Austria, ja!

Arrived in Vienna, Austria on the Gregor Mendel train! (When they announced that, I burst out laughing. My friend Tom and I, and someone else, did a whole game show video tape based on Gregor Mendel and his plant studies for 6th grade science. Hilarious.) Anyway, didn't know exactly where to go, so I started at the most famous place I could think of...the Vienna Opera House. Took a wonderful tour by a huge Austrian guy with a very think accent. He told me afterwards to get in line for standing room tickets for tonight's opera as it would only be a 3 hour show rather than Wagner's extravaganza the next day that would last about 5.5 hours. I can do tonight. Walked a bit more to Stephansplatz to St. Stephan's cathedral, which is beautiful. Don't walk up the 343 stairs to the tower though. Not worth it. But the crypt is! Took an interesting tour where I got to see some mass graves from the Black Plague and the collection of innards of the Austrian rulers. Weird, but interesting. Went back to the opera house to get in line and got my amazingly cheap 3.50 euro ticket to stand at the back of the orchestra level with great sightlines of the stage. The show was Massanet's "Wurther", and ok opera, but a fantastic set! We've tried to do trees. We usually fail. (Courtney being an exception.) But this tree was amazing! I was really impressed! And beautiful leaves. Just a stunning stage picture!

Woke up the next morning and there was a girl in the bathroom. Really had to go and was thinking...when is she going to get out. Was about to get down from the bunk and knock on the door when she came out...and guess who it was...KARA KAUFMAN! Ultimate shock happened. (Character: Kara...stage manager from Harvard. Very good friend. Didn't expect her to be in Vienna!) She was sleeping below me the entire night! It totally made my day to see her! She decided to take some stress free time and go to Europe, but didn't tell me! What are the chances of this happening? Wow. We had breakfast downstairs and caught up a bit, but she and her friend were taking off on a train to Budapest. Had I known, I would have gone to Budapest, but I was staying in Vienna for another day and a half and then off to Salzburg. Well, I will see her when I get back in NYC for sure. Hilarious.

After we both ended screaming and hugging and they left, the other girl in our room was wide awake. I felt bad because I had woken her up the night before coming in, but we banded together for the day to travel around the town. (Character: Sara from Japan who just graduated from Brown in biochem and is staying in Providence another year to work in a lab) We started off walking around the Hofburg Palace and all the platzes around there. Went into the library/Imperial State Room which was just overwhelmingly gorgeous. Our mouths hit the ground. They were having an exhibit on gifts of books that Franz Josef had received during his reign. The books may only of had congratulations in them, but the bindings and covers were just stunning works of art. I wish I knew how to do binding and book art. Another art to learn when I get back! Felt like Disney Princess Belle in the Beast's castle. (Have I hit all the Disney Princesses yet? Almost.) Definitely a must go see when in Vienna. Then we walked around to the Burg Theatre, the Votiv Church (which wasn't open, but had beautiful Gothic details), the Rathaus (which is gorgeous!), and Parliament. Decided that we were going to go to see Midsummer Night's Dream at the Burg later, so Sara went back to switch to another hostel while I took the subway out to the middle of who knows where in town to the Hunterwasser apartment building. Hunterwasser wasn't an architect, but he built a number of buildings without straight lines. Every layer and piece is painted a different color. Very Gaudi-esque, but not as refined. Lots of tourists in the area, so I fled back to Stephansplatz and walked along Graben St., as my guidebook told me to, to Peterplatz to view some interesting architectural "gems," including Adolf Loos's bathroom complex...they were all just ok. But St. Stephan's church is beautiful inside! Walked over to the Staatsoper Museum, which is just ok, and then had to meet Sara back at the Burg to get in line for standing room tickets. No one was there when we got in, so we got some of the first places in the front of the standing room section, which is in the back of the orchestra section, like the Staatsoper. And the show just felt like coming home. It reminded me very much of the A.R.T. (American Rep Theatre) in the design and the director's calls, which were just genius! So the play was in German, which is very interesting to pick up on the rhyme scheme and the attempt at iambic pentameter in German. The set started off with techies and these little old ladies setting up hundreds of tables for the wedding. Puck comes on as the wedding planner, and after the first scene, she takes off her big coat (revealing a school girl's outfit, which I didn't understand) and signals a HUGE STORM onstage. What was the roof over the tables, collapsing some of them, to create a forest landscape that the actors then walked on! (And you thought my ideas were crazy!) Then, for about 5 minutes straight, it snowed white cork making a thick layer of ground for the actors to trudge around in and throw each other to the ground on. I could't figure out what it was until intermission when I went up and stole a piece. Genius. (Is cork fire retardent?) Another genius call was to make the little old lady maids into Titania's fairies and have them sing during the performance. Hilarious. The acting, despite not totally understanding what they were saying, was fabulous. The players were really funny, and Puck was genius. They ended the play with Puck screaming at the audience in German, which was for some reason really funny, and then singing "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" in English. Actually a great ending! I loved it! Vienna has great theater, hands down.