The past few weeks have been BUSY. School has been the same as usual, but as spring comes closer and the realization that our time left in Austria is now below the 3 months mark (!) my friends and I have begun checking things off our bucket lists! Here's a sampling of some of the stuff I've been up to over the past couple of weeks.
Heurige Visit: Vienna is in the part of Austria famous for wine. We're between the Wachau valley and Styria, both known for producing delicious wine, meaning it's cheap and wonderful. With this wine culture comes a beautiful thing: Heurigen. Heurigen are seasonal restaurants, usually located in somewhat remote areas, and they time their openings based on the local wine's production cycle. Therefore, when you go to a Heurigen, you get very fresh, very cheap wine! They are often family-owned, small establishments and generally offer a selection of cheese and meat plates to go along with the wine, rathe than cooked hot meals (because let's be real, the wine is the main attraction).
My friend Annie lives in Krems, a delighful city on the Danube River, right in the Wachau, so a few weeks ago, a group of us gathered at one of the biggest and most popular Heurigen in the city. This was my first Heurige experience, and it certainly did not disappoint! The building looked like an old mill converted into a restaurant, so it was very rustic and cozy. The wine was incredibly cheap (I spent less than 4.50 on four glasses!) and super refreshing and delicious. The Austrian specialty wine is called Grüner Veltliner, and it is fantastic. If you ever find yourself in Austria, you MUST try it. Michelle and I shared a cheese assortment platter and a meat assortment platter, and it was the perfect compliment to the wine!
Michelle kindly took care of the pickle for me...
Annie's Aufstrichtsteller: a variety of spreads for the bread
For dessert we had "Rotweinkuchen"--aka heaven on a plate. Saying that it was amazing would be the understatement of the century. I would actually get in a physical fight over this cake. One person remarked that they could bathe in it. It was that delicious. Most cake in Austria is really dry but this was super rich and moist and perfect. The Heurige had really relaxed atmosphere, so we could sit there for as long as we wanted. We hung out for about three and a half hours, enjoying each other's company and "awwing" at all the adorable babies that were also there. The whole evening was delightful. Call me a mega-fan of this aspect of Viennese/East Austrian culture!
I need more of this stat.
The Musikverein: My friend Johanna teaches at a specialty Gymnasium, for musicians, and she sings with their choir. Their orchestra and choir had a concert a few weeks ago and she invited a bunch of us to attend! the concert was in the Musikverein, the most beautiful concert hall in the city, if not the country, if not Europe! This is the site of the famous Vienna Philharmonic New Years Eve concert, broadcast all over the world. I can't imagine what it was like to perform there, but I would expect it's kind of like American high school kids getting the chance to play in Carnegie Hall (if not even more awesome). What's really great about the Musikverein is how small it is--so the sound travels really well and the music has a great rich quality to it. I really enjoyed the concert itself (those kids are IMPRESSIVE) and just the experience of finally going into this hall I've seen pictures of so many times! I'll be going back in a few weeks for a concert with my parents!!
Easter Market: You'll remember the magnificent charm and perfection of the Christmas Markets from previous blog gushing, so you can only imagine how delighted I am that some form of these babies is back: Easter Markets!!! I wandered through one of these markets with some friends last Friday, and they really are quite similar to the Christmas markets, with little huts selling drinks, cheeses, meats, pastries, and all sorts of fun crafts, but of course the crafts are Easter-themed! Probably the coolest part of the market we went to was the display of painted eggs. The tradition in Germany and Austria is to hang these eggs on trees using ribbons, kind of like christmas ornaments. The eggs were beautifully decorated and so bright and colorful and creative--I wanted to buy them all.
If only they had a "teaching assistant" placard.
I can't wait to visit more Easter Markets in the next few weeks. There's on at Schönbrunn, which is already perfect and beautiful, and an Easter market can only make it more so. Until next time!!
The primary reason for going to Munich was the Lumineers concert, and it was nothing short of amazing. The opening band was called Langhorne Slim & The Law. I had never heard them before, but I really enjoyed their stuff. They were a kind of bluegrass, folk, rock fusion, if you will, with really incredible instrumentals. Most of their stuff was SUPER catchy and mostly they were just a blast to watch/listen to. And, seeing instruments like a banjo and harmonica and made me feel so at home!! (I never thought that I, a California girl, would find myself nostalgic for a banjo....).
You can see the totally sick banjo-ing going on in the video below:
At the end of the opening set, the Lumineers came out and the bands played a song together, which was just adorable, and I wanted to go onstage and sing along with them because they looked like they were having so much fun!
Then the Lumineers came out. Oh man. I'd say they were even better live than they are on their CD, which I think says a lot about a band. They were fun, and beautiful, and transitioned from dance party to emotional ballad so perfectly. At one point they came out into the audience with acoustic guitars and hand-held percussion instruments, and stood on these boxes in the middle of the crowd to sing one of their most popular songs, which required audience participation. At that point they were less than 5 feet from where we were standing. It was such a cool thing to do. They also requested that everyone put cameras and phones away and "just be with us in this moment" so I didn't take any pictures of that. But here are others:
They played every single song on their album and one new song, which was a duet between the lead singer Wesley and the cello-player Neyla, and it might be one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. I cannot wait for their new album to come out so I can listen to that song over and over again! At the very end they brought Langhorne Slim back out and they again all played a song together (The Violent Femmes' "I Like American Music"--I cheered a lot during that one...I've been feeling super patriotic lately).
Here are some videos I took of the Lumineers playing. In order the songs are: Flowers In Her Hair, Stubborn Love, and Ho Hey
If you have the chance to see these guys live, GO. All four of us absolutely loved every minute of the night, and on the train ride home the next day we all decided we just wanted to rewind 12 hours and experience it all one more time. And then again. And then again.
DISCLAIMER: This post about my weekend in Munich contains a lot of weird, bizarre, crazy, puzzling, confounding, other synonyms, and downright insane events/people.
Back in November, while sharing a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my friends Hannah, Michelle, and Annie, someone mentioned that the band The Lumineers was doing a European Tour, and would be coming to Munich in March. We quickly learned that all of us love the band, and within a week we had bought tickets and booked a hostel, four months in advance. This means I've been looking forward to this weekend for a super long time, and now that it's over, I can say with full confidence that it vastly exceeded the already high expectations I had!
Our adventure began before we even got to Munich. While on the train from Salzburg to Munich (which was delayed because of technical difficulties, and which continued to make terrifying creaks and groans throughout the journey, causing us to at several points fear for our safety) we encountered several interesting folk. About 20 minutes after leaving Salzburg, we heard an awful retching sound, and once an unpleasant odor arrived, our suspicion was confirmed: the gentleman sitting behind us had vomitted on the train. We're not sure whether he was drunk or sick, but either way, it was unpleasant. While Annie and Michelle went to seek out a new place for us to sit, Hannah and I watched our stuff, but when the scouts returned, they brought more crazy news. Apparently just after we crossed the border into Germany, a pair of gentlemen in plain clothes walked up to a passenger, asked for a passport, and when he failed to display one, took him into another car, patted him down, and eventually handcuffed him, and took him off the train at the next stop. I was sitting down, so I couldn't see this happening, but Michelle was giving me a play-by-play, which made the situation all the more dramatic. Of course we began speculating what could have happened, and my mind jumped immediately to "international fugitive taken by undercover agents just after crossing the border into their jurisdiction, drugs or heist money may be involved" but a conversation with a nice Austrian woman later on revealed that it was likely an immigration issue, which apparently happens relatively often (she rides this same train every week, so I imagine she sees it a lot). Either way, it was quite intense.
We then engaged in conversation with this nice lady who gave us some gems of wisdom as her parting words: "Don't fall in love with any men from around here. It get's complicated." Good to know.
As we were getting off the train we met some nice Mormon boys on their mission from (you guessed it) Utah. They even had name tags that said "Elder _____". I then had "I Believe" from the Book of Mormon stuck in my head the rest of the day.
And then, the first thing we saw when we walked into our hostel, was that we had two Orthodox Jewish boys staying in our room. Mormons on the train and Jewish boys in our room--hey there, diversity!
I'm jumping a head a bit, but to continue with the "weird" portion of the weekend, our hostel room turned out to be the home of an incredibly diverse and equally bizarre set of characters, including a boy who enjoyed power-walking in and out of the room several times before 6 AM, while wearing snow pants (there was no snow) so as to maximize the amount of swishing noise he made while walking. There was also a middle-aged italian woman who enjoyed waving to our skylight, charging her phone in Michelle's bed (even though her own bed also had an outlet), spreading her things all over everyone else's bed, and staring strangely at everyone, thereby freaking them out. This is in addition to the two Jewish boys, one of whom had his iPhone stolen at one point in the week, meaning the rest of us were freaked out about our own things--needless to say we were pretty relieved when we made it safely through the weekend with all of our things (and our minds) intact.
Anyway, enough of the creepy, onto the fun! Friday night was Michelle's birthday, so we headed to a traditional Bavarian beer hall to celebrate! The atmosphere in this place was absolutely wild. It was completely packed, but luckily we found a place at the end of a table. The other end was occupied by a bunch of 25-30 year old German men, one of whom was wearing lederhosen. The way these beer halls go, you share huge tables with lots of different parties, so we ended up chatting with these guys, and they proved to be incredibly entertaining. Even though we eventually learned some of their names, we like to refer to the main characters by nicknames which, I believe, convey their personalities well. There was "Tracht Tommy" (his name was actually Tommy, and he was the fella clad in Lederhosen with white classic Reebok sneakers, which completed the ensemble very nicely), "Mr. New York" (so called because he talked to me for ages about how much he loves New York), "Cartilage Piercing" (self-explanatory) and "Creepy McCreeperson" (also self-explanatory). They were actually super super friendly and very nice and interesting people, and I really enjoyed talking to them. It's nice to be in a place where the German is similar to the German I learned in school, without strange dialects or Austrian accents, so I could understand them so much more than the average Austrian. Plus, the food and the beer were awesome. This was definitely an excellent start to our Munich Weekend.
Post-dinner nighttime stroll through the snow-covered Oktoberfest grounds to see the massive Lady Bavaria statue
Schweinbraten mit Kartofelknodel und Dunkelbiersoße
yummmmmm
On Saturday morning we went into the city center to see the famous Munich Rathaus Glockenspiel, which went on for about 15 minutes, and was kind of a let-down, but still fun! The clock is in the tower of the Rathaus, the city hall, and there were TONS of people lined up to watch. Before the "show" started though, we had to stand around and listen to this awful man who was speaking into a microphone in the square (you can see his white canopy in the picture below) about his fierce opposition to the proposal to build a Mosque nearby. Apparently this guy (or his cronies) are out there and in various other parts of the city for hours and hours every Friday and Saturday, spouting their hateful crap, and they were actually successful in getting people to sign their petition. Of course, he has the right to free speech, so he can say and do what he wants, and there were police around to make sure nothing got out of hand, but it was incredibly infuriating. Anyway, there's a video of the Glockenspiel below--sorry it's sideways, I can't figure out how to turn the video around!
After the Glockenspiel, we did a lot of wandering, visiting the Frauenkirche, St. Peter's Kirche (including a climb to the top of the tower, 306 steps up, to a stunning view of the city around us), the Viktualienmarkt, and the famous Hofbräuhaus (another very famous Beer Hall, where I got a pretzel that was literally bigger than my head, and we all know that I have a really large head). The Hofbräuhaus also had a really awesome atmosphere, that I tried to capture on video below, but it's kind of a lame attempt. You can hear the band playing though, which is super fun!
Inside the Frauenkirche, the major cathedral
From the top of St. Peter's
View of Rathausplatz from the tower
Frauenkirche from above
Lunch of Currywurst with Bratkartoffeln at the Viktualienmarkt!
YUM
The band! More people (actual customers) were dressed like this throughout the hall, too!
The whole place is huge and beautiful--I love the painted ceilings
We had a few hours before the concert that night, and the sun had finally come out by then, so Annie and I decided to wander a bit more and see more of the city. Munich is a really really beautiful place. We saw lots of pretty buildings but the best part of this adventure was the part when we accidentally stumbled upon a huge gathering of teenagers that turned out to be a Harlem Shake Flash Mob. We had NO idea what was going on but we saw a bunch of people wearing funny costumes and some people with cameras, all gathered in this public square, so we waited around as more and more people showed up. The next thing we knew we were in a gigantic crowd of people jumping and chanting and screaming and cheering, and we went along with it, hoping we weren't joining in on some kind of fascist political rally, until we finally asked some girls behind us what was going on, and they said this was the making of a Harlem Shake video! Considering I didn't even know what a Harlem Shake was until about 2 weeks ago, this was quite a new experience! It was hilarious and so much fun, and I've since been searching YouTube daily to find the finished product! This video shows the kind of crazy going on, but I imagine eventually a video will actually be edited into a "classic" Harlem Shake and then I can say that I was part of this ridiculous internet phenomenon, albeit accidentally!
Hofgarten in the sunlight!
Beautiful church next to the square where the mob happened
State Opera House
FINALLY Saturday night rolled around and the main event of the weekend was here: The Lumineers Show!!! But I'm going to give the event its own blog post, to properly convey its awesomeness, so stay tuned for that, coming soon
