With a few days of Vienna living under my belt, I figured I should post an update chronicling my first adventures in the beautiful city of Wien.
After a nine-hour flight, Matt and I arrived in Vienna and found a bunch of other students from our FSP. Shivani, Matt, and I crammed all of our stuff into a taxi and rode into the city! We met up with a bunch of our other friends at our school building and walked around the first district of the city (Vienna is divided into 23 districts - the first district is the main cultural/culinary/shopping/everything center). We found a cafe, and I enjoyed my first sips of Vienna coffee, which certainly lives up to its reputation - it is strong but delicious! (Needless to say, I have indulged in many more cups of coffee since then).
After an orientation during which we were all a bit sleepy due to jet lag, we were ushered to our flats, which are really nice. Saturday night was a little odd because Daylight Savings occurred here on Saturday, which didn't help with our jet lag!
Yesterday, after our first adventures on the U-Bahn (the subway in Vienna), we took a bus tour of the city. We walked around the Belvedere Gardens (the former summer palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy) and rode up to the Vienna Woods and saw a gorgeous view of the city. In the evening, we went to a Restaurant and Vinothek for dinner, where we had some classic Viennese dishes - Wienerschnitzel and Apfelstrudel. We then crossed the street to the Staatsoper (opera house) to see a performance of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra. I had never seen a live opera before, so that was a good experience!
Today was our first day of classes. I am really excited to be able to fully concentrate on music for a term and just read about music and practice a lot. Tonight, we saw Mahler 2 (one of my favorite symphonies) at the Musikverein, which is considered to be one of the best and most beautiful concert halls in the world!
I've always wanted to live in a city, so this is a good learning experience...although I need to pick up some more German in order to get around the city more comfortably! I have already learned some tidbits and am speaking simple phrases, such as "please" and "thank you" ("bitte" and "danke"). As a city, Vienna is absolutely beautiful and historic - all of the streets are cobblestone and all of the buildings are old and gorgeous!
Well...even though it's around 8 pm in the states, it's almost 2 am here...so it's bedtime!
More soon!
