Weekly Interlude 28: (And-a-Half)

Bryn Terfel!!!

It's taken me so long to get my act together and write this blog entry that I've decided to simplify matters and make a series of bullet points. MUCH has happened in the last week-and-a-half, and MUCH MORE is coming up in the next week!

• I met Bryn Terfel last week! The Welsh bass-baritone played Scarpia in the Wiener Staatsoper's latest version of Tosca. If you remember, Tosca is my absolute favorite opera; I've seen it at least five times in the last two years, and I can say that Bryn Terfel is my favorite Scarpia thus far. He was brilliant in every way -- powerful and sadistic and mesmerizing all at once. Afterwards, he signed autographs in the bookstore, as opposed to coming by the stage door. He sat at a little table with a beer and a pen, talking to everyone while one of his CDs played in the background. He had a great sense of humor, and I felt bold enough to ask for a picture with him!

Pre-ball

• On Saturday night, I went to a ball with two of my friends, Susanna and Lizzy. It was Susanna's high school ball, though alumni often come back. Let me just tell you how wildly different it was from any kind of school dance you'd find in the States. There were three rooms: the main room with live music, round tables, and a ballroom dancing floor; a smoky lounge upstairs (complete with cocktail bar); and a disco room off the ballroom (also filled with smoke, as well as strobe lights and a DJ). A school event condoning smoking?!?! Well, this is Europe. Central/Eastern Europe, to be precise. They haven't exactly picked up on the latest news that smoking kills. But nonetheless, it was lots of fun, even though I had to shower at 3:30 a.m. in order to get the stench of cigarettes out of my hair and skin. I'd also like to add that these high schoolers can DANCE -- and I mean waltz, salsa, foxtrot, cha cha, you name it. They can waltz in the ballroom just as well as they can grind in the disco room. I danced the Quadrille at midnight -- a huge success, despite the directions being tossed out in German (eins, zwei, drei, vier, ZURÜCK! zwei, drei, vier...)

• Musical Munchkins hosted its end-of-term recital over the weekend. Although my kids are too young to play/sing in the recital, I saw a few of them there to watch their older siblings. One of them even gave me a lovely lilac bulb as a thank-you for the semester! Now I need to hunt down a pot and some soil in this frigid January...right now, I'm substituting with a large wine glass.

Graz's Clock Tower



The colorful city of Graz

• I went to Graz on Tuesday (returning Thursday) to visit my friend Lizzy, who currently lives there and teaches English in a nearby town. Graz, the City of Design, is the capital of Steiermark, one of the nine states in Austria, and lies a two-and-a-half hour train ride south of Vienna. In fact, Graz is the second-largest city in the country (Vienna is, predictably, the largest), boasting a whopping 250,000 people. It's a very student-friendly city (there are six universities), and it reminded me of a Soviet-influenced Bologna. Much of the architecture in Graz sports Italian influence, particularly the archways so common in Bologna. To give you some idea of what Graz looks like (beyond the pictures featured here), imagine Renaissance architecture given a facelift with Baroque architecture, interspersed with surprisingly colorful Soviet cinder-block apartment buildings (thanks to the post-WWII reconstruction).

• Graz's main attraction is the Clock Tower, which resides on Castle Hill. You can see it from almost anywhere in the city. Apparently, Napoleon once wanted to take the bell from the Clock Tower, but Graz's citizens stole it the night before Napoleon planned to get his hands on it. Well done, Graz! Since it was so snowy when I went, the stairs up to Castle Hill were closed; we took the elevator instead, not that I minded... Castle Hill affords the most beautiful views of the city, made even more so, I think, by the layers of fluffy white snow.

  

  A pit marking the center of Graz

  

  Overlooking Graz from Castle Hill

• The picture here that looks like a giant parking meter is actually a giant, fake pit -- as in, peach or nectarine. A fruit pit. It marks the very center of the city, a "point zero," if you will. We found it hiding inconspicuously off in a courtyard, but there you go.

• Lizzy and I went to a cafe and ordered hot chocolate. But not just any hot chocolate. You choose a flavor (I chose Cashew-Caramel; Lizzy chose Cinnamon-Honey), and they bring you a cup of steamed milk and a chocolate bar in your desired flavor. Then, you melt the chocolate bar into the milk, wait two minutes, stir it up, and experience a tiny sliver of heaven. I cannot begin to say how amazing that hot chocolate was. In fact, it was so good, I drank too much at once and promptly started choking. But it was worth it.

• Today marked my last day teaching at Musical Munchkins for the semester; classes resume in a week. Tomorrow I'm flying out to London, where I'll stay for a few days with my cousin, and then I take the Chunnel over to Paris to visit a friend there. I can only imagine how chock-full Weekly Interlude 29 is going to be...perhaps I'll have to resort to more bullet points. Or a blog entirely of pictures!

  

  The Steiermark coat-of-arms

  
  
  

  

  Inside the Graz Cathedral

  
  

  

  The city of Graz

  
  
  
  

  

  An outlook from Castle Hill

  

  A pathway on Castle Hill

Weekly Interlude 27: A Lack of Photos, an Abundance of Books

I must confess: I did not take any photos this week.

"Picture of the Day" advertisement

Normally, I take pictures to help me remember everything I do during the week, the same way I write lists and journal entries to recount all the details my (clearly ancient) mind can never seem to retain. But this week...no pictures. Which in and of itself reminds me what I've been doing all week: reading and writing.

In memory of Leonard Bernstein

I wrote some recital program notes for my former voice teacher. For those of you who don't know, program notes are the little blurbs you read in a program -- basically, a mini composer biography and a few brief sentences giving context for the music you're about to hear. Since the theme of my teacher's recital was the three types of love found in the Bible (eros, philos, agape), I wrote an introduction tying it all together. It took me two afternoons and three coffees, but the research, in particular, was a whole lot of fun. Who knew that Gluck conducted a series of operatic reforms that significantly affected the development of French opera?

I read an article in Poets & Writers magazine that talked about the usefulness of taking walks to help aid the creative process. Apparently, walking (and exercising in general) has numerous effects that might explain why it's such a common literary quirk: stress relief, growth of new brain cells, inspiration/creativity boost. Charles Dickens walked up to twenty miles in an afternoon! So (and this goes for everyone out there, not just self-proclaimed "creative types") instead of chaining yourself to your desk and beating yourself over the head until your task is complete, it's probably far more effective to work then walk, then work some more, then walk again. Our brains need time to process information.

Vienna skyline, viewed from the Belvedere

My reading took another form this week, as well: travel guides! Musical Munchkins gives me a week off in February, and I'm planning to visit my cousins in London for a few days before taking the Chunnel over to Paris to see my friend. I've been to both London and Paris before, though a very long time ago, so I'm reading up to refresh my memory. But here's the dilemma: how can you possibly do London in two days?

The answer: You can't. There's absolutely no way. I can only hope the weather's nice so that I can walk around and see everything, even if I don't go inside. I also feel no obligation to go into every museum. The last time I was in Paris, I did the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre in one day. BIG MISTAKE. It took me over two years to recover. And I think, even now, all the churches and museums I visited in Italy over the summer will tide me over on this trip; I'll pick one or two this time and be satisfied.

A colorful bench warmer

Inside Café Diglas

And, as ever, I'm on a quest for an amazing book. I know there are so many out there, but choosing a book to read is strangely difficult. When I read, I want it to be something epic, something brilliant, something that completely blows my mind. I've read so many book jackets, and so many of them sound good, but if I'm going to commit to a novel, I want it to be utterly amazing. (This seems to suggest I have control issues and want to know the end results before I do anything...hmmm. Interesting.) So after hours of perusing Barnes & Noble, I usually end up buying nothing. Unless, of course, I'm looking for a specific title that someone has convinced me will be great.

Being in a non-English-speaking country exacerbates this problem, as you can probably imagine, seeing as English book sections are decidedly small. Cue Amazon UK, Kindle Cloud Reader, und so weiter (and so on). The simplest solution probably would have been to buy myself a Kindle, but nothing--NOTHING--can ever be so satisfying as holding a real book in my hands. Even reading some quick fiction on my computer feels clunky and confining; I lose the kinesthetic experience of reading. I don't like it.

A view from an airplane

The good news is that I have several books lined up for when I get back home, all recommendations from friends via Facebook. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Just to name a few. If you have other suggestions for me, please share!

And now I think it's time for me to go outside and take a walk. Hopefully, it'll get my creative juices flowing while I simultaneously take pictures for the next Weekly Interlude and discover a new part of the city. I think the sun is even peering out!

(The pictures in this blog were taken in Vienna but not this week. I couldn't leave the blog completely blank, could I? :)

Weekly Interlude 26: Happy New Year!

A sign by the Museums Quartier

Welcome to 2014! The new year finds me back in Vienna, where I will stay until at least July 3 to finish out the school year at Musical Munchkins. I spent nearly three weeks at home, however, and let me just say that that's exactly what I needed to recharge.

Obligatory wing photo

I flew into Boston, just missing the first of many snowstorms, though that landing was by far the most terrifying I've ever experienced. As we descended, I could see snow cleared on either side of the (rather slick-looking) runway, and the plane hit the ground with a huge THUMP! that tossed everybody into the air. (That seatbelt sign is no joke!) Then we proceeded to pitch side to side, hurtling down the runway at what felt like dangerously high speeds; the thing with the Boston airport is that the plane MUST stop after a certain point--instead of an endless stretch of runway, you'll eventually just hit the Harbor.

Remnants of Christmas in Wien

After this stressful touchdown, the captain got on the intercom and apologized for such a bumpy landing. But we were safe and sound back in Boston, AND my parents met me at the arrivals gate with a sign and an American flag!

My sister and my aunt both came up for the holidays, as well, so it was a mostly family-centric three weeks. There were a couple things I definitely needed to do: go shopping on a Sunday BECAUSE I COULD (stores are always closed on Sundays in Vienna), go to Target (which inconveniently erupted with credit card scandal), eat delicious food made by my mom (I can't even tell you how glorious this was). It was super nice to drive again; my car (an 18-year-old Camry named Car) was waiting for me.

Finding a shell at Ogunquit Beach

As a surprise Christmas present, my mom took me to Stonewall Kitchen in York, Maine, where we took a cooking class--aka, we watched someone make food, asked questions, and then ate the most scrumptious meal you could possibly imagine--and then we visited Ogunquit Beach, one of my favorite places on earth. As amazing as Austria is, it will just never have a beach; no matter how perfect everything else is, it will always remain a land-locked country. I'd been very sad over the summer, thinking I wouldn't make it to the beach in 2013, but with just 12 days to go until the new year, I did! It's good to know that I love the beach just as much in the winter as in the height of summer.

Ninjabread men

Every year at Christmas, I make gingerbread people--men, women, snowmen; even houses, stars, and angels. Last year, my sister gave me a whole bucket full of cookie cutters; this year, however, she upped the ante and gave me three NINJAbread men cutters, which, according to their box, are cut out for action... So needless to say, baking for Christmas 2013 was pretty wild.

I sang for my family while I was home--mostly Christmas carols and folk songs. I bought a book of folk songs in Vienna and brought it back with me. Did you know The House of the Rising Sun is a Southern American folk song? Well, it is, and it's über-fun to play; cue me wailing away at the piano while my mom, dad, and sister sing dramatically at the tops of their lungs. I also entertained them occasionally with such classics as "Welcome to My Music Class" and the "Hokey Pokey." Once a music teacher, always a music teacher, I suppose.

A very snowy beach

Winter at Ogunquit Beach

New Year's Eve saw me cooking dinner, as I've done for the past four or five years. The menu: baked goat cheese and caramelized onion salad over leafy greens drizzled with honey, apple-stuffed pork roast, seasoned roast potatoes, lemon and almond green beans and brussel sprouts, and Bavarian pear torte. I believe I was cooking for seven hours straight with just a small half hour break in the middle. Craziness, you call it? I call it DEDICATION. Plus, if I do say so myself, it always turns out to be quite delicious :)

So it was with great sadness that I left the US again and headed back to the land of Schnitzel and Knödel. It snowed the two days before I left, though luckily my flight from Boston was delayed only an hour (thankfully shortening my 6-hour layover at Heathrow), and the flight from London was delayed 30 minutes. All in all, I arrived in Vienna completely exhausted and have been trying to adjust to the time zone ever since. (I did sleep very well last night, and I didn't wake up in the middle of the night, so perhaps I can say I'm officially over the jet lag?)

The moon & sunset from the airplane

Lillian and family are gone for two months in New Zealand, so now's the opportunity to take advantage of all my free time--go to the opera, read, take walks, visit museums, practice, etc. Now is my chance to do all the things I didn't have time for before. I have evenings now! Unbelievable.

Perhaps in this new year, I should re-title my blog "Susan's Adventures" because I'm starting to wonder just how artistic they all are. Nevertheless, I'll leave it like this for now. After all, who knows what the new year will bring?

Weekly Interlude 25: Krampus Is Coming to Town

A giant chair in the 21st district

I hope Krampus doesn't come after me because it's been such a long time since I posted a blog entry! Krampus, St. Nick's demonic companion who comes after bad children and carries them away in his sack (or flogs them with rusty chains), doesn't like excuses; but in my defense, I will say that I was living in the 21st district last week (the northernmost district in the city, on the other side of the Danube), and I spent all my time either working or commuting without internet.

A look down the main road of the 21st

For reasons that aren't important for this blog, Eliza and I had to move out of our apartment for eight days last week. She lived in the western part of the city with a friend, and I stayed with the family of my friend who's studying abroad in France. It was so nice to live in a house with a family--the decorating, the order, the home-cooked meals. It was a nice precursor to what awaits me when I go home (IN 1.5 WEEKS!!!).

The snowman Lillian and I made together!

The first full day in the 21st district, I took a bike ride with Andi (the mom) and had a nice view of one of the lesser-explored districts. The Marchfeld canal runs through this district and up into Niederösterreich (beyond the border), and I can officially say now that I've ridden a bike in Lower Austria, the largest province in the country. The 21st district itself is rather industrial-looking. Definitely not one of the most attractive places. Every day, I took a tram and an S-Bahn out to Perchtoldsdorf, rounding out the whole commute at one hour and 20 minutes. It was alright for a week, but remind me to always live close to work in the future.

During my time in the 21st, it snowed! Apparently, it never snows very much in Vienna, especially in the city center, and when it does, it typically melts right away. Well, perhaps my holiday enthusiasm is infecting even the weather gods because it snowed--count it--three times last week! One day, it really stuck, too, so Lillian and I made a snowman at her kindergarten. (Since I don't carry around carrots in my backpack, as she was hoping, we had to improvise and use pretzel sticks for the face.) My first Schneeman of the year!

A very blurry dreidel

Continuing in the holiday spirit, Musical Munchkins is preparing for its concert this Sunday. We've had three rehearsals with the band already. If I pretend that I'm not jamming out with a jazz band to "Looby Loo" and "Six Little Ducks," it turns out to be quite fun. The guys in the band are great, so even though rehearsals were all over three hours and we teachers don't get paid for any of it, it's a good time.

Hanukkah, Day 1

This year is the first year I've ever celebrated Hanukkah with anyone. Eliza is Jewish, so we have a small, silver Menorah and multi-colored candles, which we light every night. Fire safety first! The first night we tried this, we set the Menorah on a baking tray, and I stood ready with a glass of water--which, in fact, I needed to use when Eliza almost burned herself and dropped the match onto the tray. Tssss. Since we weren't living together for the beginning of Hanukkah, we started celebrating on December 1, when we got back into the apartment. Is that sacrilegious of us? It's a beautiful holiday, though, and I've loved learning the story behind it. I also learned how to play the dreidel game, so WATCH OUT, family, I'm teaching you when I come home!

The Christmas market at Schönbrunn

I've now been to at least six Christmas markets, and my mug collection is up to three. On Monday, I went Christmas shopping for my family, and let me just say, they're cleaning up this year. My checked bag will be chock-full of gifts; here's hoping the airport people don't search it and confiscate anything! Today, my goal is to finish present-shopping and plunk down in a café. Did I mention that Lillian's gone for a week at her grandma's house? Oh, the things I can do in all my free time now! Practice, shop, drink Wiener Melange...

Lillian - caroling? :)

Rathausplatz Christkindlmarkt

Meanwhile, tonight is Krampusnacht ("Krampus Night"), which means you'd better watch out because Krampus is coming to town. In Alpine folklore, Krampus is St. Nick's beast-like, demonic counterpart. Where St. Nick rewards all the good children with presents on December 6 (the Feast of St. Nick), Krampus comes out the evening before and punishes children who have been bad (see kidnapping and rusty chains mentioned above). I asked Gerhard about this, as he grew up in the central province of Austria, and he laughed, saying Krampus is the way Austrian children are kept in line. It makes coal in your stocking look like the better end of the stick, doesn't it? Around the time of Krampusnacht, there's also a Krampuslauf. Basically, people dress up like Krampus, get drunk (typically), and run through the streets. I'll have to keep my eye out for that...

If you are ever at all compelled to come visit Vienna, I highly recommend you come during the Advent season. There is nothing like Christmas in this city--the lights, the Punsch, the markets, the concerts. The universe seems to be making up for the last four finals-ridden Decembers I've had. Give me any Grinch, and I'd bring him to Vienna!

And a little Christmas cheer for you here. :)

A Christmas market in the shadow of St. Stephen's

Weekly Interlude 24: The Great Toilet Plunger/Christmas Market Quest

OBI, the Home Depot of Vienna

Last week, I left a toilet plunger on the S-Bahn.

Let me backtrack. The bathtub in my apartment hadn't been draining very well for a while, so Jennifer and Gerhard loaned me their plunger to try and fix the problem. I was tired that evening when they dropped me off at the train station to go home, so I got on the S-Bahn thinking, "Now, don't forget to take the plunger when you get off!" And what did I do? Forgot the plunger. So some lucky person (or the trash or the Lost & Found) scored a plunger last week!

Just to put public transportation in Vienna in perspective, the U-Bahn is the subway, the Straßenbahn is the tram system, and the S-Bahn is the train system that takes you from Vienna out to the suburbs. (The S stands for schnell, which means "fast.") The S-Bahn I was on that night went all the way to Laa an der Thaya, a town far north of Vienna. So basically, this Traveling Plunger could be all the way at the Czech border by now.

The Am Hof Christmas Market

The Am Hof Christmas market

Needless to say, I needed a new plunger because drain problems don't fix themselves. After a little help from a friend, I found the Home Depot of Vienna, called OBI, and set off on an adventure to find it in the south-east corner of the city. It lay between two U-Bahn stops, and I chose the one that looked more direct on my map. What I didn't know was that the sidewalk ends on the side of the street opposite OBI, making it impossible to cross the faux-traffic lanes to get to the orange building (that stands, literally, right across the road; how frustrating!). Instead, I had to cross a different street, walk 2/3 of the way over to the other U-Bahn stop, cross the road again, walk back up the street, turn left along a curving side street, and march across the parking lot. This would have been a little absurd even if I hadn't been wearing a pair of nice fashion boots with heels; I hadn't worn heels since I left in June, so my feet were in so much pain by the time I got to the store.

I now know three words for toilet plunger in German: Stöße (shter-seh), Ausguss (ows-gooss), and, my personal favorite, Saugglocke (zowg-glawkeh). Plus, despite my broken, blistered feet, this story has a happy ending -- my shower drains perfectly!

Baubles at a Christmas market

A tree at the Rathausplatz

Besides scouring the city for plungers, I've also been searching for Christmas Markets, which opened on Friday. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, and my excitement over it has skyrocketed since a) Austrians don't have Thanksgiving so it's totally acceptable to delve into Christmas before December 1, and b) Vienna is the ideal city for Christmas lovers. I realize that people back in the States are trying to focus on Turkey Day, and many people won't even acknowledge Christmas until December, but seeing as I won't even be living in my apartment for Thanksgiving week (a temporary displacement), Christmas is the way to go for me. Here, look, I'll celebrate Thanksgiving: what am I thankful for? Christmas.

I wish my camera could capture the magic of Christmas markets (Christkindlmarkt) in Vienna, but it simply can't. Just imagine wooden stalls decorated with lights, featuring beautiful artisan crafts and masterpieces, holiday trinkets, traditional Tirolian food, Austrian gingerbread, and (best of all) warm holiday drinks. The air smells like onions, sausages, and mulled red wine (Glühwein); you can stand at tall, wooden tables and enjoy your food and drink while chatting with friends.

Austrian pastries and Christmas drinks

My first Christkindlmarkt mug!

When you pay for a drink at these Christmas markets, you can either keep the mug (which is unique to each market) or you can return it and get a few euros back. I kept my mug from the Rathausplatz; I didn't take a picture, but it's white with a Christmas tree, the golden Rathaus, and an angel, all connected by blue music notes on a staff. It's very festive. The drink I had in it? Hot chocolate, like no other hot chocolate you've ever tasted. The man at the stall scooped a ladleful of chocolate from the chocolate fountain into my mug, mixed it with warm milk, and topped it with Schlagobers (whipped cream). Swiss Miss, you've been benched.

A stall at the Rathausplatz

Baubles at a Christmas market

The traditional Christkindlmarkt drinks are Glühwein (mulled red wine) and Punsch (warm fruit juice, such as grapefruit, with rum). Good thing I have a few more weekends here so I can try the Punsch and perhaps collect some more mugs. This is already shaping up to be a better holiday season than my last four -- it's hard to get excited about the holidays when you have finals right beforehand.

My life at the moment seems filled with the mundane (toilet plungers) and the extraordinary (Christmas markets) -- an exciting combination that keeps me on my toes!

The Rathausplatz Christkindlmarkt

Weekly Interlude 23: The Spirit of Discovery

A Christmas window on Kärntnerstraße

This has been a delightful weekend filled with friends (old and new) and holiday cheer. On Friday, two of my friends came from Graz and the Czech Republic, and then this afternoon, I met up with a girl who is studying abroad with IES (the study abroad program I used in 2012). Last night, I spent three hours with my coworkers at Musical Munchkins, preparing for our winter holiday concert. Add in some ukelele playing, some Christmas carols, and some Apfelstrudel, and we have a pretty great weekend.

Holiday lights (unlit) on Kärntnerstraße

My friend Marjorie, who teaches English in the Czech Republic, recently started a blog called The Ukelele Diaries. She's planning to take a video of herself playing the ukelele and singing a different song in every city she visits, beginning with Vienna. She asked me if I'd like to sing in her video, too, so click here to see us singing "Edelweiss" at Schönbrunn Palace! Filming credit goes to my friend Lizzy, an English teacher in Graz. It was scary, at first, to plunk down in the middle of a public place and start singing/strumming, but after a few takes, I became more comfortable. (Please ignore the squinting; it was such a sunny day!) A few people stopped to listen or smiled when they walked by, though most people just ignored us or admired from a distance. That's okay, though, because the experience, ultimately, was just for us. It was a remarkably liberating experience--and empowering--to make music in a public place. It also inspired me to explore my burgeoning interests in folk music and improvisation, so for the last two days, I've been playing more piano and experimenting with some Irving Berlin.

A hole-in-the-wall church

The window display at Mühlen Brot

After singing at Schönbrunn, we took the U-Bahn back to the city center and strolled up Kärntnerstraße, the main shopping thoroughfare that leads directly to St. Stephen's Cathedral in the heart of the city. City workers were putting up the holiday lights over the street, which was very exciting to watch. I'll have to go to the city center sometime after 4:30 p.m., when it's dark, to see them lit up. We then stopped by Mühlen Brot, a very small bakery that sells the BEST apple strudel (Apfelstrudel) in the city. I bought a piece and savored it as I made my way to work.

Teaching on Friday went well, and I felt for the first time since beginning in September that I did every single class justice that day. My last class went particularly well, and I'm so proud of myself. Normally, when I teach, I feel completely out of my comfort zone--but, as my voice teacher at Ithaca College used to say, fake it 'til you make it! This has basically been my mantra since June, and I finally felt like it was paying off on Friday.

Delicious sweets at Gerstner Café

A Lipizzaner horse

On Saturday afternoon, the Musical Munchkins staff had a three-hour meeting to work on the Holiday Music Party, which takes place in early December. Since it's the tenth-year anniversary of MM, the party will be held at Porgy & Bess, the famous jazz club in Vienna. Not only will we be leading the children in group versions of songs such as "Five Little Monkeys" and "This Old Man," we'll be doing so with a jazz band playing in the background! Saturday was mainly to meet with the arranger, Mickey, and to figure out the order and arrangements of all the songs. Students playing and/or singing solos also stopped by at various intervals and performed with Mickey and his guitar. Later, the teachers worked out their own solos. If you remember, I'll be singing "Sleigh Ride," which I'm very excited about. Working out jazzy riffs will also fall under my ukelele-inspired quest to tap into folk and improv roots. After spending three hours listening to "All I Want For Christmas Is You," "White Christmas," and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," I am READY for the holidays to begin! (I believe the Christmas markets open next weekend...)

1st district Vienna on a Sunday

St. Stephen's Cathedral, city center

This afternoon, I met up with an IES student (a friend-of-a-friend situation). We bought lunch at a Würstelstand (sausage stand) and then roamed the first district for a bit. The weather was milder than frigid, rainy Saturday, though not quite as nice as sunny, balmy Friday. We passed the Spanish Riding School, where the famous Lipizzaner horses perform and then looped around the Ring (the main street encircling the first district) before popping into the Staatsoper to pick up a November Spielplan (schedule). Even though it was a Sunday and everything (besides cafés and tourist shops) was closed, the streets were still packed. Holiday decorations twinkled in every window, and I stumbled upon both Figlmüller (rumored to have the best
schnitzel in the city) and a hole-in-the-wall church on Kärntnerstraße. Apparently, there will be a mass at the church every day this week. It's nice to know that after a total now of nine months in Vienna (between my semester in 2012 and my experiences since June), I can still find new, exciting places. There's always more to discover.