You better watch out or Krampus will get you!

Christmas time in Wien:

I know Christmas is over but the Christmas season is a big part of Viennese culture. 

All around the city starting right around thanksgiving, you'll find Christmasmarkts. These are delightful way to get ready for the Holiday season: little wooden huts completely decked out with ornaments and crafts, schnitzel stands, apfelstrudel, chestnuts roasting, and warmed wine and drinks called glüwein and punsch. Yummy. 

 Trees decorate with giant snowman, heart, guitar, you name-it lights at the Rathaus Christmasmarkt. 

Typical ornament stand

Schönnbrunn Christmasmarkt

Salzburg Christmasmarkt

 Still wondering what a Krampus is? Well without further adieu- Krampus:

This devilish creature is part of a terrifying tradition. When Christmasmarkts open up, people dress up with huge grotesque masks and carry around sticks to hit you with if you are being bad. The original legend of Krampus says that if kids misbehave, Krampus will take them back to hell with him. Yeah, pretty scary. Luckily I did not see a Krampus in person but these costumes are so huge that when they come up to you and tease you, you are not allowed to touch them because they could fall over and get injured from the weight of the costume. I think they wear or drag giant cowbells to announce their arrival too. 

Modern day Krampi:

Last month shenanigans

I couldn't possibly accurately relate all of the things I've been up to in the last month but since you all enjoy my pictures, I will try to spare you from my long and detailed stories and just get to the good parts.

It was pretty sad to miss thanksgiving for the first time ever but the delicious food we made and having leftovers for 3 nights helped console me and my sorrows:

Two of my housemates were from New Zealand and Korea and had never really celebrated thanksgiving before, so we did our best to have all of the necessary items. 

My first real fußball game:

USA VS. AUSTRIA

It was everything I expected to find at a European sporting event

We got there and the stadium was blasting silly Austrian songs just before the game started, everyone got a flag and noisemakers and was chanting and yelling lots of things in German. There was a huge  crazy fan section with insanely huge flags (like 15 ft.) and a percussion section. I guess the game didn't count for anything so our team didn't try very hard and lost but it was still fun and our crazy USA student section entertained all of the austrians around us :)  

Salzburg round II: 

I had another great time in Salzburg. Alone this time, I decided to venture to the valley where the opening scene to the sound of music was filmed. Venture, I did! I almost got on the wrong train going to Salzburg and got there an hour later than planned so I started running out of daylight which I didn't think would cause problems until I found myself alone on a completely wooded mountain with no light. I thought I was going on a normal walking trail to the valley, but it was more of a crazy steep hike on a road with no sidewalks or safe place to walk. Not my brightest idea.The sun set earlier than I hoped and I had to decide whether or not to keep going a half hour and make it to the valley with no daylight left, or to head back and try to get back to the town by the time there was no daylight left. I was pretty freaked out to be by myself in the woods to be perfectly honest and as I was contemplating what to do, I unfortunately thought "What if there are bears in here?!" That knocked the indecisiveness right out of me and I immediately started jogging back down the hill. I made it down the mountain just in time, got some delicious soup, walked around the desolate town, and hopped on a bus back to Salzburg. 

I was bummed to have failed checking off that experience of belting "the hills are alive" in that valley but I am just happy I didn't get attacked by wild animals or learn any lessons the hard way. 

The next day, I hit the fortress for a few hours. Built starting in the 1300s, the castle had a lot of cool medieval stuff: weapons, kings' chambers, all the good stuff.

One of the coolest exhibits was the marionettes, they actually perform full operas with them!

What's more exciting than old instruments!? It sounds lame but there was a great exhibit with instruments dating back to the medieval ages too.

 I can't remember what this one is made out of exactly but I believe wood. It's called the serpent and you can see they even painted it like serpent/snake creatures. 

Let's see other than that:

I got to sit in on a Vienna Philharmonic rehearsal!! The brass coach at IES who played in the phil for 30 years hooked us up and I got to listen to Also Sprach Zarathustra. Going to a rehearsal was way cooler than a performance because we got to hear the epic opening multiple times. My entire body was literally vibrating from the sound of the organ. Righteous. Man that was unbelievable. Those guys just don't mess up. ever. 

I befriended two Austrian girls I got to play a trumpet trio with. My trumpet teacher needed a fanfare for some award ceremony at the conservatory so she asked me to play with two other students of hers. One was from Korea and has been living in Wien for a few years and the other girl was born and raised in Austria. It was fun working with them and practicing my german. We often just nodded and laughed because they couldn't understand what on earth I was trying to say but we all had fun. 

Went ice skating in town and started a giant conga line/dance party with all of the kids there. There were some teenage boys that were particularly excited to be ice skate-conga lining with us. 

Visited the Imperial library

Look familiar? The library Beast gives to Beauty in the Disney movie is modeled after this one.

The nutcracker at the opera house:

Absolutely stunning. Their costumes were incredible. Those sugar plum fairies must have gotten theirs at Tiffany's. 

Two days before leaving I got to check of the last item on my bucket list:

The second largest cemetery in Europe. I got to see some of the greatest and most influential musicians' graves. 

Mozart

And one of my all time favorite composers

I bring a whole new meaning to the term "wrecking ball"

I didn't think it was actually going to happen but I finally got to go to a real Viennese ball! It was everything I imagined and more. I definitely felt like a princess, minus the grace and poise (and the prince charming) of course... but a princess nonetheless!

It was the Rotkreuzball (Red Cross Ball) and was very similar to prom, only, the ball had real class. I went with a bunch of music students and did the typical dance things: went out to dinner first, took lots of pictures, and danced all night long. 

Most of the people there were older Viennese citizens so everyone was in ball gowns and tuxedoes. The ball was in the Rathaus which is a beautiful government building that looks like a castle.




The theme had something to do with Japan so the tables had beautiful white flowers and hand made paper cranes everywhere. We unfortunately didn't realize that there was nowhere to sit if you didn't reserve a table so as cheap college students, we had to stand all night and but luckily there was plenty of dancing to do!



When we walked in, it was like being in Hollywood. They stop you and take your picture on the red carpet but also hand you gifts! I took home a pair of gold earrings, some decorations, and the best gift of all, pastries.

The ball opened with the presentation of the debutantes, all in white poofy dresses, tiaras, gloves, etc. and they waltzed beautifully. There was a full, live orchestra which was so awesome and after the beautiful young people danced, the dance floor opened up to anyone who wanted to dance. After watching the debutantes waltz I was pretty intimidated so I sat the first dance out. Waltzing looked way faster than I remembered and I couldn't remember any of the steps.

But someone asked me to dance by the second song so I said 'what the heck,' jumped right in, and well, it was entertaining for both me and the bystanders. I was first a little shocked just to be in Vienna waltzing to a live orchestra in basically a castle. Second, nervous that I would trip all over the place and embarrass my poor partner, and third, getting spun around like a drying machine! It was like bumper cars out there. Those old people have a lot of spunk! Since everybody is spinning around you don't really have control of what's happening, especially if you're the lady. So everyone is bumping into each other. I did okay and luckily my first partner spoke english very well and was nice enough to show me the steps. I definitely looked like a newb, watching my feet the whole time, but I think I did respectably. At least for my standards.



After a bit of dancing there were some solo performances which included two very beautiful and very dramatic singers. The guy was a typical beautiful Austrian who had a great voice. We thought he might be someone famous so we took a fan girl picture with him.

Francisco (from Chile) and Andrea (Chicago)

After the concert things got a little crazy. Just kidding, more like a lot crazy! The line dancing started at midnight and this was when the party really started. Anyone that was left went out onto the dance floor and made huge lines. The orchestra played some really fun polka-ish music and everyone did the steps to some super complicated line dancing choreography. We wanted to join but it looked so difficult. I wasn't going to do any line dancing but then our whole group decided to just go for and we made such huge fools of ourselves but it was such a blast. The orchestra would play for a minute or two, stop, and then play again but it got faster each time. You march forward, backwards, bow, criss-cross, spin around, and do all sorts of things that we never quite got the hang of. The people watching were cracking up at our group trying to figure out what the heck was going on but 2 min. into the line dancing we gave up on trying to be poised and graceful and just had fun. The best part of the line dancing was when in between each set couples would gallop all the way down the row and back to their spot. I galloped once with a friend and caused a trainwreck haha. Everyone probably thought we had too much champagne but oh well!

After that I forgot about how much my feet hurt and danced for the next two hours. There was a 'disco' room that had fun lights and american music (people were still waltzing in there which was weird but we showed them how it's really done) and a waltzing only room.

I danced with one more Austrian, Johannes, who was super nice and tried to teach me some different dances but I unfortunately started getting worse! I accidentally made him trip big time and I could not keep up with the tempo. My friend got it all on video and I'd post it here but you'll probably see it on youtube as the next most viral video. Ay carumba.


All in all, it was one of the most memorable experiences I think I'll have this semester and I'm so glad I was able to go! Although I looked like bambi trying to walk on ice out there I was definitely inspired and really want to start learning how to ballroom dance. Look out dancing with the starts, here I come!

Hallstatt- another day another mountain

I know I said that Wachau was the most gorgeous place I've ever been but I think Hallstatt takes the cake. I learned about this ancient town in my Art and Architecture class but forgot about it until my roommate Pauline showed me pictures of it online. And then I realized I absolutely had to go. 

We originally planned to go on a saturday but poor little me was just too 'sick' to go to class on friday when the weather just happened to be absolutely perfect so my roommate and I hopped on a train and went to the alps! (I do NOT condone skipping class but I think this was a pretty good excuse) It was definitely worth it as you can see, we had a incredible day. 

 Hallstatt a teensy tiny town built right into the side of a mountain located in western Austria. You have to take a ferry to get there which is just too dang perfect. 

The sun often slipped behind the peaks of the mountains because they were crazy high which created great effects for picture taking but dropped the temperature to 'I can't feel my fingers or my toes.' 

This more than ancient town was actually founded in believe it or not 500 BC!! When the celtic people and german tribes discovered the plethora of salt under the mountains they started mining and today Hallstatt holds the record for oldest salt mine in the world.

After walking through the town which only took about an hour we started the hike. Of course the easy trail was closed due to rockfall so our only option was the stairs. Ouchy, ouchy, ouchy. By the time we got up to the top my muscles already hurt and the way back down was a little scary with shaky legs. 

When we finally did make it up to the top there was no one else up there which was awesome so we didn't have to deal with tourists and got to fully soak in the sights. Plus we could then yodel as loud and long as we liked. That was pretty satisfying.

Pauline out on the observation deck that stuck out waaay out over the water. I love the feeling of flying and don't mind heights but I was clutching on to the sides for dear life this time. 

Another mountain you can only see from up on top of the trail. 

We packed some dinner for a picnic in the alps and listened to "Pines of Rome" and other soundtracks while eating. Climbing up there and seeing those alps was probably one of the most epic things I'll ever do. I always picture this type of scenery when I listen to my favorite soundtracks so actually getting to be there was a tremendous experience. 

Another wonderful weekend. Wachau!

The weekend after Prague was also jam-packed with fantastic things!

Friday night my apartment had a baking party and I made this wonderful creation:

Mom you would be so proud I did it without any help and no one died!!
It's not austrian but it's still incredible. Apple caramel pull-apart bread. YUM.

On Saturday, I went to probably one of the most epic concerts I'll ever get to see. My favorite conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, who is world-famous and probably the best conductor of this generation, conducted the Vienna Philharmonic playing Beethoven 9 for the Musikverein's (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's concert venue) 100th birthday. It was a BIG celebration. The tickets were tres expensive and I felt really spoiled as I sat in one of the private boxes in a ball gown. It would have been great to sit there very properly and act like some type of young and important royal person but we were running late and came flying into the concert hall just before it started. Not so graceful. However, it seems like every awesome event/adventure I have starts with a quick sprint so I suppose it was necessary.

There were camera crews and photographers all over and I'm hoping they'll sell DVD's of it that I can buy someday because it was incredible. I was sooo excited when Gustavo walked out onto the stage and from the moment he lifted his hands to start the concert, passion and energy just flowed out of him. It was also the first time I got to hear the Vienna Phil play live. Holy cow. The most fantastic sound I've ever heard. Like butter. It was hard to take in where I was and what an event I was a part of and I took away a lot of inspiration to go home and practice. I also watched more interviews with Gustavo and decided to add meeting him (ideally playing under him) to my bucket list. He's not just a genius of a conductor, but a really wonderful and inspirational person as well. 

 

Sunday might have even been more fun than Salzburg. My whole apartment signed up to go on the day trip with IES to Wachau and we had a blast. In the morning we drove to a monastery, Melk, built by the Hapsburgs as an attempt to get a bishop to come to Vienna. It was a beautiful building with the most bedazzled baroque church probably in all of Europe. I think the pictures speak for themselves:

So many cherubs!

Imagine playing phantom of the opera on that bad boy!

My favorite part is definitely the crown floating above. 

We got a short tour inside that had lots of neat things like chalices, vestments, relics, etc. The coolest part of the monastery was definitely the library though. Imagine the beauty and the beast library times 10. It took 13 rooms with double rowed shelves to hold all of the books. Can you say nerd heaven!? Some of the books also date back to around the 500s. 

Wine country 

After the monastery we learned some drinking songs and drove to this cozy restaurant where I had pork and a big fat dumpling for lunch out in wine country and then got to hiking. 

That little castle waaay up on top of the mountain was our destination but that was no problem for this expert mountain hiker!

Just kidding, I was definitely the last one up but in my defense that was due to my obsession with nature photography. I got some great shots though.

On the way up

Taking a break and basking in the sun like a lizard on this sweet rock

 

Made it to the top! Gorgeous view and in the middle there is the Danube

A piece of the castle ruins. This castle doesn't exist anymore but there are still some remains from the original structure. 

"Jenna, you're on top of the world, strike a pose!"

?

Our group had a lot of fun on top of the ruins and begged the staff not to leave but alas we had wine tasting to attend. Poor us! As this was my first official wine tasting, I'd say other than Italy, there couldn't have been a better place to do it.

You could say I enjoyed it

Here I'm trying Stürm which is baby wine. It's nice and sweet because it isn't fully fermented yet. But be careful, more than two glasses and it won't be so sweet anymore. Once you drink it this stuff continues to ferment in your body. ew. If you like sweet, I'd definitely recommend stürm. 

My favorite kind of white we had. They served cold cuts for dinner which was pretty weird and maybe not the best option when you're doing a lot of wine tasting. Maybe that's why the austrians have so much fun at meals...

The Wachau trip ended with a sleepy bus ride and then a second dinner with all of my roommates as soon as we got home. The cold cut austrian dinner didn't quite cut it so we made everything we had in the fridge. Perfect day, phenomenal weekend.