Vienna, a music lovers dream come true

This weekend me and my new friend Amy (from OSU) went to Vienna, Austria. It has to be one of my new favorite places. I know I saw that about every place I go, but it was absolutely wonderful there. We traveled by sleeper train from Mannheim all the way to Vienna. It was glorious being able to sleep on a train for once and for a whole 6 hours. We had the whole compartment to ourselves and the seats folded down to make almost a twin size bed. I got better sleep on a train that I'd had all week! We got into Vienna at 6:40am and thinking we'd be able to find a tourist information booth in the train station we began to wander....but we didn't. So we just wandered around until things opened up. In Stephensplatz we saw the filthiest cathedral I'd ever seen...the Stephansdom (the cathedral where Mozart's funeral was held). We wandered around until we found Mozart's house (the one he lived in when he wrote his Requiem). Unfortunately it wasn't open yet so we had to wander around for a while. We found a few more interesting cathedrals and things to walk around before things began opening up, namely the Vienna State Opera House. We got a student discounts for an English tour. It was beautiful. Built in 1861 the entry hall and front intermission room are still well preserved. The actual theater and seating area was rebuilt after WWII and the stage was built on a hydraulic system so they could raise the orchestra pit to the level of the stage or 20 feet below for a bigger orchestra. A ticket for a box seat in the Opera House during the Opera Bowl runs for 20,000 Euro because you have to buy the whole box out plus the entrance ticket but you have to purchase the food and wine separately....crazy!
After we toured the State Opera House we finally found a tourist center where we finally figured out what was available as far as shows go for the night. The options were pretty slim: an outdoor Operetta that was available but because it was outside the chance of it getting canceled without getting money back were pretty large. I was really sad to discover that Mozart's Don Giovanni was opening the weekend after we were there. Other options included sketchy sounding shows that advertised way too much music/song/dance for the price and were on brightly colored pamphlets. We finally discovered that Mozart's Requiem was being performed in St. Karl's Cathedral for a reasonable price. We immediately hopped on the tickets and gained a map of the city so we could find our way around. On our way back to Mozart's house we ate at an outdoor cafe and I had the largest schnitzel I'd ever had. It was made with turkey instead of pork and it was very very delicious.
By this time Mozart's house was open and we could go tour it. We payed for a tour and received an audio tour radio type thing that you could type in the number on the wall and then listen to the significance of the pictures or the room. I learned some interesting things like Mozart was an avid Freemason. Mozart could write in English, Latin, and German! Mozart's Requiem was commissioned by Graf Franz von Walsegg who wanted to pass the Requiem off as his own and use at his late wife's memorial. The whole three story apartment building had been transformed into a museum and was all very modern...kind of on the weird side. Being in his house brought back many memories of composer parties at my old piano teacher's house.
We could finally check into our Hostel which was the most hostel like hostel I've stayed in. The office was barely in the doorway of the building. The receptionist was an Asian/German who spoke English, but was not understandable. She began drawing all over a map and telling us things we didn't understand and pointed to a bag of sheets and set us out the door...we were very confused. According to the map our actual hostel was down the street in building 8...but we couldn't find building 8. We wandered up and down until we found building 10 and then counted down two doors. We stood before 2 very large ornately decorated doors, amazingly the keys worked. After walking through the doors we were in a grand hallway leading to a courtyard. To the right was a dark stairwell and the only place to go, so we went up the stairs to another door that worked with the keys. Inside was a windy hallway full of mirrors and lockers. We found our actual room and it had 2 bunk beds and well that was it. The bathroom had no door and the toilet room had a sink without soap or towels. But the beds were comfortable and the other two beds weren't filled thankfully so it was just me and Amy. We locked our stuff up in one of the lockers and headed back out into the city.
We hopped on the Metro and went to Schonbrunn Palace a very large very yellow palace that has large beautiful gardens and winding staircases that rival the staircases from Beauty and the Beast. We hopped back on the metro and found a park that holds many monuments for the composers that made their lives in Vienna. We saw Schubert, Strauss and Brahms. A block down the street in his own grassy area Beethoven had a large monument.
The sun began sinking further in the sky and we began to make our way towards St. Karl's Cathedral for the Requiem concert. Once we found it we ate at another cafe and got in line to get in. The cathedral was really ornate, but under reservation work so parts were covered with scaffolding. The concert was definitely the highlight of my trip. The soprano soloist had a voice that was perfectly pure, but rich at the same time. She had so much control over her voice I was super jealous. The orchestra was a bit weak, but what they lacked, the choir made up for three-fold.
My one mishap of the trip (because every trip has to have one) was deciding to turn my phone off before the concert. I had called in to my director for check-in before the concert began and decided it would be rude to leave it on during the concert even though no-one ever calls me. Well the thing is, with German phones you have to have a pin number to turn your phone back on due to a lock on the sim card. If you mess up your sim pin 3 times you then have to punch in your super pin and after 5 failed attempts your phone permanently locks. Well, thinking I had my pin with me I didn't think it was a big deal to turn my phone off...oops it wasn't in my bag, and it wasn't back at Ramstein. I had planned on using my phone as the alarm to wake us up in the morning so we wouldn't miss doing more activities in Vienna before our train...but that was a no-go. The other problem...Amy doesn't have a phone. Thankfully she is a light morning sleeper and woke up at half hour intervals after 6am to make sure we were up in time.
The next morning after re-packing our backpacks we headed to the park containing Mozart's memorial statue....it was the most beautiful park I'd ever been too. The sun was shining through the trees, the pond was shimmery, and the flowers were well groomed. We turned a corner and saw the most glorious sight my eyes had beheld in a while....a grassy area with a large treble cleff sign made with flowers stretched out before Mozart's statue. Mozart himself stood atop an ornately decorated pedestal full of angels and scenes from Don Juan. The sun was shining on him just right for a while I could almost hear angels singing down on the statue. Amy and I being the complete music geeks that we are, sat in pure bliss just looking at Mozart and the park for over a half hour before a group of Asian tourists came through and we decided it was time to find some breakfast and get on the train.
We found a cute cafe with a beautiful friendly waitress for breakfast. I ordered a bowl of yogurt and fruit with a croissant and orange juice. The juice was freshly squeezed and completely delicious. The yogurt was plain straight yogurt, no sugar added, so the fruit helped sweeten it up. We boarded our train at 10:40am as scheduled and the train left the station maybe a minute late. The train was scheduled to get us back in Frankfurt by 7:30pm. Well at each station/stop the train was getting increasingly more delayed for who knows what reason. A typical ICE train is able to run smoothly at 200km/h...this train was going 170km/h tops and would slow to 70km/h long before we would pull into a station. By the time we got in to Frankfurt we were nearly 40 minutes behind schedule and had missed our connecting train that was supposed to leave at 7:55. I began to go into full panic mode seeing as I was the only one of the two of us with a phone, and well my phone was locked an incapable of making anything but emergency calls. And even if we could figure out a pay phone the only place I had saved the phone numbers of my Project Coordinator or my Director in my phone. By some luck we were able to find seats on an ICE train that would take us right to K-town that left in an hour from the time we got into the station. From K-town we were easily able to take a train back to Landstuhl and we took a taxi home.
It was a weekend full of fun adventures. One of my favorite things about Vienna was how old all the buildings were. Like there would be a building built in the 1600s and it would have these fancy statues holding up the doorway and it was just a pawn shop or a grocery mart now...no big deal. I thought it was funny, but also very cool. Comparing the Meeker Mansion (the oldest thing we have in Puyallup...built after 1900) to these buildings is just ridiculous!

Pictures in order: 1. Me in front of the Stephensdom 2. The Vienna State Opera House 3. the lobby of the Opera House 4. the view from the stage out onto all the box seats in the Opera House 5. the outside of Mozart's house 6. the courtyard stairway where Mozart's entrance door was, his is apartment below 7. my giant schnitzel 8. Amy and I at Schonbrunn Palace 9. me and Beethoven making serious faces 10. Amy and I with Brahms 11. St. Karl's Cathedral where we heard Mozart's Requiem 12. The inside of St. Karls 13. the treble cleff and Mozart 14. Me loving Mozart 15. My Austiran breakfast 16. the ornate statues holding up random doorways