I am writing this on my last morning in Vienna. In 45 minutes I will be getting into a taxi headed back to the airport for a dreaded 17 hour flight. There isn’t a whole lot to report on for this last week. Mostly I rested and got over my sickness and studied for finals. Overall I think my finals went well. My German final was super relaxed and not like any other final I’ve ever had before. Our teacher even let us ask some questions and told us what some words meant! My Music History final was a lot more tough. I didn’t feel too great about it because there was so much material covered and it was all way over my head. My teacher gave me some really good comments on my other assignments this term though so I am sure that overall it will be fine. Last night we had a concert that all of the music students had to play in and I had a violin solo. I think the concert went really well and it was a lot of fun visiting with everyone after the concert for the last time. I think this was the first time that I was sad I’m leaving. It was hard saying good bye to my teachers and site directors. They were all really emotional and sad to see us leaving. Well I need to finish getting my stuff together now. I am excited to get home. My boyfriend will be picking me up from the airport and then the next day I’m off to a leadership conference where I’m being hopeful that I can do laundry and get sleep as well… I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their trip!

I have been noticing some things around Vienna that would never happen the same way in the US. For instance they do road work with traffic still flowing by basically figuring out what to do and where to go on it’s own without any flaggers or detours or anything. They have also been doing a lot of work on and near the sidewalks and they will have people working giant machinery while pedestrians walk right beside it and it isn’t blocked off at all. Giant CAT claws will swing right by your head and machines will be lifting things up in the air and they just keep letting people walk through while this is happening and most of the workers don’t wear helmets or protective gear of any sort. This has been pretty shocking to me since in the US we constantly see road work areas barricaded off and people showing you exactly where you can and can’t go, while here it seems like they basically let people figure it out on their own.

This week I have been a lot more focused on violin and classes as the program is nearing its end so I need to prepare for finals and a concert I have to perform in. A couple of days ago my German teacher took us on an excursion to an apartment in Heiligenstadt that Beethoven lived in. While he was living in this apartment he finished his 2nd symphony and some piano sonatas and variations.

View from Beethoven’s window

Beethoven’s apartment

After we left Beethoven’s house we went to a cute restaurant and got some wiener schnitzel!

We ended our day by going to the tree circle of life in the Vienna woods. It is a big circle made up of a bunch of different types of trees. We all walked around and found the trees that corresponded with our birth date and they have a plaque in front of the trees that talk about the characteristics of people who were born then. My tree, the kiefer, is in this picture.

After we left the tree circle we walked on a long trail through the Vienna woods that led back into the town where we could get on a streetcar to get back home. Also, last week we went inside the Votivkirche (Votive Church) but I forget to include a picture of it then!

Those were the most significant things that happened since my last post. Unfortunately I have become sick so I missed classes yesterday and today I am actually supposed to be in Salzburg right today and tomorrow but I ended up staying home. My site director didn’t think it made any sense for me to go if I would just be miserable and she said that being surrounded by people and walking long distances in the sun would only make me feel worse and I think she is definitely right. Staying behind was a really hard decision because I so badly wanted to be there, but when I woke up this morning I didn’t even feel like going to the subway station let alone on a train for 3 1/2 hours followed by touring places all day long. When I went to the store today to get some tea and soup I realized I had made the right decision because the store is very close to where I live and when I got back I was absolutely exhausted and my throat was bothering me and I kept coughing really badly so there’s no way I could have had a good time there. It is better that I rest and heal before my finals and my concert!

So much has happened this week! Where to begin! I think it is really interesting that a lot of stuff in Vienna runs on the honor system. For instance for all of the public transportation here you just get on and off without ever having to show anyone your ticket and they trust that you have one. I’ve been told that every once in a while someone will be there to make sure you have a ticket, but I have yet to have this happen. They also have newspapers all over the sidewalks in these bags with a place for you to put the money for the paper, but there is nothing to stop people from taking the paper without paying for it. And A LOT of shops have merchandise outside of the store on the sidewalk for people to look at as they are walking by. This is really strange to me because of how many times I have been warned about protecting my stuff here so that I am not pick pocketed. Even the ATMs warn you to make sure no one is watching you enter in your pin so I find it really strange that somewhere that obviously has a lot of thievery is so trusting that people will pay for things.

In this last week I had my first violin lesson, which took place inside a palace!

Schonbrunn Palace

After my lesson my instructor gave me and the other 3 students in my program free tickets to the concert he was conducting that night! The tickets were worth 65 Euro (or about $85) each!The concert was really awesome and a lot of fun.

The next day I went to the Tiergarten Zoo. The zoo here is the world’s oldest zoo and has been voted the best zoo in Europe. I really love zoos so I had a great time spending the day there. The zoo is really massive and has lots of animals that I had never seen before, like pandas and koalas 🙂

Then Last Sunday my roommate and I went to the Imperial Palace to see a series of exhibits there: the Imperial silver collection, the Sisi Museum, and the Imperial Apartments. We had such an awesome time there. We spent over 2 hours alone looking at the dishes used by the inhabitants of the palace. There were so many different collections of dinnerware for every type of situation. Unfortunately this was the only part of the exhibit that we were allowed to take pictures of so I don’t have any pictures of the Imperial Apartments to share.

Table runner and center pieces

While we were there we decided to take a break from looking through the museums so we sat in the cafe and I got Eis Schokolade! Yummy!

I have mostly just had classes in between now and then, but today we went on an excursion with our German teacher and she showed us the main university in Vienna and taught us about the school system here. Our classes are not actually at the school so we had yet to see it. It’s actually weird and cool because our classes are in an apartment, which means we have a bathroom and kitchen in our classroom, but it comes in handy for making lunch in between classes. She also took us to a house that Beethoven lived in for 8 years where he composed several symphonies and to a cafe in the Museumsquartier.

Basically everything has been going well here except for one mishap the other day. I tried to get cash from an atm at a subway station on my way home and the atm confiscated my credit card! It told me to wait a moment while it processed my transaction, and then a second later another message popped up saying that it was retaining my card for my security. This became a frustrating experience and caused me to be scared of using the atms here. I still don’t even know why it kept my card. I tried calling the number on the atm but it was out of service and I couldn’t call the bank that owns the atm because it didn’t have the bank’s name on it. When I finally figured out the correct person to get in contact with (after attempting to have several conversations with people who spoke no English), they told me there is no way for me to get my card back from them and that instead they will eventually mail it back to my bank in the US. I called my bank and it seemed that everyone who worked there had a different idea of what they can and cannot do. I was told that they can, can’t, and then can again, ship me a card internationally to replace the card that was confiscated. At the point when they told me they couldn’t send me a card here they said they could overnight a new card to my boyfriend’s address in the US so I had them to that and now apparently there are also two cards on their way to me here in Vienna! So much confusion.

Now that I have been in Vienna a little longer I have definitely been able to more fully adjust to life here. Before it seemed like most everything was a challenge, but now most daily things are not much of a problem at all. Between the little German I have now learned and the little English some people speak, I am able to communicate well enough with most people to accomplish what I need to. My classes are very exhausting as there is so much information given! Since there are only four people in my classes it takes much more focus and understanding of the material to make it through each class. My teachers are understanding though and for the most part try to accommodate us by making the work load reasonable. This last weekend all of us in the music program went to my site director’s house out in the countryside. It was so nice getting away from the city for a while and enjoying nice music and conversation in the garden. She showed us around her village and we saw a simple castle and some cool art made by a friend of hers that was inside the castle.

Violins made out of scrap metal!

We also went on another excursion with our music history teacher and saw Belvedere Palace, Hotel Beethoven, and some buildings designed by architect Otto Wagner.

Belvedere Palace

Classes, excursions, and homework have taken up a lot of my time and all of my energy so I have not done too much outside of those things. Besides that I mostly hang out with my roommate (who is now a great friend), catch family up on my adventures, and find good places to eat! I found another bakery with tasty pastries 🙂 And as I am an avid pizza lover I am more than satisfied with the pizza here!

As I have now been in Vienna for a week, I am becoming much more adjusted to my new temporary home.

I am blessed to have been paired with such a wonderful roommate. Her and I have spent the majority of our time together exploring shops and restaurants while getting to know each other better. It is so wonderful to have someone to share this experience with who is always there at the end of every exhausting day. We have found a really great bakery just down the street from our residence hall. We went there for our first time this morning and are sure we will be frequent customers! We got topfenstrudel and hot chocolate! Yummy!

We learned that topfenstrudel is a treat that is special to Vienna.

My teachers and site director are also very friendly and resourceful so I have been enjoying being around such wonderful people. There are only four students in my program so we have very small classes and it enables us to cover a lot of material in class. My music history teacher took my small group of four on a tour of the first district our first weekend here. We saw so many beautiful buildings that I never could have even imagined existed.

I had a little surprise when I opened my violin case and discovered that my sound post had fallen out of place, but this allowed me to figure out the public transportation system quickly as I had to get to a violin maker’s shop to get it fixed. Since then I have met my private violin teacher and he is basically a celebrity around here. He is a very respectable guy who I know I will be able to learn a tremendous amount from and he is an excellent resource as well. As soon as I met him he offered me a free ticket to an orchestra concert he is conducting! I have been having a great time exploring the city, looking in shops, and finding restaurants with my roommate though we have had our share of difficulties adapting. After my first couple of days it seemed as though everything I tried to do was a challenge. Being that I came here not knowing any German there was a definite language barrier. Prior to coming here I never could have imagined just how many daily tasks I would have difficulty with. Normally simple things like doing laundry, cooking, making copies, and getting a grocery cart suddenly become a great challenge when instructions are written in a language you do not understand and the only people around to request assistance of do not understand your language. Many people I have run into don’t speak any English at all. My first morning here I was trying to find the place I was supposed to be meeting my site director at and I didn’t have a phone that worked here and I couldn’t find anyone who spoke English who could give me directions. Since then I have experienced many similar occurrences. When my roommate and I first went to the grocery store we couldn’t figure out how to get the grocery carts loose. There was a chain that connected them all and we couldn’t get it loose so we gave up because we were really embarrassed standing there trying to get a cart, knowing that there is something simple not known to us that everyone else there knew. Instead we were forced to carry everything in our arms so we were walking around with our arms full of groceries and everyone was looking at us funny. Later on we asked one of our teachers what the trick is to the carts and learned that you are supposed to stick a euro in a slot on the carts and then it is released and when you re-connect the cart after you finish shopping, the euro is returned to you. This has definitely been a huge learning experience and I feel much more informed about how things work now than when I first got here, but I know I still have a lot more to learn.

Reina