amazing city with its numerous coffee houses, romantic Baroque facades, and gigantic royal palaces. There is so much more to see and to do here than what we had time for. I guess I will have to come back someday!

 

Schönbrunn Palace

 

In summation….

From all of our pictures and previous blog posts, it goes without saying that this has been an amazing once in a lifetime experience. It is hard to processes all of what we have seen and done in under a month. Four countries, seven cities, and eighteen performances. Wow! Being one of the few non-music majors in the class, each day I have had a greater appreciation for the opportunity that has been given to me to be on this J-term trip and to go to see all of these internationally recognized orchestras. The Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig was my first time seeing a professional orchestra in person and all of the performances we have seen have afforded me substantial experiential learning and a deeper appreciation for music and the performing arts. I have always loved the theater and live performances in general, but I wasn’t as able to fully understand and appreciate the music specifically until now. I enjoy hearing my peers discuss the pieces we heard and explain their historical contexts and technicalities. I believe a well-rounded education is very important, especially at the university level and so this has been an invaluable experience. Now I am interested in looking up this year’s program for orchestras back in the U.S. Before signing off I wanted to thank all of you for reading our blog and to thank PLU and especially Dr. Powell for this amazing opportunity. Tchüss!

How to Enter Subways and Make a Scene

I'll be the first one to admit that sometimes, I don't make the best choices. In fact, sometimes I make incredibly dumb choices - choices that seem okay at first, but in the moment I execute them I immediately regret everything I had ever done in my life leading up to that one stupid moment.
You would think that, in a foreign country, I'd be a little more careful with my choices. Unfortunately, thinking that I would be more careful with my choices was another mistake to add to my collection of mistakes, and as I now sit writing this blog post, I'd like to think that I am, hopefully, a little bit wiser than I was two days ago.

So it goes like this...

Vienna has a great subway system. It's very similar to the Berlin subway system, so we easily learned how to make our way all over the city. After Berlin, I felt like a subway pro. I rode the subway everywhere, by myself, during the day and in the evening (I know that's not much of an impressive feat, but hey, I can be proud of the little things, right?). I knew that we only had ten to fifteen seconds to get on our stop at Senefelderplatz, before the doors to the train closed. I even gave accurate subway directions to a German lady looking for a station I had never been to. I had practically mastered the subway system!

In Vienna, it was much the same thing. Until I made a grave error. A horrible miscalculation. You see, I was coming down an escalator leading to the U3 train platform, and I could see my friends hopping onto the train about ten seconds in front of me. The train doors were beeping, and, at first, I thought I would have to wait for the next ride. But in the moment the doors started closing, they bumped into the shoulder of one of my friends, and in response they opened again. That was my chance, I thought. They were going to stay open for a few more seconds, and I could run for the train. I could make it... no. I would make it.

I ran. I ran as hard as I could, because it seemed like the coast was clear. But just as I stepped into the train...

The momentum I had picked up caused me to slip on the slick floor of the train. In what could only be described as the biggest catastrophe of my life, I slammed into the pole in front of me, hitting the back of a seat and collapsing to the floor. It would have been fine had my glasses not flown off my face and onto the platform outside the train (I'm still not certain how they traveled so far). Practically blind, I could squint just enough to see them sitting, of course, just out of arm's reach. I think the only way I could react was by uttering a really bad word.

Thankfully, some of my friends helped me up and grabbed my glasses for me, just before the doors closed one last time. We took off in the direction of our hostel. Nobody on the train wanted to look in my direction. It was slightly embarrassing.

But I made it. Success!

I guess, in the end, there are two lessons to be learned from this. One is that you should never charge at a subway train as it's about to leave the platform. Two is that, if you're going to run anyway, you should at least make a big deal out of it, and have as grand of an entrance as I did.