#42daysofopera

I walked down from the gardens only when I got hungry. I found lunch in a place nearby, and tried the local specialty of Nürmberger-Bratwurst. I walked around the town, peeking into churches, or around buildings when I could. I eventually made my way to the German National Museum, which was excellent.  The rooms seemingly went on for ever and ever. They were packed with wonderful things, and devoid of people.  I came back to my room, relaxed and checked in for my flight. I studied my music for Bard for awhile, and then went back out for some dinner. After eating, and getting more lemon ice cream, I walked in the setting sun back to my hostel. I printed my boarding pass off at the front desk thanks to amazing staff here, and they didn’t even charge me for it. Finally, I just sat down on my bed and listened to music.  So dear reader, here we are at the end. I can’t believe it’s been six weeks. I’ve moved around so much it doesn’t feel that long, but I feel it's been long enough now. It's been a while since I’ve had my own bed, a while since I’ve lived in my own part of the world. It’s been forty-two days of opera. Time to leave.

Tomorrow in the morning I'm going to rest, and then explore the old town.

Today I went to the Dachau concentration camp. As I walked out of the gates of the camp, I turned to Gen, my Australian companion, and said “I have no idea what I’m going to fucking write about today”. I wish it could be like the 20 other days of sight seeing. A post where I list what I saw, and what I thought was cool. For obvious reasons, it just can’t be like that. In the four hours I was there I took no photos or notes. This will not be a post about details of the camp. If you want to know those details there are plenty of better written, and better educated sources on the topic. The best I can do is to talk about my personal experience of being there. I want to preface this by saying that I did not come to Munich to see Dachau. It was not a goal when I left Vancouver to go see a camp. As the course of the trip went on, and I read a little about the camp just 20 minutes by train from Munich, I became interested in going. However, I was told by a few people, in no uncertain terms, that I should not go alone. When I met Gen in my hostel and she expressed an interest in also not wanting to go alone, I saw a good opportunity. I am very glad I had someone there with me. Our guide for the tour was a englishman named Tom. He’s been doing this tour for over a year, and while he carried himself in a jovial manner, it was well tempered by good sense and no nonsense touring. I was also comforted to discovered we were joined by another Canadian on the tour. The memorial is very well set up. There is plenty of information, even an overwhelmingly large amount of info. Something that surprised me was the sense of calmness around the site. There is nothing naturally austere about the grounds. Were it just the large poplar trees and green grass it would be peaceful, almost serene. Yet as I walked through the utilities building, there were a few moments where I almost lost it. I need not depict the details of torture, or brutality, it is enough to say that it was not an enjoyable sight. Part of me didn’t want to be there. A big part of me wanted to walk away. I persisted through the building only because I felt like I would regret it if I didn’t.  As we stopped at the end of the building tour, Tom made a point of saying that he feels the exhibit is incredibly important, because it gives strong evidence for fighting against holocaust deniers.  However, in the next building we were given the option of not touring through the prison cells in the gestapo building, and I immediately followed the tour guide the other way. I just couldn’t stomach it.  By the end, standing beside a mass grave, the 15 young, energetic students were all silent. We walked calmly back through the poplars and out to the bus. Again, I was very glad to have Gen there.  It will not be an experience I will soon forget, neither one I would want to repeat. But it is one that I strongly believe will remain surreal in my mind.  We took the train back into town, and walked back to the hostel. Gen is off to Budapest, so we said our goodbyes, and I came upstairs to write. Tonight I’m joining the Canadian I met on the tour and her friend for a drink, which will be a nice taste of the Munich beer culture. Although, admittedly, all I need is a taste.  Tomorrow I leave for Nuremberg. 

It’s a beautiful city, and I regret only being able to spend two days here, although that is the price of many stops on a short trip.  Tomorrow I go and see Dachau with Jen, and then I will continue to explore the city in the evening. 

The place was fantastic. The wait staff all spoke German, Italian, and English, and screamed at each other in all three. Pedro, the manager, is quite the character. Everyone knows him. He gets yelled at from across the street, or people come in just to say hi to him.  The food was excellent, but the people watching was even better.  I finished my meal, and walked over the the square to watch the first act of Figaro.  It was lovely sitting in such a beautiful location, and watching the opera.  I came back to the hostel, and now it’s time for some much needed sleep. Tomorrow I travel to Munich. 

Back to posting at nights. We had a very long day today, although that not action packed. We started by waking up a 7 to get our laundry done and pack up the apartment. After getting the laundry in, we had breakfast, and then sat and read for awhile. We cleaned the apartment, had lunch, and then finished packing, and went to the hotel.  The hotel is certainly a different scene from the apartment, although it has none of the same character.  After we checked in we took the train to Schönbrunn palace. Now I know I have been comparing a lot of things to versailles recently, and so this really has lost it’s meaning, but Schönbrunn really is like versailles. The palace is 1.2 square km total, and is a real feat of architecture.  We walked through the palace, but it was incredibly busy. So after braving the crowds, we moved outside and explored the massive gardens. After the palace, we picked up the laundry, dropped it off at the apartment, and left our cute apartment for the final time. We got dinner in a lovely little italian place near the cathedral. We walked back the hotel, and now I’m writing as my parents watch a movie.  As amazing as this trip as been, I am really starting to feel like I need a vacation. I hope to take a few days off in Vancouver before all the craziness starts up again.  Tomorrow I get on a train to Salzburg, and my parents fly to Amsterdam. 

We slept in today, and took no efforts to pretend to be leaving any earlier than we did. In theory this was supposed to inspire some sort of slower paced day than we have been going at for the last ten days, but that was an utter failure, as you will soon see.  We caught the Ubahn 2 to Karlsplatz. As we walked underground towards the Staatsoper, we crossed paths with the stars of Schnitke, Smetana, and Bartok, just another example of the engrained musical culture in this city. We emerged from the tube station looking at the beautiful Staatsoper. Once again we were lead by one of my father’s walking tours, this time around the first district of Veinna.  Along our way to our first stop we saw the home of the original Sacher-Torte. The book cynically proclaimed that the cake is often declared by tourists to be “a bit dry”. Past the Sacher we walked into Albertinaplatz. We will be visiting here tomorrow to see the museum. From there we walked along the Karnterstraße, a pedestrian mall.  Usually it’s filled with vendors and shops, however, on Sunday most of the shops close, so it was mostly full of tourists. We took a short stop to see the Capuchin church. My father has proclaimed he has enough church photos to last him a lifetime, and although that might have more to do with how many photos he takes, than how many churches we’ve been in. Next to the church in the basement is a crypt that holds all the royalty of Vienna. We skipped past it partly for time, but mostly for the 6 euros we didn’t want to spend seeing all the royalty of Vienna. Kitty-corner to the church is the four rivers fountain. A standard fare fountain on first glance, and wouldn’t be worth mentioning except for a beautiful comment from the guide book. As the book proclaims, we can use the bare left breast of the goddess at the centre of the fountain to point our way back to Karnterstraße. If this is a new trend in orienteering, I’m sure we can get a lot of people behind it. We walked along the Karnterstraße to Stephanplatz, and looked up at Saint Stephan's cathedral. This massive cathedral was built in 1300-1450. At the time Vienna was a town of only 10,000 people, but its exceptional size is attributed to the desire to be bigger than Saint Vitus in Prague. The larger church meant it garnered more respect and allowed Vienna to become the seat of the Holy Roman Empire.  After a small lunch, my dad and I walked up all 343 stairs of the south towner. In fact the 343 stairs only get you 2/3 of the way up, but even only climbing that high, you still get a wonderful view of the city. We came back down, met with my mom, and circled around the church. As we were coming around the other side my mom and I almost got run over by a horse drawn carriage. There is little as off-putting as a horse drawn carriage with a family of tourists sitting in the cab, filming the entire event on their DV cameras to never be watched again. We sidestepped the throng of tourists at the entrance of the church, and explored the forward portion of the church.  The sheer size of the church is staggering. The ceilings expand high above, as buttresses support the ornate ceiling. The detail of the church does not meet somewhere like Westminster abby (although few do with every inch of the building embellished and adorned with detail). However, the scale well makes up for that. Along with many elaborate decorations, the church also contains a plaque dedicated to Mozart. He and his wife were married in the church, and two of his children were baptized there.  After we came out of the church, we walked down Graben, a chic shopping district of the city. There the guide told us all about the Holy Trinity Plague Column. The sculpture commemorates the 75,000 Viennese who died of plague in 1679. The column also features an effigy of Empire Leopold the I, identified by his unmistakable underbite. The book notes that this is because he was royal. I can’t make this shit up. From there we walked to Kohlmarkt as my parents wanted to check out Demel, a famous chocolate and bakery shop. Rather than salivating over cakes I couldn’t own, I decided to go window shopping. In retrospect I realized that rather than salivating over cakes, I was salivating over clothing… I’m not sure which is preferable. Once again the guide book provided us with humour as it described the daily ritual of discarding of the unsold cakes at Demel as the “greatest tragedy of the european union”. Claire and Neal, you two may agree with the book on that one.  From Kohlmarkt to Michealerplatz and from there to the Hofburg. The best way to describe the Hofburg palace is by asking one to imagine Versailles, but in a city. It’s massive, and it’s grandeur is beyond anything I’ve ever seen in a metropolitan city. We meandered through the palace grounds over to the Maria-Theresa monument. With an approaching rainstorm, we ducked into a Cafe in the Mueseumquartier. After some cake and tea, and the passing of the rain, we headed out for the Staatsoper museum.  The small museum is fantastic. It contains photos or drawings from almost every great production. The walls are lined with photos of singers, directors, and conductors. It gave a lot of wonderful detail about how the house has evolved.  Just as we were leaving the museum I spotted the picture of a singer I had seen in Vancouver in recital last year. I was telling my parents about her fantastic rendition of an aria from the Barber of Seville, when I realized I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the aria. Yes, by now I am well aware it’s Una Voce, but at that moment I just couldn’t grasp the name. I knew that it was going to drive me nuts if I couldn’t remember, especially since I had no way of looking it up when I got back to the apartment. I figured since I was in an opera museum, I might as well just ask. I walked up to the women who took our tickets, and asked if she knew opera well. She pointed me in the direction of another woman at the front desk. I asked her if she could remember the name of the aria and she gave me a look not unlike what I’m sure my face looked like a few seconds earlier. She told me she couldn’t remember it, but that she would google it for me. After a few minutes of her typing away, she looked at me and said she couldn’t find it, but, she could call one of their opera experts and ask them. She dialled the phone, and told the expert that there was a young man looking for the name of the aria from Barber of Seville that isn’t Figaro’s aria. After a short pause she said okay, and hung up the phone. It seems that no-one could remember the name, since even the opera expert couldn’t remember it off hand, but that they would look it up, and call her back. While waiting for the expert to call, the woman at the desk went back to the computer, and after a few seconds, turned to me and said “Una Voce?”. Elated, I said thank you, and left the museum humming the aria to myself. From the opera museum, we went to the Globe Museum and the Esperanto museum. A weird combination of museums in the same building, but both wonderful. The globe museum had some amazing pieces, including a globe that was taller than me. We walked downstairs, and my parents agreed to indulge my love of the obscure by going into the Esperanto museum. There I learnt many amazing facts about the invented language, such as that it was mocked by critics for trying to unify countries, and detested by both Hitler and Stalin, even punishable by execution. It also had a section on other modern languages, including Klingon where I got to listen to “To be or not to be-“ in the Star-trek language. I will restrain myself from memorizing it. I don’t need to be that nerdy... After our long day of museums we went and had dinner at Bettelstudent, a lovely restaurant that had it’s own beer, and most of the items on the menu were fired. It was the perfect meal for the day we had. Especially since it wasn’t over yet. From the restaurant we walked around the corner to the Haus Der Musik. This interactive music museum is a must see for anyone even slightly musically included. The four floors of exhibits are fantastic, and even as a music student, I learnt a lot of things I didn’t know before.  The first floor is dedicated to the Wienerphil. There we got to see batons from all the major conductors, Bernstein’s tails, a great video of the new years day concert, and you can even compose your own waltz using a dice game.  The second floor was a little tiny bit boring. It focuses on the science of sound, and any student of music 119 student can tell you exactly what I found on the second floor. Although there was one a very cool room where you could listen to isolated sounds, including the sounds of space, of different train stations in the world, or even of just household objects. The third floor was my favourite, and focused on local composers. Haydn (I skipped this room, due to my blinding hatred of the composer), Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. It has some amazing pieces such as death masks from composers and even Schubert’s glasses.  The fourth floor was, and still is a bit of a mystery to us. We know it was an interactive exhibit, but couldn’t get it to work… Regardless it looked cool with motion controls…. On the other side was the gift shop, where I got an music umbrella to replace my old one which disappeared somewhere. Finally, worn out, we walked back to the Ubahn, and caught the metro home.  It’s absolutely insane how much we did today, but it was so nice to finally get a feel for the city. Soon I’ll be heading to Salzburg, and in a week I will be sleeping in my own bed for the first time in way too long. However, I really will miss Vienna. I feel very strongly that this city still has a lot to offer me, and I sincerely wish I could have come here during concert season. I really hope I can come back in the season.  Tomorrow we check out even more of the city, and even more museums. Huzzah! 

With a strong desire to get out of the city today, we headed for the hills. Not only is it stinking hot, but also Saturdays can be unpleasantly busy, We got on the train, and went to Melk. Melk is a small town about an hour away from Vienna. After a short ride on a international train heading to Germany, we transferred onto a two car local train to get to Melk. The small little train chugged through local stops at a slow speed, but provided ample time to gaze at the scenery. We stepped off the train in the bright sun and were met with the sight of the Melk monastery. The monastery, built originally in the 11th century, sits on a large hill above the quaint little town. We walked up the hill, and got to look inside the monastery. After a period of disarray, the monastery was rebuilt in the 20th century. The cathedral hosts the usual ornate and opulent style, and everything is leafed with gold. At one my point my dad turned to me and said “you know, the baroque style is all a little much”. Along with the church, the monastery has a 12 room library. Now, when a building advertises a 12 room library, you would expect to see more than two rooms. But after two two exquisitely decorated rooms of amazing books, we were shuffled away. But, my disappointment aside, the monastery also has the amazing views of Melk and surrounding country side. Because I am trying to tackle so many cities in the last five days of my trip, I won’t get much of a chance to see anything rural other than today, so I was very happy to see at least a little of the Austrian countryside.  After the monastery we got some groceries for lunch, and walked towards the Danube. There, we bought tickets for a boat that went along the river giving us a scenic tour along the water and of the Wachau. The boat was lovely.  It would stop every 30 minutes at a different small town and switch in and out passengers,. After a few hours on the boat, we reached our destination of Krems. From there we caught a train, and headed back into the city. We got some groceries for dinner, and went back to the apartment. A small note for anyone shopping at Billa, although I don’t know how I didn’t realize this is Teplice. If you’re buying bananas, make sure you weigh them. There is nothing worse than having the clerk at the checkout go to weigh your bananas for you, while a line of tired, hungry, angry commuters waits behind you…. After dinner we walked to a park close to our apartment. As we neared the other end of the park we noticed a large concrete tower. My dad remembered that these are flak towers, left over from the war. Built by the Germans, the structures are so massive, and so well fortified, that to take them down would cause significant damage to the surrounding buildings. These days it looks as though it’s mostly used as a roost for crows and as an austere reminder that history is inescapable.   Tomorrow we tour more of the centre of the city.