Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday!
[Warning, as the name implies, this is a long entry.....]
Friday:
Voice Lesson: €50 (free after mail-in rebate)
Random Pineapple drink: €1
Internet at MQ: Free (but freakin' cold)
The other stuff on which I spent money that day: forgotten.
Saturday:
Groceries: €18
Clothes: €30
Total transportation costs to Heiligenkreuz: €18
Ticket price of the concert there: €20 (paid two weeks ago)
Me after the best string quartet concert ever: speechless.
Sunday:
Mass at Augistinerkirche: Free! (since I forgot to bring money for the collections)
Delicious Fish & Chips at Nordsee: €3.50
Ticket for Elijah at Stephansdom on the 18th of next month: €40
Das Rheingold @ Staatsoper: €6.90
Melange and Apfelstrudel at Aida: €3.90
Standing straight through a 2-hour-and-45-minute-long-opera: ridiculous.
Monday:
Groceries for a long time: €13.50
Not spending money: (literally) priceless.
-------
Things have just been so weird for the last few days, and I've ended up with very little time at home and which to sit down and write a long journal entry, and as the days progressed and the journal entry that I would need to write got longer and longer and longer and longer, the thought of me sitting down for forever and writing got even less feasible. But now, with no class tomorrow, and all of my roommates on their way out to a bar, I can sit down, put on the (proverbial) tea, and write, write, write! Let's hope that I can remember everything!
On Friday I woke up at about 10:30 to go to the center and practice before work. When I got there I checked my e-mail, only to find that when I had sent Dr. Schier's presentation to Chicago it had not worked....so I spent a couple of hours (and more later in the day) rectifying the situation....I tried again, in vain, to attach it to an e-mail, then trying to upload it to my webspace on the Oxy server, which finally worked after trying seriously 5 different sets of instructions on the ITS website......anyway, I had work for a couple of hours, after which I had a voice lesson. The lesson was OK.....it's hard to apply the principles on which she's working with me in such a short time...(also, I didn't really practice!) She gave me a couple of ideas for repertoire, so I'll find them and bring 'em in in two weeks when I see her next.
After my lesson I saw a gourmet Spar (think Gelson's meets Bristol Farms, but smaller) so I went in to see what they had. I ended up purchasing this really awesome pineapple-orange-ade, which was only €2 for 2 liters! The only reason it's that important is that up until I got home about an hour later I was carrying a 2 liter bottle of soda through Vienna with me. Yea.....anyway I got back on the Straßenbahn towards Karlsplatz with the intention of going to the MQ to check my e-mail and ensure that Dr. Schier had received the attachments. Since it was foggy and sort of heavily misting, I was dubious about going to the MQ....but seeing as how IES was closed and I wasn't shelling out money for an internet cafe when I could just get it for free, I went anyway. I took the U2, which was kind of silly since the walk through the fog would've been way prettier. I got there and tried different rooms (didn't want to tempt fate and use the laptop outside) in the MQ but couldn't get a signal....finally I gave up and stood by a post in the entryway by the gift shop and, with my left hand holding the computer and my right operating the trackpad and keyboard, I checked (and composed) my e-mail. After that...experience (keep in mind I am still lugging around the 2-liter bottle of pineapple-orange-ade) I decided to walk home in the beautiful fog. So I did, and it was a gorgeous walk! When I got home I tooled around and ended up watching Best in Show with Dave and some of my roommates, and then Nick and I and (someone else? memory's fuzzy...) watched Clue. It was a fun little double-feature, and a nice way to end the day.
On Saturday I had my short little meeting with Allison, during which we breezed through the Jägerlied (our duet) and in lieu of trying to read through the Bach (the three flute and soprano piece for which she's singing and I'm playing the piano) which neither of us knew well, we read through another piece she's doing, Shepherd on the Rock, for soprano and clarinet, by Schubert. (Kari did it at one of the MOFAs with Jeff Bienstock) It was really fun, and I thought it was interesting that I could sight-read Schubert SO much easier than I could possibly have played the Bach, even after an hour and a half of practice on it last week.....na ja. The Schubert is a great piece, and I might even play it with Allison and Reb at the workshop (maybe? possibly?) After the rehearsal I bought a few groceries and went down to the Meidling Hauptstraße to the second-hand clothes store I saw there to look for some clothes, specifically a nice colored dress shirt to wear to Heiligenkreuz that night. Unfortunately it was closed (they close at noon on Saturdays......darn these conventions!), so I went to H&M. I spent about half an hour there just looking and trying a few things on, and eventually I got a dark red button-down shirt (€19), a cheap short-sleeve button down shirt (€7.90), and pair of black socks (€3 something). After that I went back home to quickly change and meet Natalie and Carla. We took the D to the Südbahnhof just like before, except this time we were not 15 minutes late for the Schnellbahn!! At the station we saw Emily, the other IES student who had bought tickets for this concert, and the four of us bought our tickets (both for the trip out there and the trip back) and proceeded to the terminal, comforted by the knowledge that we'd already made all the possible mistakes, and that this time we knew exactly what to do, and when to do it. When we got to the terminal we noticed that the display said nothing about the S1 to Mödling (the one we needed to catch) but instead said that the S2 to Hütteldorf was 7 minutes late. Naturally we (standing there at 4:50) assumed that the S1 to Mödling was still due to arrive at 4:56. 4:56 came, and the train did not. We began to worry (they started worrying, I started screaming) and we heard a message over the intercom that started with "Sehr Geehrete Fahrgäste" and ended with "wir bitten für Ihrer Verständnis" (which means something is wrong) and somewhere in the middle was "S1 nach Mödling." Something must have been wrong, but in any case we missed the train and had to take the next train to Mödling half an hour later, thus once agian missing the bus and forcing us to take a taxi to the monastery. (We comforted ourselves in the fact that at least the concert we were going to see was going to be damn good, unlike the other one.....)
After taking a taxi (@ €9 each) we walked around and had hot drinks at the little restaurant. We then went to the Kaisersaal to get our seats, by now in eager anticipation for what we knew was going to be an amazing concert. Nor were we disappointed: the concert was the Wiener Streichquartett playing Dvorak's Cypresses, a cute little string quartet by Schubert, and the Dvorak piano quintet. All three pieces were amazing in their own right....the Cypresses were breathtaking, and their performance was so moving and expressive....I couldn't see any of them (except occasionally I got a glimpse of the cellist's fingerboard) and it sounded like I was listening to one musician on one instrument.....it was beyond ensemble. It was CRAZY. The Schubert was really cute...there's no other word for it. It was identified as the "Heurigen" quartet on the poster, but not in the program....if that was true I would laugh....leave it to Schubert! The piano quintet was freakin' crazy....the third movement? Anyone? Amazing? They even did it as their encore! (the audience did the eastern European clap-in-unison-meaning-reprise-your-best-piece schtick....I honestly didn't know that they did that here! also....OS X knows that schtick is a word! I'm so proud....) After the concert we took the arranged taxi back to the train station in Mödling and boarded the Schnellbahn. When the guy came to stamp our tickets (which they did not do our first time out for the other concert) he frowned and said that the tickets that we bought at the Südbahnhof couldn't be used to get us back there....we were all quite scared of having to pay the €60 fine or whatever it is, but he didn't even admonish us (it wasn't as if we hadn't spent the same amount of money) but just told us to do it next time. After getting back to the city, we dropped by the Schönbrunner Straße apartments, where Reb, Miriam, Mary Rose, Jill, and them were having a little party. It was fun, and lots of cool people were there.....it wasn't a huge drunk party like Thursday, but a fun little get-together with lots of good food and delicious Glühwein (spiced wine served hot) Mike and I stayed until everyone went to bed, and had a hilarious conversation on the way back to our respective apartments (I walked back, since the U-bahn had already stopped running, and my place isn't far at all....). When I came back, everyone and their grandmother was in our apartment at Mike's farewell bash, sponsored by Nick and JB. They were up until very late....I graciously paid my respects to Mike and hung out for a while, and then retired.
Sunday morning I woke up bright and early to meet Mike and Kate for 11:00 mass at the Augistinerkirche. I met Mike at the Kettenbrückengasse station at 10 so we could get there nice and early and get good seats. They were doing Haydn's Nelsonmesse, as well as a couple of Mozart things as Gradual and Offertorium. It was fun....I got yelled at by the woman in front of me for talking to Mike.....10 minutes before Mass started, I was talking in hushed tones (albeit not a whisper) while the general murmur drifted from the back from all the people standing, and she turned around and said in the most contemptuous tone of English I've heard here yet: "would you please be quiet!" I stopped talking immediately, and of course didn't talk during the service. (not that I would have had she not so admonished me....but how did she know that?) Also, maybe she was mad because I was talking about the Apocrypha.....midway during the homily I realized that what I should have done when she yelled at me was immediately replied (a lá Vader) "I find your lack of faith disturbing." For some reason she left after the Gloria....whatever. I wasn't going to let her ruin my experience there. The music was pretty darn good.....I like the choir's sound far better from the loft than from the front of the church where they stood for the Requiem.....whatever. It was really cool to go to a real Catholic mass (no wine for parishoners! is that normal in the States? I thought maybe Vatican II had covered that....) with a classical mass thrown in. After mass we went to Nordsee for lunch, and then we headed Stephansdom so that I could buy a ticket for Elijah in November. I had been before, but the guy apparently thought I was on crack and didn't believe me that there was going to be a performance of Elijah, and kept trying to sell me tickets to the Schubert concert that week.....on Sunday, however, the guy still didn't know about Elijah and had to call his superior to find out where the physical tickets were. Apparently I was very early to buy tickets, then, so I spent a little extra for good seats (front row, baby!) he also claimed that there wasn't a student discount, even though it said there was on the flyer in my hand....not feeling in the mood to argue, I just paid the full price of €40 (I think I only would have saved €4 or so.....)
After that they went back home and I went to the Staatsoper to wait in line for Stehplatz tickets for that night's opera, Das Rheingold, which is the first of the four-opera Ring Cycle of Wagner. They are only playing each opera once, so I figured that there would be a ton of people there, and since I had nothing better to do I thought I might as well get there really early and just wait in line for a long time and get a nice spot in the front row of the Parterre. Sure enough, when I got there at 2:30 (4.5 hours before curtain) I was fourth in line! We were waiting outside the doors, since they don't even open the doors into the building until 3 hours before curtain. I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and slept for a while, and after much waiting I found myself very near the center of the front row of Parterre marking my place! To celebrate my liberation from the line, I went across the street and treated myself to a pre-opera Apfelstrudel and coffee at Aida, which was delicious! I went back twenty minutes later (still more than 30 minutes before curtain) and found a strange man standing in my spot. Needless to say I was surprised, but thought perhaps that he had marked a place near me and was just standing there idly....no, in fact, he had seen the markings of me and my neighbor, and somehow decided that he was going to be a bitch and try to fit himself in between us.....he was trying to use the old "they oversell the Parterre" trick (which is true) and there was no room anywhere else, but when an usher came over, they were not impressed. He moved out of the front row, and I think ended up standing up in a shitty spot near the back in the center without a rail...I don't know. Luckily the Japanese woman next to me spoke perfect German and handled the confrontation very well.....I tend to be too passive in those situations, especially in other languages. We ended up having a great conversation (the longest conversation I've had purely in German where I've understood everything) about different things....mostly bagging on the jerk who thought he was slick enough to trick the system. At one point she mentioned something about a similar experience she had had in China, and how the word for China means "center of the world." I nodded knowingly and traced it out with my finger on my program. She nodded excitedly, and asked if I had taken Chinese or Japanese, and I said yes, etc. (luckily she didn't try to speak to me in Japanese....that would not have worked to well for me)
The opera itself was..............long. 2 hours and 45 minutes long, to be precise, and no intermission or sitting break......that aspect of it was a little undesirable, but what are you gonna do? The music was fantastic.....you know that the opera's going to be long when the overture is something like 7 minutes of just Eb that eventually moves to Ab when the singers come in.....I thought to myself "you mean we just had 7 minutes of V?????????? Oh Wagner....." The staging, sets, and costumes were all........well, not very good. All the musical aspects: the vocalists, the orchestra....all were fantastic. When the Rhine maidens were bouncing around on an unseen sub-stage level trampoline to simulate moving in water, and when the Rhinegold itself was just a gold drape over Superman's-cave-like stalagmites, I thought I had seen the worst. Well, not really. Valhalla (only seen from a distance by the Gods) was a giant cube. A freakin' cube, for crying out loud! Oh, and let's not even mention Loki's costume....or Freya! She looked like a Swedish maid with her blond hair little basket......jeez. Also the acting wasn't very good...tons of semaphore....and slow, methodical sweeping movements representing simple emotions......some of them looked like they were under a Martha Graham sheet or something.....but, like I said, the music was fantastic. And although it was fun to get there early and see everything else up close, next time I'll come at a more reasonable time with everyone else and stand up in the Gallery and be happier.
After the opera the strangest thing happened to me.....I first noticed it while waiting for my coat, when I noticed that the girl at the counter didn't have a left eye.....it seemed to be just skin and no socket or anything. When I looked straight at it, though, the eye appeared, but then it looked as if the other girl behind the counter didn't have a mouth. Looking around the room, I quickly realized what was happening: I had somehow developed (what later turned out to be temporary) scotomata, or temporary blind spots, in my eyes! It was interesting, because I got to experience all the phenomena associated with scotomata that I'd read about, mostly the brain's ability to fill in the blank information by way of pattern recognition.....I won't go into all the details, but sufficed to say that I was glad that Mike and Jess and everyone walked with me to the U-bahn, because there were a couple of times when I wasn't too sure on my feet because of my impaired vision. Strangely enough, as quickly as they had appeared after the opera, I blinked on the subway and my vision was completely normal again! That night I had a bad headache and sinus pressure.....my research this morning told me that temporary scotomata occur in some people before a migraine headache, so that at least explained it! (Mike and I just called it "The Aneurism"....) After a long night of troubled sleep, I awoke this morning.
Class this morning was fairly benign.....I worked between German and AA&A, and had to work an extra hour because Gretel didn't realize that she was supposed to work, and so I had to deal with the 10:15-11:00 rush to return overnight books....which is unimaginably frustrating with the card catalogue system......AA&A was relatively boring, and Music history relatively short. After class I bought the last bit of groceries I could possibly need for a long while, and went home. Gretchen came at 7:15, and we had dinner and planned out our oral presentation for German. She left, my roommates and I watched South Park, and now they're all out at a bar. Almost 3 hours after I started writing, I am done! Now to go to bed and sleep until late tomorrow!! (no class....it's Nationalfeiertag tomorrow.....like 4th of July) Well...not too late, because I have a tour for Classical Symphony at 10:30...........silly Solvik!
Friday:
Voice Lesson: €50 (free after mail-in rebate)
Random Pineapple drink: €1
Internet at MQ: Free (but freakin' cold)
The other stuff on which I spent money that day: forgotten.
Saturday:
Groceries: €18
Clothes: €30
Total transportation costs to Heiligenkreuz: €18
Ticket price of the concert there: €20 (paid two weeks ago)
Me after the best string quartet concert ever: speechless.
Sunday:
Mass at Augistinerkirche: Free! (since I forgot to bring money for the collections)
Delicious Fish & Chips at Nordsee: €3.50
Ticket for Elijah at Stephansdom on the 18th of next month: €40
Das Rheingold @ Staatsoper: €6.90
Melange and Apfelstrudel at Aida: €3.90
Standing straight through a 2-hour-and-45-minute-long-opera: ridiculous.
Monday:
Groceries for a long time: €13.50
Not spending money: (literally) priceless.
-------
Things have just been so weird for the last few days, and I've ended up with very little time at home and which to sit down and write a long journal entry, and as the days progressed and the journal entry that I would need to write got longer and longer and longer and longer, the thought of me sitting down for forever and writing got even less feasible. But now, with no class tomorrow, and all of my roommates on their way out to a bar, I can sit down, put on the (proverbial) tea, and write, write, write! Let's hope that I can remember everything!
On Friday I woke up at about 10:30 to go to the center and practice before work. When I got there I checked my e-mail, only to find that when I had sent Dr. Schier's presentation to Chicago it had not worked....so I spent a couple of hours (and more later in the day) rectifying the situation....I tried again, in vain, to attach it to an e-mail, then trying to upload it to my webspace on the Oxy server, which finally worked after trying seriously 5 different sets of instructions on the ITS website......anyway, I had work for a couple of hours, after which I had a voice lesson. The lesson was OK.....it's hard to apply the principles on which she's working with me in such a short time...(also, I didn't really practice!) She gave me a couple of ideas for repertoire, so I'll find them and bring 'em in in two weeks when I see her next.
After my lesson I saw a gourmet Spar (think Gelson's meets Bristol Farms, but smaller) so I went in to see what they had. I ended up purchasing this really awesome pineapple-orange-ade, which was only €2 for 2 liters! The only reason it's that important is that up until I got home about an hour later I was carrying a 2 liter bottle of soda through Vienna with me. Yea.....anyway I got back on the Straßenbahn towards Karlsplatz with the intention of going to the MQ to check my e-mail and ensure that Dr. Schier had received the attachments. Since it was foggy and sort of heavily misting, I was dubious about going to the MQ....but seeing as how IES was closed and I wasn't shelling out money for an internet cafe when I could just get it for free, I went anyway. I took the U2, which was kind of silly since the walk through the fog would've been way prettier. I got there and tried different rooms (didn't want to tempt fate and use the laptop outside) in the MQ but couldn't get a signal....finally I gave up and stood by a post in the entryway by the gift shop and, with my left hand holding the computer and my right operating the trackpad and keyboard, I checked (and composed) my e-mail. After that...experience (keep in mind I am still lugging around the 2-liter bottle of pineapple-orange-ade) I decided to walk home in the beautiful fog. So I did, and it was a gorgeous walk! When I got home I tooled around and ended up watching Best in Show with Dave and some of my roommates, and then Nick and I and (someone else? memory's fuzzy...) watched Clue. It was a fun little double-feature, and a nice way to end the day.
On Saturday I had my short little meeting with Allison, during which we breezed through the Jägerlied (our duet) and in lieu of trying to read through the Bach (the three flute and soprano piece for which she's singing and I'm playing the piano) which neither of us knew well, we read through another piece she's doing, Shepherd on the Rock, for soprano and clarinet, by Schubert. (Kari did it at one of the MOFAs with Jeff Bienstock) It was really fun, and I thought it was interesting that I could sight-read Schubert SO much easier than I could possibly have played the Bach, even after an hour and a half of practice on it last week.....na ja. The Schubert is a great piece, and I might even play it with Allison and Reb at the workshop (maybe? possibly?) After the rehearsal I bought a few groceries and went down to the Meidling Hauptstraße to the second-hand clothes store I saw there to look for some clothes, specifically a nice colored dress shirt to wear to Heiligenkreuz that night. Unfortunately it was closed (they close at noon on Saturdays......darn these conventions!), so I went to H&M. I spent about half an hour there just looking and trying a few things on, and eventually I got a dark red button-down shirt (€19), a cheap short-sleeve button down shirt (€7.90), and pair of black socks (€3 something). After that I went back home to quickly change and meet Natalie and Carla. We took the D to the Südbahnhof just like before, except this time we were not 15 minutes late for the Schnellbahn!! At the station we saw Emily, the other IES student who had bought tickets for this concert, and the four of us bought our tickets (both for the trip out there and the trip back) and proceeded to the terminal, comforted by the knowledge that we'd already made all the possible mistakes, and that this time we knew exactly what to do, and when to do it. When we got to the terminal we noticed that the display said nothing about the S1 to Mödling (the one we needed to catch) but instead said that the S2 to Hütteldorf was 7 minutes late. Naturally we (standing there at 4:50) assumed that the S1 to Mödling was still due to arrive at 4:56. 4:56 came, and the train did not. We began to worry (they started worrying, I started screaming) and we heard a message over the intercom that started with "Sehr Geehrete Fahrgäste" and ended with "wir bitten für Ihrer Verständnis" (which means something is wrong) and somewhere in the middle was "S1 nach Mödling." Something must have been wrong, but in any case we missed the train and had to take the next train to Mödling half an hour later, thus once agian missing the bus and forcing us to take a taxi to the monastery. (We comforted ourselves in the fact that at least the concert we were going to see was going to be damn good, unlike the other one.....)
After taking a taxi (@ €9 each) we walked around and had hot drinks at the little restaurant. We then went to the Kaisersaal to get our seats, by now in eager anticipation for what we knew was going to be an amazing concert. Nor were we disappointed: the concert was the Wiener Streichquartett playing Dvorak's Cypresses, a cute little string quartet by Schubert, and the Dvorak piano quintet. All three pieces were amazing in their own right....the Cypresses were breathtaking, and their performance was so moving and expressive....I couldn't see any of them (except occasionally I got a glimpse of the cellist's fingerboard) and it sounded like I was listening to one musician on one instrument.....it was beyond ensemble. It was CRAZY. The Schubert was really cute...there's no other word for it. It was identified as the "Heurigen" quartet on the poster, but not in the program....if that was true I would laugh....leave it to Schubert! The piano quintet was freakin' crazy....the third movement? Anyone? Amazing? They even did it as their encore! (the audience did the eastern European clap-in-unison-meaning-reprise-your-best-piece schtick....I honestly didn't know that they did that here! also....OS X knows that schtick is a word! I'm so proud....) After the concert we took the arranged taxi back to the train station in Mödling and boarded the Schnellbahn. When the guy came to stamp our tickets (which they did not do our first time out for the other concert) he frowned and said that the tickets that we bought at the Südbahnhof couldn't be used to get us back there....we were all quite scared of having to pay the €60 fine or whatever it is, but he didn't even admonish us (it wasn't as if we hadn't spent the same amount of money) but just told us to do it next time. After getting back to the city, we dropped by the Schönbrunner Straße apartments, where Reb, Miriam, Mary Rose, Jill, and them were having a little party. It was fun, and lots of cool people were there.....it wasn't a huge drunk party like Thursday, but a fun little get-together with lots of good food and delicious Glühwein (spiced wine served hot) Mike and I stayed until everyone went to bed, and had a hilarious conversation on the way back to our respective apartments (I walked back, since the U-bahn had already stopped running, and my place isn't far at all....). When I came back, everyone and their grandmother was in our apartment at Mike's farewell bash, sponsored by Nick and JB. They were up until very late....I graciously paid my respects to Mike and hung out for a while, and then retired.
Sunday morning I woke up bright and early to meet Mike and Kate for 11:00 mass at the Augistinerkirche. I met Mike at the Kettenbrückengasse station at 10 so we could get there nice and early and get good seats. They were doing Haydn's Nelsonmesse, as well as a couple of Mozart things as Gradual and Offertorium. It was fun....I got yelled at by the woman in front of me for talking to Mike.....10 minutes before Mass started, I was talking in hushed tones (albeit not a whisper) while the general murmur drifted from the back from all the people standing, and she turned around and said in the most contemptuous tone of English I've heard here yet: "would you please be quiet!" I stopped talking immediately, and of course didn't talk during the service. (not that I would have had she not so admonished me....but how did she know that?) Also, maybe she was mad because I was talking about the Apocrypha.....midway during the homily I realized that what I should have done when she yelled at me was immediately replied (a lá Vader) "I find your lack of faith disturbing." For some reason she left after the Gloria....whatever. I wasn't going to let her ruin my experience there. The music was pretty darn good.....I like the choir's sound far better from the loft than from the front of the church where they stood for the Requiem.....whatever. It was really cool to go to a real Catholic mass (no wine for parishoners! is that normal in the States? I thought maybe Vatican II had covered that....) with a classical mass thrown in. After mass we went to Nordsee for lunch, and then we headed Stephansdom so that I could buy a ticket for Elijah in November. I had been before, but the guy apparently thought I was on crack and didn't believe me that there was going to be a performance of Elijah, and kept trying to sell me tickets to the Schubert concert that week.....on Sunday, however, the guy still didn't know about Elijah and had to call his superior to find out where the physical tickets were. Apparently I was very early to buy tickets, then, so I spent a little extra for good seats (front row, baby!) he also claimed that there wasn't a student discount, even though it said there was on the flyer in my hand....not feeling in the mood to argue, I just paid the full price of €40 (I think I only would have saved €4 or so.....)
After that they went back home and I went to the Staatsoper to wait in line for Stehplatz tickets for that night's opera, Das Rheingold, which is the first of the four-opera Ring Cycle of Wagner. They are only playing each opera once, so I figured that there would be a ton of people there, and since I had nothing better to do I thought I might as well get there really early and just wait in line for a long time and get a nice spot in the front row of the Parterre. Sure enough, when I got there at 2:30 (4.5 hours before curtain) I was fourth in line! We were waiting outside the doors, since they don't even open the doors into the building until 3 hours before curtain. I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and slept for a while, and after much waiting I found myself very near the center of the front row of Parterre marking my place! To celebrate my liberation from the line, I went across the street and treated myself to a pre-opera Apfelstrudel and coffee at Aida, which was delicious! I went back twenty minutes later (still more than 30 minutes before curtain) and found a strange man standing in my spot. Needless to say I was surprised, but thought perhaps that he had marked a place near me and was just standing there idly....no, in fact, he had seen the markings of me and my neighbor, and somehow decided that he was going to be a bitch and try to fit himself in between us.....he was trying to use the old "they oversell the Parterre" trick (which is true) and there was no room anywhere else, but when an usher came over, they were not impressed. He moved out of the front row, and I think ended up standing up in a shitty spot near the back in the center without a rail...I don't know. Luckily the Japanese woman next to me spoke perfect German and handled the confrontation very well.....I tend to be too passive in those situations, especially in other languages. We ended up having a great conversation (the longest conversation I've had purely in German where I've understood everything) about different things....mostly bagging on the jerk who thought he was slick enough to trick the system. At one point she mentioned something about a similar experience she had had in China, and how the word for China means "center of the world." I nodded knowingly and traced it out with my finger on my program. She nodded excitedly, and asked if I had taken Chinese or Japanese, and I said yes, etc. (luckily she didn't try to speak to me in Japanese....that would not have worked to well for me)
The opera itself was..............long. 2 hours and 45 minutes long, to be precise, and no intermission or sitting break......that aspect of it was a little undesirable, but what are you gonna do? The music was fantastic.....you know that the opera's going to be long when the overture is something like 7 minutes of just Eb that eventually moves to Ab when the singers come in.....I thought to myself "you mean we just had 7 minutes of V?????????? Oh Wagner....." The staging, sets, and costumes were all........well, not very good. All the musical aspects: the vocalists, the orchestra....all were fantastic. When the Rhine maidens were bouncing around on an unseen sub-stage level trampoline to simulate moving in water, and when the Rhinegold itself was just a gold drape over Superman's-cave-like stalagmites, I thought I had seen the worst. Well, not really. Valhalla (only seen from a distance by the Gods) was a giant cube. A freakin' cube, for crying out loud! Oh, and let's not even mention Loki's costume....or Freya! She looked like a Swedish maid with her blond hair little basket......jeez. Also the acting wasn't very good...tons of semaphore....and slow, methodical sweeping movements representing simple emotions......some of them looked like they were under a Martha Graham sheet or something.....but, like I said, the music was fantastic. And although it was fun to get there early and see everything else up close, next time I'll come at a more reasonable time with everyone else and stand up in the Gallery and be happier.
After the opera the strangest thing happened to me.....I first noticed it while waiting for my coat, when I noticed that the girl at the counter didn't have a left eye.....it seemed to be just skin and no socket or anything. When I looked straight at it, though, the eye appeared, but then it looked as if the other girl behind the counter didn't have a mouth. Looking around the room, I quickly realized what was happening: I had somehow developed (what later turned out to be temporary) scotomata, or temporary blind spots, in my eyes! It was interesting, because I got to experience all the phenomena associated with scotomata that I'd read about, mostly the brain's ability to fill in the blank information by way of pattern recognition.....I won't go into all the details, but sufficed to say that I was glad that Mike and Jess and everyone walked with me to the U-bahn, because there were a couple of times when I wasn't too sure on my feet because of my impaired vision. Strangely enough, as quickly as they had appeared after the opera, I blinked on the subway and my vision was completely normal again! That night I had a bad headache and sinus pressure.....my research this morning told me that temporary scotomata occur in some people before a migraine headache, so that at least explained it! (Mike and I just called it "The Aneurism"....) After a long night of troubled sleep, I awoke this morning.
Class this morning was fairly benign.....I worked between German and AA&A, and had to work an extra hour because Gretel didn't realize that she was supposed to work, and so I had to deal with the 10:15-11:00 rush to return overnight books....which is unimaginably frustrating with the card catalogue system......AA&A was relatively boring, and Music history relatively short. After class I bought the last bit of groceries I could possibly need for a long while, and went home. Gretchen came at 7:15, and we had dinner and planned out our oral presentation for German. She left, my roommates and I watched South Park, and now they're all out at a bar. Almost 3 hours after I started writing, I am done! Now to go to bed and sleep until late tomorrow!! (no class....it's Nationalfeiertag tomorrow.....like 4th of July) Well...not too late, because I have a tour for Classical Symphony at 10:30...........silly Solvik!
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