Speaking of happenings, I just saw The Happening, and my main question is, what horrible event occurred in M. Night Shyamalan's life between The Village and Lady in the Water that killed his ability to write a script? Because the premise was pretty good, but the dialogue and acting were terrible. Anyway, plants made people kill themselves. I thought a good title would have been PLANTS! (But aha, I was dorky enough to spot Victoria Clark of The Light in the Piazza fame, a wonderful actress). The X-Files trailer was the most exciting part of the movie.
Then afterwards Tommy and I went to the Cafe Mozart, and I got some kind of dessert which involved strawberries and mousse inside a giant chocolate cone. I was a fan. They were showing the France vs. Netherlands game, and clearly everyone that worked there was for the Netherlands (actually, I think everyone in Austria is for anyone that is not Germany, France, or possibly Turkey). The Netherlands were winning while we there, and we left before it ended to avoid insanity on the U-Bahn, but I'm assuming they won and cheering for them. Yesterday Croatia beat Germany and nobody expected it because apparently Germany always wins. But they are saving their best players for last, and for teams better than Croatia.
Anyway, it is kind of fun and fascinating seeing people running around the streets draped in their country's flag and face-painted appropriately. I've witnessed lots of showdowns, mostly between Croatia and Austria, for who can be loudest. Austria is fun because I'm pretty sure they don't expect to win anything (apparently their team is pretty bad), but they are going to scream about how great Österreich is at every possible opportunity anyway.
Yesterday we had a tour of Parlament, which is completely beautiful inside. We got to sit in the seat of the President and pretend to be powerful, and try to understand the party-system here, which is definitely more complicated than anything America has ever had. Getting there was interesting, though. I luckily ended up on the same U-Bahn as Ruth, otherwise I'm not sure I would have figured it out. The Fanzone is blocking everything, and we had to take some weird route that involved her talking to a lot of security guards to get us in. And then I set off the metal detector anyway.
Later Rachel and I went to the Museum Moderne Kunst - the modern art museum. They had a huge exhibit called "Bad Painting, Good Art", about painters who deliberately use techniques considered bad in the art world, and create paintings that I generally thought were interesting. The bottom floor was the performance art floor, bizarre as usual. There were a lot of videos ofpeople injuring themselves, or doing various other vile things to make some kind of statement. But it's a little hard to focus on a statement when you're distracted by the blood gushing out of the naked guy's head.
And last weekend was the Wachau trip. Wachau is a valley region of Austria, along a river and full of old medieval towns with wineries, or Heurigen. We went to Melk and Durmstein, with a boat taking us from one to the next. In Melk we saw a huge old abbey, up high on a hill overlooking the valley. We had a tour of it, complete with the church and the royal hallway and all. The library possibly made some of us think we were in Beauty and the Beast. And we arrived in the church in time to hear the monks doing their midday prayer.
We then took the boat to Durmstein, a beautiful trip complete with ice cream and drunk Austrians yelling at us in an unintelligible dialect. In Durmstein, since it looked like a storm was approaching, we went straight to the winery. We were treated to a plate of various sausages and cheeses (and hey, I ate blood sausage before I knew what it was, but it actually was kind of good), and a spritzer. Some of us stayed afterwards to try the apricot schnapps the area is famous for, and I was definitely a fan. We took a tiny little train back to Vienna.
This past week I also saw The Sound of Music at the Volksoper in German. I loved it, and loved the translations, some of which were more amusing than anything else. But it still worked really well, perhaps better because they were all speaking the language they were supposed to be. The changes we all noticed are actually only different from the movie, but were always present in the stage version, apparently. It was interesting and a little uncomfortable to be sitting next to some old Austrians who might have been old enough to remember the German annexation, especially during the concert hall scene when giant swastikas were flying onstage and Nazis were marching through the audience. Anyway, the cast was perfect.
The roommate has gone to bed (and so must I).
So in conclusion,
"Tonight's story on The Twilight Zone is rather unique, and calls for a different sort of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States, and there's a little town called Peaksville. On a given morning not too long ago, the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone. Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Peaksville left untouched, or whether the village had somehow been taken away. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing: the cause. A monster had arrived in the village..."
(and the Netherlands won 4-1)
