• 3 plane trips (on 6 flights)
• 4 bus rides between cities
• 2 music schools visited
• 6 composition professors met
• 5 different places I've spent the night
• 11 cities visited, if you include the airports
• 1 ridiculous travel blunder (it turns out there are Bloomingtons in both IN and IL! I'm sure you're as incredulous as I.)
• x showers taken (x = the number of members in the musical group Aphex Twin, multiplied by three, minus one)
• 2 bowls of ice cream (far, far below my average)
Fortunately this week has also included:
• 1 opera in Vienna (Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov)
• 1 concert in Boston (Student Composers' Concert)
• Many enjoyable visits with old friends & new friends
• Many good meals
• Reading Bel Canto, a heartwrenchingly good book by Ann Patchett
• Even some composing (on the bus)
It's been great to make these trips, and be making progress on my plans for grad school next year, but I am so glad that the next few weeks consist only of visiting with family & friends. I need some time to relax! (Of course, I'll also be working on finishing up three compositions. You know how I am...)
My first three months in Vienna were great, such a rich and challenging time of new experiences! Lessons with Chaya have been fabulous, always stimulating and insightful, and I feel that I'm making some good progress towards becoming a better composer. It's been a lot of re-evaluation of the compositional process, rethinking where ideas come from, how to develop them, and what sort of concepts I'm trying to express through music. It's rather like learning how to paint with oils when I've been doing watercolor all my life - so my newest efforts are still sort of "learning pieces."
So what is it like to live in Austria? Those of you who have lived in foreign countries know that it takes months to get used to how things are different, and it takes years to start to really understand the culture. When you're a tourist visiting a new country for a week, it's enough to visit museums, go to the opera, take pictures, learn to say "Gruss Gott", sample the Austrian dishes and the Sacher torte (as pictured above). But there's something quite different about actually living there, and I didn't fully realize this before. Rosalind and I have done many of the tourist activities — and I highly recommend them all, especially those glazed in chocolate — and look forward to doing many more on the return trip, as Vienna is a place where cultural attractions are both numerous and thriving, frequented by locals and tourists alike. The thing is, there's so much more that we would like to do, since we have this amazing opportunity of living on a different continent.
We would like to become fluent enough in German that we can readily converse with shopkeepers, students, families in our neighborhood and fellow concertgoers. We'd like to learn more about modern European thought, especially in the areas of politics and environmental policy. We'd like to know how people feel about the euro, the Olympics, and the blogosphere. I'm now glad to be quite aware of what young student composers and well-known Austrian composers are writing, and would also love to find out what's new in visual art and dance, what isn't old enough to be in a museum yet. Essentially, I hope that we end up interacting with Austrian people and culture on something deeper than a superficial level. I think that we've made a decent start, and will learn better how to do that during the next six months.
I'll leave you with some impressions of Christmas in Vienna:
~ WEIHNACHT IN WIEN ~
Advent is a big season in Austria. The city happily proclaims Christmas cheer far and wide. (As a Unitarian Universalist myself, I'm happy to report that other traditions are also openly celebrated during this time, as there was a large menorah up during Hanukkah, just a block away from Stephansdom.) Two dozen Weihnachtsmärkte pop up around the city, elaborate Christmas markets with vendors selling handmade art, clothing, jewelry, ornaments, and ocarinas. The seasonal drinks are glühwein and an assortment of punches - all cheerfully alcoholic, except for the gummi bear punch. (You know, for the kids!) Christmas pastries are in abundance as well - such as krapfen, an imposing hunk of deep-fried dough spread with jam or sprinkled with powdered sugar. Cotton candy is also available, and that segues nicely into the "non-food" section:
SCHAUMROLLE.
Now, Vienna is famous for its pastries, and rightfully so. I have enjoyed delicious confections at many a coffee shop and restaurant, including the best Tiramisu of my life. Likewise, I've found Austrian traditional cuisine to be quite tasty, even in unassuming dishes like Krautfleckerl (egg noodles with cabbage) or picked salads. But Vienna is a large city, large enough to contain some factories, and at one of these (or perhaps in Taiwan) they manufacture the SCHAUMROLLE. Have you ever taken a large bite of a cupcake, only to find that a large piece of the paper wrapped seemed to find its way into your mouth as well? Have you ever bit into a Ho-Ho and taken part of the light cardboard tray with it? Keep these delightful thoughts in mind for another moment. Have you ever opened up a Twinkie to examine the strange white substance within? No, it is not sugar - it's one of these mysteries of the modern world, a "food substance" which is 0% natural and 100% artificial.
Now, imagine a combination of these charming elements - an outside of stiff cardboard masquerading as pastry, and an inside of "white" flavored filling. Remember that they're made by a factory - untouched by human hands. You've got yourself a SCHAUMROLLE. But can you tell me this - why on earth do the Viennese sell (and presumably buy, and - I shudder to think - EAT) such monstrosities? In regular and jumbo sizes?
Perhaps the answer lies in this book. [No Problem with Santa Claus!] Merry Christmas, everyone!
