Of Music in Vienna

Looking back on Vienna (the last stop on my Eurotrip this past April), I think I will always put it as one of my biggest regrets. Forgetting that I was going to Austria, I did not plan anything in advance in anticipation of it, even though in the back of my head, it occurred to me that the city was the mecca of classical music and opera and that I should probably try to see some sort of show (especially when standing room tickets at the opera house and concert halls were only 5 euros). Alas, this wonderful thought did not occur to me until I was riding on the train to Vienna and thinking, "Oh wait, Vienna was my contribution to this part of the trip, where should we go?" That's what happens when you get trapped into the complacency that comes with being mellow and letting other people lead you around.


Vienna - 2 days

So what did happen in Vienna, besides the marathon that was going on as we were within the city that weekend, were 4 Americans stumbling around like zombies trying to enjoy the city but in actuality, just wanting to lay down and sleep for 100 years. At this point, after having been to 5 other countries this month alone, I was mentally tired and was not in the right state to thoroughly enjoy such a beautiful city.

Yet, what did hit me was how grand and beautiful the city center was. I can go on record to say that Vienna has one of the most beautiful city centers that I have ever seen. The road around that area were lined with trees and it was filled with public parks that were blooming with flowers, trees, and the occasional monument to a famous composer (I only saw three when we were there but trying to find them is like a scavenger hunt, they are scattered all through the city).


Monument to Mozart, who was buried in an unmarked grave outside of the city (which I regret not going to, Beethoven and countless other composers are buried nearby there too!)

The weekend we were there, there was a chance to go into one palace, we picked the Hofburg Imperial Palace which was built with a mixture of Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical styles. Walking within the royal apartments, I was subtly reminded of Versailles but a more Neoclassical, simpler version that did not contain as much gold. Sadly, the royal apartments was the only place we went into since every component of the Hofburg had a separate entrance fee (and they don't even let you take pictures!)



Another educational experience was our tour of the Burgtheatre, built by Empress Marie Theresa (mother of Marie Antoinette) in the 1700's and filled with paintings from Gustave Klimt. You cannot help but feel like royalty when you walk up the more than 200 year old entrance hall, the grandeur of everything and being able to pretend that you were seeing a play there does help you feel like a million dollars. I even sat in a box for the first time in my life, my next goal is being able to afford to sit in a box to see a show. One of these days...


Come right in your highness...

Of course, a trip to Vienna would not be complete without trying the coffee. And despite the fact that I was not able to hear any classical music in one of the grand concert halls, I did hear a pianist during our afternoon coffee break play Leonard Bernstein "I Feel Pretty" while having a wonderful cappuccino. So it was not a complete loss. Yet, just walking around the city and listening to everything gave me a taste as to why so many famous composers wrote their best pieces here. The whole city is filled with music, I could hear it from the festivals that were going on in front of the Rathaus to the music from the street players beside the Danube Canal (the Danube River is located outside of the city), to just the chattering of people sitting in the park. It was not a symphony played with a full orchestra but it was musical nevertheless.


Eiskaffee, coffee with vanilla ice cream and my favorite thing about Austria.

Vienna, the photo album

Of Up!

Now, here is another conundrum about living across the pond.

Why is it that while America is the land that gave birth to Hollywood and thus, the first movie stars and celebrities, and where a majority of films and film companies originate, movies are so much more expensive over there than in Britain. I went to the local electronics store and saw a two disk special edition of Sweeney Todd priced at 10 pounds! That's 15 dollars! Wanna know how much that goes for on Amazon.com $22.99, retail price $34.99. In what world does that make sense?

Of course, that's just one example, I'm not counting the myriad of new releases that were all priced at 5 pounds. And at that point, I cursed US Region 1 DVD players.

Another thing that's cheaper in the UK, Ipods. And I am sure that Apple is not even remotely British. But that's another issue.

Yet, what does make me sad about being in the UK is missing the release of movies, since - "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" aside, the US tends to get first dibs on movie release dates. I will be missing the premiere of "Up" while I'm here and when I go back to California, guess what's going to get its first worldwide release in London? "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince." Like the new "Wolverine" movie, this sucks.

And now, to alleviate the pain, the new trailer of Pixar's "Up," which opened the Cannes Film Festival. At least some film juries take animated pictures seriously, ie: no one in the Academy, whom I will never forgive for snubbing "Wall-E" in the Best Picture nomination. But again, that's another story.

Of the Nature Boy

There was a boy...A very strange enchanted boy

19th century King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The tour guides said he was "eccentric." We think he just was not ready to be King of Bavaria which is why he chose to retreat into a world of fairy tales and music.

They say he wandered very far...Very far...

Hohenschwengau, located next to the Bavarian Alps and the nearby town of Fussen (where we stayed), and the summer palace of the Bavarian Royal Family. Yet, Ludwig was not satisfied and sought to build his own dream world. It was in Hohenschwengau where he retreated to oversee the construction of his magnum opus.

Over land and sea...

You cannot take pictures inside the castle except for the view out of the windows. And what a view it was. If you could wake up every day and see such a sight from your window, anyone would feel like royalty. You can see my pink camera floating on top of the lake.

A little shy, and sad of eye...But very wise was he...

Neuschwanstein castle, Ludwig's legacy and fantasy come true. It was the unfinished product of personal funds, 14 years worth of work, and of dreams. Today, it's one of the most visited places in Germany and the model for Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. It also has a cave (complete with waterfall) within one of its many rooms and a large concert room for Richard Wagner, Ludwig's close friend and favorite composer. Like the inside of Hohenschwengau, you can only enter the castle via a tour, which you buy tickets for at the foot of the mountain. But it was well worth it just for the panoramic view of the Bavarian countryside, the mountains, and the image of the quintessential fantasy castle come to life.

And then one day
One magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things...
Fools and kings...
This he said to me...

Sadly, after a mere 100 days within the castle, Ludwig was declared mentally insane and overthrown. 3 days later, his body was found floating in Starnberger Lake, a sign that the world is not kind to dreamers...

Despite his tragic and untimely death, for 100 days, Ludwig got to do what so many of us can only dream of someday doing: live in his perfect, fantasy world. That is some consolation.


"The greatest thing, you'll ever learn, is just to love
And be loved, in return" - Eden Ahbez, "Nature Boy"

Fussen, the photo album

Of Wow in Switzerland

Wow, that's all I could really say about Switzerland...just wow. The amazing part was, I did not expect it to be as breath taking as it was. I was just speechless when I set foot out of the train station and before me was Lake Lucerne and the freakin' Alps! Imagine waking up to this every morning:


Lucerne. Time spent: 2 days.

Thinking about Switzerland, I always imagined things like chocolate, rolling hillsides, and yodeling. There wasn't much yodeling but there were a lot of green hills, farm animals, and beautiful, beautiful scenery. Lucerne was that perfect size between metropolitan city and small town. There were just enough cars and shops to give it life but not too big that it was stifling. We spent the better part of the day just walking by the lakeside and looking out at the waters. I found myself taking pictures of the same thing over and over again since every time I thought I had a good view of the lake and the mountains, I got an even better one a couple of yards up.



Of course, the downside with Lucerne was the hefty pricetag. Since the Swiss Franc was equal in value to the dollar, everything looked more expensive (I had gotten used to a small number on the price tag, even if sometimes that number equaled something exponentially bigger in dollars) and in actuality, it was more expensive. $18 for a souvenir little boy t-shirt...oy vey. Suffice to say, all I have from Lucerne are memories and a LOT of Lindt chocolate, which was the cheapest thing and which came in fun flavors such as creme brulee, chocolate mousse, and cherry and chili. For the latter, I'm not entirely sure how it tastes, that's what the people back home are for when I give it to them as a Swiss souvenir.

Yet, the best part about Lucerne, the one that made up for the hefty pricetag, were the Alps. At a cost of 50 euros (after a discount since we had a Eurail pass), a ski lift took us all the way up 7000 feet to the top of Mount Pilatus where according to local legend, a dragon is supposed to be buried there. Of course, I didn't go for the dragon but rather, I went for this view:



I remember going to Yosemite National Park in California when I was 8 and there was a sign that said that because of smog, that visibility from the top of those mountains had decreased. Which is why, standing on top of the world, and being able to see far and wide, even out to Germany, I just felt so lucky to be able to see something like that. It seemed to me that this was nature at its purist, no trace of smog, no hint of civilization, just clouds, water, fields, and snow for miles around. Though there was a small trace, a cross and church on a summit, probably because it was the closest thing to heaven. But in that part of the world, that high up, that little structure eemed like something that was not built humans but rather, by God (or whoever God is called). You couldn't help feeling so small and minuscule, like in so many sublime paintings of the wilderness and the grandeur of everything just threatened to overlap you.



Afterward, we went into the restaurant and warmed ourselves up from the icy cold with a bowl of potato soup and a cappuccino. So ended a day at the top of the world.


Beware of the swans, they bite.

Lucerne, the photo album

Of the Black Forest

Pardon my horrible delays in getting all of these entries up. In contrast to the ones of Italy, I did not get bring along my laptop this time around so for all of the places I am writing about, I'm recalling them from memory (which may account for why these entries are so short). Of course, you can always tell of the impression that a place has made on you depending on how much you end up writing about it in your journal. So keeping that in mind, we move onto:

The Black Forest, or rather, the two towns that we visited that were near the Black Forest: Freiburg and Triberg. Time spent: 2 days.


Freiburg


Triberg

We arrived in Freiburg at 6AM, after spending the night in an overnight train and almost missing our stop. Luckily, days of waking up at 7AM and sleeping in a room together had acclimated us to becoming very light sleepers. So after what was a very bumpy rest in a reclining seat (since we were cheapskates and didn't want to pay an additional 10 euros for a bed), complete with the periodic waking up in the middle of the night anytime the train stopped , we woke up right at our destination, and hauled our duffel bags and our tired bodies off of the train a minute before it left. Talk about great timing.

What follows is me recalling our first morning in Freiburg where all I wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. Suffice to say, sleeping on a train is not something I care to repeat, only because of the exhaustion and dirtiness that follow from not being able to shower the night before and from only getting a light sleep. Perhaps sleeping in a bed would have been better...

Yet, one cannot call the morning unproductive since after dropping our luggage off at the Black Forest Hostel, we proceeded to climb up to the old fort on the hill to get a glimpse of the town and the forest that surrounded it. Nothing like a good walk uphill to work up an appetite, especially since that walk gave you the countryside of Germany in the morning light.



I may have been a bit presumptuous (and a wee bit ignorant) calling San Marino in Italy the place of fairy tales, considering that the Black Forest in Germany is where most of them originated. Looking at that blanket, and then walking through it the next day, it was easy to see where such dark thoughts of fairies, elves, talking wolves, and gingerbread houses came from.

Though there were no houses of gingerbread, there was a giant cuckoo clock next day in the town of Triberg, located in the middle of the forest, and infamous for its clock. And we had come just in time to see this one come out of its doors and greet us.



There was also the waterfall, which is one of the tallest in Germany and the mist was so refreshing after such a humid walk up and through the woods. I had never been so close to a roaring waterfall before and it had always been a dream of mine ever since Yosemite at age 8. Of course, at that time, that fall was dried up and there was barely any mist. Not in this one though, we got so close that I could just almost touch the water.



Then there was just the hike deeper and deeper into the forest, with the trees on both of your sides just waiting to envelope you up. They grow so thick and dark. At any moment, the Elf-King could come and take you away and no one would even know...


"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
For many a game I will play there with thee;" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Erlkönig

The most surreal moment of that walk, to me, was just coming out of the forest and as the trees parted, you were greeted to a view that seemed to have come from the pages of a storybook. It was the picture that I have always used to associate with Europe in my mind, the rolling hills of green with cottages, and fields that seem to go on forever with no fence to picket them off. The strangest thing about it was the enveloping silence where nothing seemed to disturb the air, save for the mooing of cows. It was such a strange moment and one that I have not experienced before. Usually, when you go to any of these places, there are always the chattering of tourists or the clicking of cameras. Not then, it was just us, the fields, and the forest behind, waiting to envelope us in again. Strange and yet, so calm. I would never be able to live in such a place but sometimes, it is a wonderful reprieve from the stress of car horns and the cold steel and concrete of city life.



To end our days in the Black Forest, I had what I had been dreaming about the whole time, ever since Allison told me that we were heading towards that area of Germany: the Black Forest cake. It is a dessert concoction of chocolate cake, held together with black cherries and covered with white icing plus just a spray of rum. Bittersweet and slightly tart but that's the way all good fairy tales traditionally end. In our case, it was an ending to replace the lack of gingerbread houses and witches that were supposed to dwell in the woods.



Freiberg, the photo album

Triberg, the photo album

Of 21

We take some time out of our regular programming (ie: the travel blog), to wish myself a Happy 21st away from home. Of course, it lacked Las Vegas (a 21 year old tradition) and copious amounts of alcohol. Yet, what it did include was British flatmates, surprisingly good Mexican food, and cake. Oh, and the lights that they gave me with fun little hand-written quotes such as "It's not my fault, I'm American." All in all, the best thing that could have happened in my home away from home.

Though I must admit, I do not feel as wise as I thought I would be at this age. How very anticlimactic.