Farewell

It has been one heck of a month. It’s almost weird to be back in Vienna—coming back I felt like we were from Vienna and had just traveled to all these other cities and now we were back home, but that’s not even close to reality. Which means it’s super weird to think that I’ll be back in the US like… technically today. While I am so ready to sleep in my own bed again, I’m seriously going to miss a lot of things. These include but are not limited to: tax being included in labeled prices so you actually know how much you’re gonna pay when you get to the register, the Viennese U-Bahn (my favorite transit system), the abundance of schnitzel (so delicious), seeing awesome buildings everywhere, literally never being carded, listening to awesome music almost every night, and so many other things that I can’t remember right now.

I seriously can’t believe how much I’ve learned in this class—about music, about history, even a little bit of German (links=left, rechts=right, a few other words and phrases like “please” and “thank you”… it’s not super impressive sounding, I know, but hey it’s more than I knew before). I’m like a coat-check pro now, too, plus I discovered that I really like paying with coins, so maybe when I’m back in the US I can be that person who holds up cash register lines by paying with exact change. Also, I realize how silly it is that I don’t know another language—I think at least 70% of the people I interacted with spoke at least passable English (c’mon US school system, get with the program). In any case, our last couple of days in Europe have been pretty representative of our time here. Last night… or I guess the night before last… we went to a concert at the Musikverein (Capella Andrea Barka), and it was amazing. Double piano amazing! No, seriously, there were two pianists playing two pianos at once, and it was incredible. They played Bach. Now, watching the documentaries way at the beginning of this course, I didn’t really love Bach’s music… but holy cow have my opinions changed. Double piano is now my new favorite kind of classical music. There were so many notes flying around but somehow it all made sense anyway and came together in this incredible way that I’m not skilled enough to describe here, but just… wow. After intermission there was only one piano onstage, but even after experiencing double piano, the soloist still managed to amaze me. Up until this point I tended to like violin solos better than piano solos, but, well, that’s not true anymore.

Musikverein (we got to sit this time!)

Tower of Babel

Sarcophagi

Today we went to the State Art History Museum and saw some pretty awesome pieces (including Rembrandts!). This museum also had a pretty big exhibit on ancient Egypt, which I absolutely adored. After the museum my little group ate (twice), and I got to experience Mozartcoffee—espresso+hot chocolate+mozartliqueur+a ton of whipped cream (it was really good). While discussing where to go for cake, we started accidently calling the Beethoven café “Mozart café” (because we went to the café frequented by Mozart in Salzburg) and it suddenly hit me how totally insane this experience has been. Who can say they’ve been to cafes that Mozart and Beethoven went to? I wouldn’t be surprised if people think I’m half-lying when I talk about the incredible things I’ve gotten to do on this trip. Man, I’m so lucky. I’ll never forget this class.

Mozartcoffee with cake!