european vacation part 2: vienna (or mostly mozart)

After a lovely ride in our OWN compartment on the night train to Vienna, we arrived at Wien West at 6:30 am. Took the Underground to our hostel which was about as far away as possible (last stop on U4). Next we were confronted with the hills of Austria. After putting our bags in an unlocked luggage room, we were unsure of what to do next (by this point it was like 7 am). So we trained it back to the center of the city and looked for the Opera house, and ended up walking the wrong way. We eventually found it along with a place to get coffee. AMERICAN STYLE (and it wasn't at Starbucks, although this is ALWAYS an option in Europe). No more of this espresso crap.



Vienna was mostly pretty boring. And I say mostly mozart due to the vast amount of gift shops with this title, as well as the numerous men dressed in period costume trying to invite you to a symphony or something. As someone who doesn't appreciate classical music, I didn't really have much appreciation for Vienna.

The coolest things we saw were all in museums. They have this area called Museumsquartier where they have a bunch of art museums. We hit up the Museum Moderner Kunst (Modern Art Museum) one day...they had a sweet exhibition on this Austrian artist named Maria Lassnig. Shes currently like 90 years old and still painting massive pieces.



Also in the Museumsquartier is the Kunsthalle...which is an exhibition hall for really contemporary art, or as they describe themselves, "cool and disturbing art". The current show was called Sex and Crime. The Sex part was titled "The Porn Identity" and had stuff by Marcel DuChamp...then had pornos, movies about porn, one of the statues from the bar in "A Clockwork Orange":



The Crime portion was pretty cool and hard to define. It was really dark and had a room where you could listen to Miles Davis, a room where you could listen to readings of "The Halloween Tree" by Ray Bradbury stuff by Poe...etc. Then there was an installation by some sort of pretentious artist named Banks Violette who's works were about the glamorization of violence in America. My favorite part of the show was a section on Weegee, a street photographer in the 20s-40s who was known for his photos of murders/criminals/dead bodies...



Also saw the Hapsburg's imperial palace at Schönbrunn. Kind of put Versailles to shame.




Also went to the Belvedere another palace that has been converted into a massive art museum. This place houses Gustave Klimt's "The Kiss":




They had a special show on Alfonse Mucha...one of my favorites. He's a Czech artist who did a lot of posters...but also did everything from paintings to engravings to jewelry design and also designed the Slavic Pavillion for the Paris World's Fair in 1900.




We took the tram to Grinzing, a really cute little town where we were supposed to be able to see all of Vienna...turns out you had to hike like 3 miles uphill to achieve this. We did it, then we ate Käsestreusel and Apfelstreusel with a cup of Viennese coffee (called a melange, I guess).



I guess looking back Vienna wasn't as lame as it felt at the time...but I don't think its one of my favorites.

european vacation part 1: berlin

I really don't know how to begin writing about the past two weeks...so I'm going to do it in the most organized fashion-by country. I'd rather just bullet a few things but I'm sure that won't satisfy your voracious curiosities.

So after an overnight train from Paris Gare-Est to Berlin HBF Tricia and I hopped on the S-Bahn to our hostel...weirdest place ever. Called Generator hostel. Theme colors blue, lime green, silver. Eurotrash. But it was a surprisingly nice hostel with free breakfast and terrible watered down Tang.



Berlin was one of my favorite cities because of the history-90% of the city was destroyed in WWII so almost everything there is new, which is so different from the rest of Europe. Berliners sort of have a 'tude that matches their history (meaning what? I don't know. but I liked it.)

I enjoyed my fair share of bratwurst, currywurst, and various other wursts there...as well as Berliner (?) the local brew. Basically PBR.

Another favorite part of Berlin was Oranienburger Straße where we found this old building that had been converted into a bunch of artist's studios. Behind the building were a couple of makeshift bars, big sculptures and lots of sand. Old box trucks converted into studios and hang-outs. Quite possibly the coolest/weirdest thing I've ever seen. The building itself was filled with trash and the walls were covered in years worth of graffiti. There were strange characters in corners of the building, including a man in a Jordan jersey (Wizards, not Bulls...?) who mumbled incoherently at us. Artists working in their studios, and confused tourists like us also populated the space.






Other notable sites:

the Berlin Wall...kind of anticlimactic, and encased in fencing.

the Reichstag-Parliament meets here, and the building was burned down (allegedly by a communist...this instigated the banning of the Communist Party in Berlin) and rebuilt in 1999. There's a cool dome on top that was added so the people could "see democracy" and so that there were no walls between the government and the people...very poetic.



book burning memorial-located at the place where Hitler ordered the burning of around 20,000 books. The memorial is a set of bookshelves below ground that supposedly can hold these 20,000 books. Now as a reparation Humboldt University (the University located there...Einstein "thought" here...Karl Marx too) and the Gov't holds a book sale at this spot daily.

Overall, Berlin was a nice break from Paris...the people aren't well-dressed or pretentious, the weather was awesome, and it was nice to be in a "modern" city.

la phonetique

One test, one paper between me and eurotrip '09. I am currently sitting in my room reading things like this aloud to myself:

eau-eux
dos-deux
seau-ceux
beau-boeufs
faux-feu
veau-veut

"Belle marquise, vos beaux yeux me font mourir d'amour."
"D'amour mourir me font, belle marquise, vos beaux yeux."
"Vos yeux beaux d'amour me font belle marquise, mourir."
"Mourir vos beaux yeux, belle marquise, d'amour me font."
"Me font vos beaux yeux mourir, belle marquise, d'amour."

How Molière has a way with syntax.

(This is in preperation for my phonetics test in 2.5 hours)

And as my insane teacher says: "if your face doesn't hurt you're not doing it right".

My face doesn't hurt.

avril, deja?!

So it's already April, and spring break is in 8 days! Meaning I get on a train headed to Berlin, then Vienna, then Rome, then Bern. This trip is destined for disaster. But I am excited.

Last week Miles visited and we took the train to Nantes (about 2 hours west of Paris) and saw Animal Collective (his birthday present). I was incredibly impressed with his ability to stay mostly awake for the entire day and stick it out til 1 am. I went to sleep at about 8pm the first night I was in Paris.

I'm too lazy to go into detail about the whole week, because it was mostly more of the same site-seeing stuff I've already told you all about. I will however list the things that were new for both of us...

• Musee d'Orsay-mostly 18th-19th century European art...very pretty, too much impressionism, however.
• Eiffel Tower-we went up it! And it was freezing cold and mostly unpleasant, but something you have to do!
• Musee d'Erotisme-we went at like 1 am (this museum boasts itself as the ONLY museum in Paris open til 2 am) so it was mostly empty and full of primitive looking erotic art that was really from the 20th century.
• the Sexodrome-stay away from the creepy private rooms on the second floor, unless you're in the market for that sort of thing.

We also did a lot of eating and drinking. We bought and consumed a fair amount of cheap wine and champagne. Champagne mixed with Orangina to be exact. Delicious. We also ate a lot of crepes and panini...gelato, tapas, flammenkueche, algerian couscous...

Miles got burned by hot chocolate, then received free beer and was offered to have his H&M eurotrash shirt dry cleaned by the restaurant, we declined this offer but took the free beer and dessert. Yum.



This week I went to the Fleche d'Or again and saw Ben Lee and some other french acts...I don't remember what they were called but one group was like hip-hop/jazz/folk if thats possible, then the next act was a really awesome chick who sang...Tricia says she was kind of like Bjork.

Here she is:


Also went to a bunch of open mics to see Tricia and Devin play...Its really interesting to hear the song choices of a lot of these Parisian musicians. Among the odder selections were Creep (on two separate occasions), Umbrella, and Like a Prayer. All acoustic.

The rockstars themselves:


This weekend we're going to Rouen/Giverny...More churches! And Monet's home-hopefully the weather stays awesome for that!

xopeace

S