Vienna: Land of Music and Composers

As much as I love all the places they're taking me, I must say these bus rides are becoming a bit tedious.  Today we had to get up early to leave Salzburg and sit through a three hour bus ride to Vienna.  Heinrich came with us, which I hadn't been expecting!  We got to Vienna in time to make it to the 11am Vienna Philharmonic Concert.

The music was absolutely beautiful, but here's the thing:  I had no idea the concert was going to be made up of only two songs.  Two forty minute songs.  So around twenty minutes into the first piece I was looking at my watch wondering when in the world the song was going to end.  I was pretty sleepy from the bus ride, so I kept myself awake by taking notes on the concert for the concert report I had to write, and also taking notes for this blog.  It worked.  I didn't fall asleep, and now I have pretty solid notes to write my report.  However, apparently I made a lot of noise flipping pages and scribbling in my notebook and annoyed some older people sitting in front of me.  Which was pretty embarrassing when I realized how oblivious I'd been to their stink eyes and dirty glares.

Vienna Philharmonic

Oh, and another important thing to know about Austria and performances, in case you ever go to see a show or concert here:  they love to clap.  And they will clap seemingly for hours.  And they will have encores for clapping.  I mean, I wanted to applaud too--the music was very good--but everyone else made me feel bad for wanting to stop clapping.

After the concert we grabbed a quick lunch at a little buffet place where I got delicious pasta.  Apparently I lucked out because most people spent at least 20 euros and I only spent 12.

We crammed back onto the bus--still in our formal concert clothes--and proceeded to parade about Vienna, visiting the houses of any composer within driving distance.  We saw Beethoven, Schubert, and Haydn's houses.  Again, this was very cool.  I especially enjoyed seeing where Beethoven had lived during several winter times.  During the summer he moved to live near the forest where he could search for a cure for his deafening ear..  But after Mozart's house in Salzburg and then these three, they all started to blend together, especially in my sleep-deprived stupor.  I feel like I would have appreciated it a lot more if I'd been better rested.  

"Beethoven lived in this house repeatedly between 1804 and 1815"

My favorite part was probably getting to see their different instruments, particularly the pianos with black keys.

Haydn's piano

 When we finally got to the hotel, it was to find it in a sketchy looking area of Vienna.  We'll see how that goes.

Not really sure how I feel about Vienna so far, but it's hard to compare anyplace to Salzburg.

Until next time.