gemutlich

Well, where did I leave off?
I went and saw Madame Butterfly. It was good, but not great. I thought the direction was weird, but the music was beautiful. I'm thinking about going to see Die Zaborflute again because it was so good. I don't know if I talked about it that much in my post, but it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. The concept for it was: Rainbows, White and Black. Which included: Rainbow, White and Blacklight. YAY!! And the set was terrific- very very ingenious. The sets moved but never took away from the show. And there was pyro. As Larry would say, it was about the spectacle.
Ok, so onto other things. I finally got my railpass! Yay! So, I can start to travel, but after some discussion with Michelle we decided to wait till next weekend because mid-terms start on Tues. So next weekend I will finally get to go new places.
However, I'm not complaining about being in Vienna. I had a fabulous week here, as usual. Yesterday after getting out of class I walked around the city for 3 hours listening to The Beatles on my ipod. I love just walking around here. The buildings are beautiful, you almost always find new places, and it's a really easy way to learn about the city. So, I guess it's a really boring thing to post a blog about, but walking around is fun. And you get to people watch. And Vienna has some crazy people. For instance, mullets, unicycles, and handlebar mustaches are all very common in Vienna.
I went home and was down by the river when I got a call from Michelle, and we went to an art opening. It was so much fun!! I love that after walking around surrounded by historic buildings and places, I can go to an art show and see totally new art. The show was by Raymond Pettibon, who is an american and does Cartoon art. I love love love cartoon art, so this show was amazing to me. I love going to museums and seeing old paintings that you've never seen in real life before, but it's also great to go see something that's completely new to you. The art show was really interesting though, and very different from all the other museums I've been to.
After the show we were both tired and hungry, so we made our way home to eat pasta and watch the office. It was a wonderful day.


I've become accustomed to Vienna parks to the point where I actually like them. At first I wasn't a fan because I'm used to more "informal" parks. Parks here don't have playgrounds, you have to go to seperate places with playgrounds, and they have pretty landscaping, sculptures, and paths though them, with open spaces of grass that people lay on. Students flock to these areas to study. It's like a giant, open-air library. It was weird at first, but I like it now.


The Palm/Butterfly house.

Memorial sculptures. There was a building on this spot with lots of people hiding out in it that got bombed and they died.



Notice the police officer in the down-left corner? How am I supposed to take them seriously with those berrets?
Down by the river. There are swans everywhere.
The river at sunset




Me and Michelle after the show. The MQ (Museum Quartier) has these weird red things everywhere outside that you can sit on, or in, or climb on or whatever you want.
Organ at the circus. We took the senic route home and walked by the circus. We can't afford to go, but if you walk around the back you can watch the clowns practicing before they go onstage. It's almost like going!

The Rathaus with the circus in front of it.


They wouldn't let us take pictures at the art show! The place was beautiful though, it was an old building that had been remodled to look more modern, and the space it was in was huge with these two balconies on the side that you could go up on and view the show from above. There was also two huge murals in the middle of the room. This guy does the album art for Black Flag, by the way, if anyone knows them. Some of his stuff was really weird, but some of it was really good. He works mostly in ink, watercolor and marker, which are my favorite mediums. But, the layout of the show had way too many things, and it was a little overwhelming. Plus, some of them were up so high you couldn't see them.

The train and sufer section (the show was divided up into sections based on what the drawings were of, everything from sufers to the fall of the berlin wall) was my favorite because they had headphones there, so you could listen to music meant to go with the artwork. It was really cool. I love it when there's fitting music to go with a situation. Later when we were by the Rathaus I remembered when you could walk around the block and hear opera music. It just fit so well.
The baseball section was my favorite, but they didn't put any of my favorite pictures on the CD. I just realized I never explained how I got these pictures, they wouldn't let you take pictures, but I did manage to snag a "Press Images" CD at the door.