Tuesday 2 September, 2008
Just a quick update of what I've been up to, as I'm about to fall asleep. It's not too late here, but I didn't sleep to well last night and I've had a long day.
Saturday is the day of the Flohmarkt, the enormous weekly flee market where you can buy almost anything. I got a 5-cd set from a pianist that I like for 12 euros (I probably should have haggled a bit, but I wasn't sure how accepted that was). More interesting than the actual flee market though, was the aftermath: At 6pm, everyone closed up shop, picked up their tents and left, but many sellers left a TON of junk that they just didn't feel like taking back home with them. This must happen every week, because at 6:00pm SWARMS of people came in and started grabbing whatever they could find - clothes, shoes, printers, glassware, furniture, you name it. It was quite a sight to behold. We should make sure to get there right at 6 next week to get the pick of the litter. Here's some before and after shots (the second is my roomate Sarah collecting some hangers for our apartment left behind).
Also on Saturday, several of my friends and I went on the IES bus tour around the city. We got to go to some areas of the city that we wouldn't otherwise have seen, especially the Wienerwald (the Vienna woods) which surround the city to the South, West and North. This is the place where Beethoven found much of his inspiration. We stopped on a hilltop which looks over the entire city beautifully. My pictures really don't do too much justice, but here's one:
Here's the Hundertwasserhaus, an incredible apartment building:
and here's the Upper Belvadier, a palace right outside the inner city:
That night, i ended up heading back to the Rathaus filmfest to catch an excellent performance of the Berlin Philharmonic with Rattle conducting and Stephen Hough performing in the the Rachmaninoff Variations on a Theme of Paganini. (I also had some delicious chineese food there - I couldn't stop thinking of My Cousin Vinnie when they pull into the town and Marissa Tomei asks "Do you think they've got good Chinese here?")
On Sunday, My roommates and I headed out to the Alte Donau, a section of the Danube river with lots of outdoor activities (swimming, boating, tennis, volleyball....). It was a beautiful day to be outside and it was a great place to go to relax and get away for the afternoon. It did indicate a little bit about the majority of the people who went there that there was a Defibrillator near to where we parked ourselves on the shore).
Yesterday, I just went to class and practiced. I got some good Gelato and realized that the guy didn't give me enough change back, probably because he thought that I was a stupid American, and told him what's what in German.
Today I had my first lesson with my new teacher. She was fantastic and it went really well. I won't bore you with all of the details about what we worked on, but I really enjoyed it a lot and I'm looking forward to doing some great work throughout the semester.
Now it's 1 and I need to get some sleep. Bis Bald ('till soon)
