I woke up at 5am Saturday morning and was out of the house by 5:45 to get to the train station and meet Matt and Emily for our day trip to SALZBURG! If you're unfamiliar with Salzburg, it's named for it's salt mines and was also the birthplace and home of Mozart, as well as the location where Sound of Music was filmed. Not to mention it is breathtakingly gorgeous!
I feel I need to add this as an important side note: winter came on Friday and came to stay.
Thursday was a sunny, warm 70+ degree day and Friday was 50 degrees and raining. This was the continued theme for Saturday and it looks as if there's no turning back.
We had already bought our train tickets so we thought, what the hell, we'll make the best of it! And surprisingly enough, we actually did!
(Matt eating Anker pizza for breakfast on the train...nomz.)
The train ride to Salzburg is around three hours long so we pulled into the station at 10am. Our first stop was the Hellbrunn fountains. One of the Prince Archbishops built the palace as a summer home some 400 years ago. Apparently he had quite the sense of humor, which is apparent in the fact that he had countless fountains installed, hidden in bushes or statues, which would squirt water out at his innocent guests. He even had an outdoor dinner table installed which would randomly shoot water out of the chairs! In those days, one couldn't stand up in the presence of a seated noble, so all the guests had to squirm in their seats as water shot up their asses. PERFECT.
(They awkwardly took our pictures throughout the tour... Emily was NOT pleased with the weather conditions.)
We walked through the gardens and got to see the fountains and statues. It had been pouring while we were waiting for our tour to begin, but lucky us, the rain stopped right as we entered the gardens and stayed stopped for the entirety of our visit! Usually the tour guide doesn't warn people about the fountains because you kind of know what you're getting into at the start, but thankfully he let us know when to stand back so that we didn't have to walk around for the rest of the "winter" day in soaking wet clothes. Everything mechanical in the place was solely operated by water! They even had a wooden stage filled with over a hundred little figurines who moved about to music. This thing has been in operation since the mid-1700s! WHAT, THAT'S TOO COOL.
It was also especially awesome because Belle and her friend from home were able to meet up with us there! They had taken the train into Salzburg the night before and were staying until Sunday. Psssh, paying for hostels, who does that??
(Me and Emily are always, always twins.)
After Hellbrunn we went back into the center of town, frantically searched for somewhere to eat (come on Salzburg, leave SOMETHING open on a Saturday afternoon!), and met up with our tour bus for THE SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR.
YES. WE REALLY DID A FOUR HOUR TOUR ON THE SOUND OF MUISIC.
AND YES, IT WAS GREAT.
Our tour guide was this hilarious man who was obviously doing anything he could to keep himself entertained. Matt, Emily, and I were throughly amused. The tour is only offered in English, (go figure), and the bus was completely full.
We drove around the city and he pointed out some stuff and we got out for some as well. We saw the lake behind the Trapp family house, the abbey, the bridge they danced across, and much, much more. Our final stop was a little ways out of Salzburg, in a town called Mondsee, where the church in which Maria and the Captain got married is. In reality, the actual Trapps were married in the abbey, but, as was made clear at the very beginning of the tour, the movie is a bag-o-lies but much more interesting than real life anyways.
On the way to Mondsee it started SNOWING. Not just a flake here and there, but SNOW.ING. The thermometer on the bus read 3 degrees Celsius. It felt as if we'd been catapulted into a winter wonderland, and from the warmth and safety of the bus, I really enjoyed watching it through the window. It made me a tiny bit homesick though!
Just as quick as the snow came it was gone and by the time we got to Mondsee the sun was actually kind of shining and the ground was dry.
The church was really, really beautiful, and we got to go inside and walk down the isle and pretend to get married and act like a-holes as much as we liked! It was funny though, because I've been taking this art and architecture class and this church was more interesting to me from an artistic and historic point of view than from a Sound of Music geek point of view.
(Emily and I both married Matt.)
After the church we had about a half hour of "free time" before we had to get back to the bus so we stopped at a gift shop, warmed up with some coffee at an adorable little cafe, and bought some emergency fruit (as per usual).
On the ride back to Salzburg they played the Sound of Music soundtrack and we watched some of a documentary in which "Liesel" is followed around Salzburg 40 years after the making of the movie and has over the top reactions to everything.
Once the bus dropped us off we walked through the Mirabell gardens, which is where most of the song "Do-Re-Mi" was shot. The gardens are lovely, and the rain continued to hold out on us!
Our intention had been to walk through the gardens to the Mozart Wohnhaus which is where Mozart lived from the time he was 17. Inside there's one of his pianos and a lot of his letters. Unfortunately, due to some bad tourist information booklet reading, THE HOUSE WAS CLOSED! Heart-brokenness was had by all, but Belle and her friend showed up and suggested we attend a little 45 minute Mozart Sonata concert in the basement of a church nearby. We had to get our Mozart in SOMEHOW, right?
The church was nice and warm and cozy, but the sonatas were EXTREMELY standard rep and, according to our pianist in residence, Emily, the women performing them managed to botch them anyhow. I thought it was very pleasant though and was given a chance to take a breath and let my toes defrost.
We made it to our train station about 45 minutes before the train was supposed to leave at 9pm, so we sat in the station restaurant and ate some goulash and warmed up (yet again). We also talked about what an AMAZING day we had! I can't believe just how wonderful it turned out to be. This just goes to show that life is unpredictable, and you just have to roll with what you're given. When you don't put expectations on things, sometimes life gives you even more than you could have hoped for.
The trip back to Wien was just as easy as the way in and we passed the time by reading our souvenir Sound of Music books that we bought. An English-speaker really needs to proof read these things before they go to press. Germans really seem to love their run-on sentences and pictures placed next to things that they have nothing to do with.
After a 20 hour day, I was home and snuggled up in bed by 1am to get my beauty sleep BECAUSEEEEEEEEEE.....
ON SUNDAY I WAITED IN LINE FOR SIX HOURS TO SEE NATALIE DESSAY IN OPENING NIGHT OF LA TRAVIATA AT THE STAATSOPER!
Matt, Shelby, Julia, Emily, and I got there at noon for a 7pm performance. There were only like ten people in front of us! We probably could have gotten there closer to 1 or 1:30 because of the icky weather (still butt-crack cold) and the fact that it was a Sunday, but no matter, I would have just sat around my apartment being excited for an extra hour and a half (although I would have been much, much warmer).
We ate sandwiches from the U-Bahn Anker, drank coffee and tea, and pretended to do homework and study. I finished all my concrete work for the weekend so I brought a bunch of ambiguous work like German vocab to study and music that I need to memorize the words to. My one fatal mistake was bringing my nook along as well because I ended up, for just shy of six hours straight, only reading. The plus side is that I started this really captivating, (obviously), new book and I haven't really had any time to read since I've been here so I got to extreme make up for that!
I also ran into my friend Amy Crossman, from HIGH SCHOOL. WHAT?! She is studying in London and was in Wien for three days and was also getting on line for standing room tickets. How crazy is that?!
We took turns walking to the Starbucks down the street and going inside to defrost and use the bathroom. It was like a toaster in there which was awesome, but made walking back out a total bitch.
As always, they let us into the lobby three hours before curtain, so by 4pm we were happily inside. By this point everyone had given up trying to do homework.
Because we are SUCH pros at pushing old people, we got ridiculously good parterre spots! This is what sitting around in the cold for six hours is all about!
After a typical frantic "Kebopera" dinner, we headed back to the theatre for the performance. It was BREATHTAKING. I have yet to be a huge fan of the sets or the choruses of the Vienna Opera, but Natalie Dessay blew me out of the fucking water. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about her voice, but I soon realized that I was just thrown off by the fact that she was SO DAMN EXPRESSIVE WITH IT. I have never heard someone sing like that before in my life. The tenor was also fabulous, as was the bass. It was a stellar cast. I also had never seen La Traviata in its entirety before. I sobbed through the entire half hour long death scene. I couldn't call my emotions "sad" though, I felt so deeply moved that my actual feelings were almost unidentifiable.
We're going to go back one of these nights to wait outside the stage door for Natalie. I'm not usually one for autographs, but WHOA, I can't not meet this woman.
After the opera we all went back to Matt's house where they made Milka hot chocolate.
Recipe:
Shave Milka with a cheese grater. Melt Milka in a hot water bath. Add milk. Add an entire container of cream. Add maybe a little hot water. Maybe. Drink.
I didn't partake because God only knows how ill that'd make me, but my friends happily drank their liquid chocolate bars and I was just glad to be there with everyone. And besides, one would expect nothing less than the consumption of pure melted chocolate at the end of another fabulous weekend!
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