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Entry from: Eisenstadt, Austria
Entry Title: "Vienna, day 1: Rohrau, Austria and Eisenstadt"

Entry:

"Really quickly I'm going to try and update this. We arrived safely last night in Vienna. We flew, and were the only study tour to do so, so we're kind of lucky. We have 2 classes which travel, and so this is the first of my traveling class tours. The class is called Great Ideas in Western Music. It's a really interesting class. It's nice to stay in a hotel too! Our hotel is really really nice, and we found out this morning that breakfast is wonderful!! They had a huge spread, rivaling Maga's breakfasts :-) Last night we went to a restaurant with the whole group and tried typical Austrian cuisine of potato soup, goulash, apple pastry, and wine. It was yummy, but we had to walk down all these weird ally-ways to get there with dumpsters in the middle and stuff. It was really bizzare. But dinner turned out great. We left for Rohrau (or Rust) this morning, which is closer to the Hungarian border. Here we went to the birth house of Franz Joseph Haydn and his lesser known but also very talented brother Michael Haydn were born. This wasn't that exciting, but it was okay. You can see the picture of the harpsicord that they played on, which is kind of neat. Haydn only lived there until he was 6 however, and the house technically burned partially down, so it's more of a replica house. So, I thought this wasn't that great. After this we went to Rust, which is a tiny village on the marvelous lake of Neusiedlersee. If you look across the lake you can see the Hungarian border, which is kind of cool. We ate at a great little restaurant and had pizza and wine. Yummm. The wine here is cheaper than the water (even tap water costs money in Europe), so we are finding ourselves drinking a lot of wine in Austria. It's good wine though, and I'm certainly not complaining. After this, we went to the Esterhazy Castle in Eisenstadt. This is the place where Hoseph Haydn worked for around 30 years. The castle is in the Baroque style, so it really has more of a palace feel than a castle. We mainly saw the concert hall and the chapel here. It was really neat to be in the concert hall while they played Haydn's music... I could just imagine all the wealthy people in their powdered wigs and busty dresses filling the hall, which this short and extremely ugly man Haydn filled the hall with this music. Incredible. After this, we looked at his grave, which is in the church that you can see pictures of. We then went to a concert in Vienna's Musikverein, which is one of the leading concert halls in the world. I hear it has what is considered to be the best acoustics in the world. We saw Antonin Dvorak's Requiem op. 89. We had standing room seats for the concert, because the normal seats are legitimately starting at 100 Euro a seat. Our standing seats only cost 6 Euro. This was an iiiinteresting experience. We definitely did get to see some of the most famous soloists in the world perform (including a midget with no arms... seriously!) as well as incredible music performed by some of the best musicians in the world. The choir was incredible. I'm glad I got to experience this, especially in such a world famous hall. That being said, this experience was miserable. There is a very reason standing seats are so inexpensive. We stood for a good 3 hours, no intermission or anything, pressed between bodies. It's impolite to move, so we could only move during the 10 second breaks between the music's movements. My feet were KILLING ME, my back/neck was so sore and I couldn't move to loosen up, it was dreadfully hot, the lady in front of me smelled like BO, there was no ventilation, and people were definitely invading my personal space the whole time. All I can say is that you would have to be a really really intense music lover to enjoy it very much. If you were there, you would definitely understand. After this concert, we all went and found dinner. We were all incredibly tired, and I went to ..."
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Photos from this trip:
1. "In Rust"
2. "Candid on the street"
3. "Cute little door in Rust"
4. "Concert hall Hydan performed in at castle"
5. "Castle chapel. Hydan debuted much music here"
6. "Church where Hydan is buried"
7. "Hydan's harpsichord from his birth home"
8. "Near the lake"
9. "Musikverein Concert hall"
10. "Ceiling inside concert hall"
11. "The lobby in our hotel!"
12. "Riding the Vienna Metro"

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