The person we're looking at is Annie Gilliland, 21 years old, surviving in Vienna, Austria for two more weeks...

Recently The Twilight Zone has made its way back into my life, and my friends and I watch episodes online and wish that Rod Serling was narrating our lives.  I'm trying to memorize his long monologue from "It's a Good Life", one of the best episodes, just so I can appear at a startling place in someone's life and start saying it, and they would know some freaky stuff was about to happen.

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) 

geh mal tanzen ja ja!

Another successful weekend of Get to Know Vienna.  Things I did, probably out of order:

Found the Kriminalmuseum, basically a large, graphic archive of Vienna's worst crimes and methods of punishments for them.  It began with the usual displays of torture instruments from the Middle Ages complete with complex German descriptions we could not understand (The Sacher Stuhl - we swear they made witches sit on the chair and then force-fed them Sachertorte).  But then it went on to the truly disgusting/morbidly fascinating collection of information and pictures about all the worst murders that have taken place here.  Why did so many crazy men own hatchets in the first place?  Also, why did so many people have completely creepy death masks made of family members?  Anyway, the museum was in a medieval buildings, which was pretty cool itself.

Saw Indiana Jones 4.  Assumed that Stephen Spielberg has not lost his talent, and therefore blamed George Lucas for all that was wrong with it.  ("Hey Stephen, your dialogue is looking a little too decent here, let me make a few edits.  Hey Stephen, we should create scenes that make it appear that Harrison Ford can't act anymore at all.  Also, Indy should fight ALIENS!")  Ugh.

Night at the Zwölf Apostelkeller, good as always.  Dealt reasonably well with a possibly-insane waiter.  

Night of Creative Writing Majors Talking About Things They Can't Talk About With Anyone Else Because No One Else will Understand was also great, and lasted for about 3 hours in a bar somewhere.

Yesterday Rob, Rachel and I went to a church from the Jugendstil, which was beautiful outside but costs to get into, so we just walked in circles around it.  It also happened to be on the edge of the Wienerwald, which we proceeded to romp through.  We found fields, tai chi, awkward old women, and ticks.  There was a cafe back at the edge of town where we dined on soup and wurst.  

I gathered with fellow American friends to be American and eat delicious sloppy joes (seriously Suzanne, how was that possible, I never even liked them before but they were so good), and watch kind of bad yet entertaining TV.  Eurovision, Europe's answer to American Idol, except not and way more legitimate since it's been on since the 1950s.  Every country enters one singing act to compete, and they only show the semifinals and the final.  I only saw the final, and concluded that Europe, on the whole, has horrible taste in music.  That Russian guy should not have won.  Greece should definitely not have come in anywhere near the top.  Bosnia and Spain were possibly actually good songs though, so of course no one liked that.  And what was not to like about Croatia, which featured old men dressed like the mafia singing old jazzy tunes, or Latvia, which had everyone dress as pirates?!  (Not to mention Finland, which was a screaming metal Finnish band).  But I was very entertained by the guy from Sweden trying to announce his country's results who was either just very drunk, couldn't speak English, or both.  And now I'm looking up that Bosnian song.  We spent an hour afterwards looking up early 90s German rap.

Rachel and I went to the crypt where Maria Theresia and crew are buried.  Basically all of the Hapsburgs are down there.  All the Franz Josephs and such.  Question: why did they use to make tombs so creepy?  What was with all the skulls?  We know they're dead!  But it was interesting to see all of that, especially Maria Theresia's enormous tomb, 20 billion times the size of everyone else's.

I saw Der Besuch der Alten Dame at Volkstheater, and understood it way better than when I had to read it in German class sophomore year.  It was so, so much more frightening onstage though.  I didn't understand that it was actually that scary.  But they did it with an amazing set, complete with a portrait that bled when chopped with an axe, and lots of lawnmowers to represent the collective mind.  And real gun shots, apparently.

Also saw a ballet at the Staatsoper.  Onegin from Tchaikovsky.  I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, and wished I could dance.  Also wished Onegin was not such a stupid man and felt sorry for all the characters.  And dealt with Italian tourists being far more obnoxious than us.

Today we were back in the Wald again, starting at the Lainzier Tiergarten, an old hunting ground for some rich guy who built a house for Sisi there, who, as predicted, hated it and continued to be stupid and spoiled.  There were rams and deer frequenting the place, but none of the promised wild boar (and we looked).  There were also many small children, including the bilingual family consisting of a very annoyed father, and Martin, who just would not get his shoes.  We ended up walking/hiking forever today, got up to the top of a foothill that overlooked all of Vienna, and went down the long way.  We covered a lot of ground.  Fortunately there was a cafe with some Spargelcremesuppe and Sachertorte to keep us all happy.  It is beautiful.  I want to live/camp in the Wienerwald.  

Wenn wir uns kennen...

Let's talk about Innsbruck/the best place I have ever been.

Friday morning Rob, Rachel S, Kevin, and I left on a train at 9:30 out of Wien Westbahnhof, headed for Innsbruck.  It was a crowded train, and mostly reserved, but after some searching we found four seats together.  It also became a boiling hot train as noon approached and there was no air.  But it was a beautiful ride through the countryside of Austria, with the hills getting bigger and bigger until they finally became mountains.  We hopped off at Salzburg to get some air for about five minutes, and just stood pointing at the mountains yelling "BERGEN!"  (Sometimes, when you know a word in Deutsch, you simply begin to loudly name everything around you, forgetting that everyone else there most likely has known that word for quite a long time).  We arrived in Innsbruck about five hours after we left.

Fortunately, walking with my backpack and bag in pants under the intense sun in Innsbruck was not too bad because the mountains visible around every corner were so beautiful.  Our hostel was fairly close to the train station, and probably the best place I have stayed yet while abroad.  It was more like a bed and breakfast, the only real difference being the hostel thing of you have to take care of yourself, which none of us minded.  The room was very nice, they gave us pasta to make for dinner, and we got an included breakfast in the cafe below every morning.  We probably annoyed the older Australian couple staying next door (there was hardly anyone else there) by singing loudly and I'm sure attractively late into the night, but oh well.

Friday evening was spent just wondering around town.  We found das goldenes Dachl, built in the early days of Tyrol.  We walked along the river as the sky was darkening.  We sat outside with ice creams, and made ourselves a nice feast for dinner back at the hostel.  Bizarrely-named cocktails at a bar later completed the evening.

The next day we got up (somewhat) early to go hiking.  We took a tram up into the mountains, into an outer village of Innsbruck that was in the fields.  It looked just like how I have always pictured Alpine culture and homes, and was gorgeous.  From there we took random paths, ending up running through fields below giant mountains, finding a lake that we couldn't really approach but could look at, and picnicking in the flowers.  We spent a lot of time traipsing around singing The Lord of the Rings theme because everything was so epic.  It was then unfortunately stuck in everybody's head the whole weekend, and if there were ever a few moments of silence, someone would inevitably begin to hum "da da dadada..."  I couldn't suppress the urge to run through the fields.  It was not possible to stand still.  I stared up at the mountains a lot, wondering about how they could possibly be snow-covered when it was so warm below, and wanting to be on a summit.  Ah well, for another trip.

We spent that evening again wandering around Innsbruck, and eventually sitting in the (admittedly lame and lacking-in-grass) Stadtpark, looking at the stars.  Everybody was tired and sore, and in my case a little sunburnt.

On Sunday we decided to hike up to the Bergisel, the giant ski jump used in the winter olympics in 1970-something.  It is pretty intimidating to look at, but very impressive to stand on top of.  The hike up took a lot of uphill, but was followed by a nice (although unnecessarily expensive) cable car up to the top.  We could see all of Innsbruck and all of the surrounding mountains.  

We found a path back down that began at a palace, inhabited apparently mostly by peacocks, which made strange noises at us and went into places labeled "private" like they owned the whole place.  Rob and I stopped there for a snack, and then we all continued back down.  The path we randomly chose was gorgeous, taking us along the river through the mountains for awhile, then back up over more hills to offer spectacular views.  I found a lot of places I wish I could have a house.  It began to rain a little, but unfortunately never got too bad, and really just made the forest smell good and the air a little cooler.  We found strange houses and dogs that appeared to bark at us, as well as a man in full business-clothes that seemed to be completely misplaced.  

Sunday evening we got standing-room (and then stealing-empty-seats-room) to The King and I in German at a local theatre.  I loved it, and was proud I could understand a good portion of it.  Again, some of the song translation were interesting.  "Getting to Know You" was more like "when we are all friends", or something.  The man who played the king was the best.  As per the theme of the weekend, we all noticed that it was very much The Sound of Music set in Bangkok.  

Speaking of the hills being alive, the next morning we found ourselves in Salzburg.  It was naturally also beautiful, but in a very different way from Innsbruck.  Salzburg looks very, very old and is full of palaces (but in a different style than those in Vienna).  We spent a lot of time figuring out where the movie was filmed and found the fountain, the steps, possibly the von Trapp house, and the mountain they escape on at the end.  The best/hottest part of the day was hiking up to a castle which we did not actually go in, but which was on a hill that offered views over all of Innsbruck and the mountains in the distance.  We came back down again on gorgeous wooded paths that lead through the backstreets by people's homes where I yet again wanted to live.  After dinner with an unhappy Italian waiter and time spent sitting by the banks of the river, we went back to the train station to go home.

And after a somewhat insane train ride on which we turned all the seats in our little compartments into beds and made everyone walking by uncomfortable, I am back in Vienna.  I miss the mountains.

He died on the road...

Feeling weird after seeing Into the Wild and now listening to sad guitarey-type songs, but today was probably the best day yet in Wien.

Yesterday was Arbeitertag, May Day to everyone else, and the Social Democrat Party through a celebration all over town, most of which my friends and I got up too late to see.  I did manage to hear the distant parade music while still being half-asleep in bed, and saw the remains of various socialist celebrations.  Everything was red.  We did indeed make it to the Fest at the Prater last night though.  We got there to a strange British country-rockish band playing, trying to say things to the audience in German, and messing up some grammar in their songs.  The Prater at night is insane.  The thrill rides that look questionable during the day look even more questionable lit up with neon lights in the night, making you wonder why human beings want to do some of these things to themselves.  I took approximately a hundred pictures of the Riesenrad at night, and they all came out lame.  It is beyond impressive when it just looks like a circle of floating lights.  We went on the smaller, more normal-sized ferris wheel, which still managed to freak me out with my fear of heights.  I don't know what it is.  Sometimes I am comfortable being up high, sometimes I am not.  But it was perfect timing, because the fireworks started while we were on it, so we saw them from up in the air.

We ended up staying at the Prater for awhile and sitting in a restaurant/Biergarten called Schweizerhaus, making ourselves feel gross with beer and fries.  But, a fun night.  We went home tiredly before the transportation stopped.

Today was a journey into the Wienerwald, or the Vienna Woods, the huge forest that begins to the east of Vienna and continues into the Alps.  I think it is the most gorgeous thing I have found since I've been abroad, and I was full of all the possible sappy pastoral sentiments all day long.  But I really do want to live in a field or a mountain or somewhere with lots of flowers.  We started out at the end of an U-Bahn line, took a bus up to the top of Kahlenberg (a foothill), and emerged at the top with a spectacular view, of which I took way too many photos.  We could see the mountains in the distance and all of Vienna laid out before us.  We picked a random path to hike back down through the woods, and were surrounded by trees for a good while until we emerged into a meadow and enjoyed watching a frantic dog run around for awhile.  A bit further down, we started to see the vineyards.  Vienna has its own vineyards and wineries on the edge of the city, and they were beautiful and reminded me of Italy.  I want to live there, maybe.  We eventually made it all the way back to the Donau (Danube) and then back into the city for an Austrian dinner of Knoblauchsuppe (my favorite Austrian food) and various types of Schnitzel.  

We saw Into the Wild tonight, so my day went from GREAT INSPIRING NATURE to INSPIRING THEN TERRIFYING NATURE.  My Lit and the Environment class talked about the story last year even though we didn't read it, so I knew most of what happened, but I apparently forgot the crucial, disturbing ending.  But I think I kind of loved the movie and am a big sucker for nature and spirituality and cliche lessons learned from being alone in the wilderness...things every nature writer of all time has written about.  I really want to read the book though, because Sean Penn seems to be an awkward director at times.

So,

FORESTS AND MOUNTAINS!  YAY!

Hunden.

Today was a very nice day, in which I finally walked through the Prater park.  It is huge and full of trees and meadows, things I have missed going from a small town in a valley to a big city.  There were dogs everywhere, but we couldn't touch any of them, which was just extremely upsetting.  However, there were a couple which bounded over to where we were lying and jumped all over us for awhile.  Tomorrow or sometime soon might bring an exploration into the Wienerwald.

Today also began the quest of Find Every Aida Cafe/Konditorei in Vienna...there are 26, according the website.  I've been to three now.

Last Monday a bunch of us got together at another Wohnheim to have a Passover feast.  Sometimes I am pretty sure I should be Jewish just for the food.  Matzahball Soup is delicious, as were all the other dishes.  It was also complete with the traditional four glasses of wine.

Last night, my friends and I went to the Zwölf Apostel-Keller again, one of my favorite cafes here.  It´s in an old Baroque cellar, and features various delicious deserts.  There are also the old men that roam around with a violin and accordion and play The Third Man theme every night.  As I was enjoying mz Glühwein and Topfenstrudel, I noticed a loose brick on the wall.  We pulled it out and found a package, full of notes from lots of countries in lots of languages.  We left one there as well, congratulating anyone on finding the hideout.  I was hoping that it would perhaps lead to a secret passageway.

Also, went to Prague recently.  Despite the fact that it rained the whole time and I have possibly not ever been wetter and colder for a whole day, it is a beautiful city and I want to go back.  We went on a very rainy tour, where we all probably looked a bit miserable and therefore got our tour guide to let us stop for a long lunch.  But the tour ended up in Prague Castle, which was pretty amazing.  The second day we found the Mucha/Dali exhibit, and I bought some Mucha prints because I loved pretty much everything he did.  We also went to a very old bar featuring old Czech men playing jazzy stuff and pretended to be writers.  Where was the absinthe?

And I now have my Innsbruck trip planned for the Pentecost holidays.  Innsbruck for two days and possibly a day trip into Salzburg on the last.  So excited ALPS!

I never knew Vienna before the war...

This was a good weekend, I believe.  It was, perhaps, a bit full of Der Dritte Man, but that is never a problem.  

Yesterday, two friends and I went on the tour, hosted by a strange little Austrian man whose entire family was so embedded within the movie and Graham Green's and Carol Reed's lives, that he may actually be a fictional character.  He walked with us to a lot of the main sites the movie was filmed at, and disillusioned us about some others (it is not actually possible to splash around in Viennese sewer waterfalls).  I enjoyed descending into an old bomb shelter to the tunes of Anton Caras' theme, to find someone strumming a zither at the bottom.  Can I please learn to play that?  Right after I learn the banjo.   Anyway, I took some cheesy skewed-angle black and white photos.

The most interesting part of the tour by far was a quirky old British woman who sounded a bit like Angela Lansbury crossed with someone who has sat inside with her cats for too long.  She was very defensive of everything about the film, saying of the entrance to the canals, "In Britain we would have made this a national monument!" and of the statues that could have been destroyed in the war, "In Britain we dismantled our statues and hid them in caves...in Wales!"  Another personal favorite was when she learned of some of the tricks of movie-making: "How deceitful, these film-makers."  I'm not sure the tour guide knew quite what to do with her.

It was interesting to watch the film again and finally recognize most of the places - beginning with the tackiest statue in the world at the very start, ending with the Zentralfriedhof.  

This weekend I also ventured to the Natural History Museum, which is also the Museum of Very Old Things.  Some of the preserved animals in there are from the 1800s.  I'm also almost positive they made some of them up.  Some of those cannot be real animals.  And I was apparently unaware of the number of bird species in the world.  And again, someone needs to remind me not to go in the insect exhibits.  But, a really cool museum.  And it even smelled like every other natural history museum!

We also had a couple of nights at bars this weekend, and a nice American dinner at TGI Friday's just for a little taste of gigantic, fried American portions, something which I have surprisingly been missing.  

I spent a couple of hours on a couple of days recently sitting in the Burg Park, which has magically sprung into a garten while I was apparently not looking.  I also wandered through the Steiernmarkt, an open-air market outside the Rathaus complete with plenty of people in Lederhosen, accordions, and lots of beer.  Actually, it was really fun, if not a bit intimidating.  

On Thursday night my grammar class met with a group of Austrian students who will be abroad in America next year (I am not sure what this has to do with learning grammar, but the Professorin is crazy, should be hosting an NPR show, and obviously doesn't care about actually teaching us).  Talking to them was interesting though.  In one of the groups, discussing cultural differences and perceptions of each other etc, we inevitably got into their views on America.  They, like most people, were able to separate the government from the people.  But I have realized that being abroad has at times made me slightly defensive of America, not of the actions of a stupid, careless government, but just of a country and its' people.  When I first left, I thought I would be embarrassed and quiet about where I was from.  But it's not necessary, and maybe self-defamatory to be so.  I'm not ashamed of being an American, and intelligent people can figure out why.

Now back to trying not to stress out about next year's classes, next year's housing, and life after college.

When your mind's made up, when your mind's made up...

I've been singing Once songs melodramatically down the streets of Vienna.

The rest of spring break went well. The best part of Paris was still climbing Notre Dame and pretending to be in Victor Hugo's book.  Paris is beautiful but not my favorite city, perhaps just because everywhere else I went and Vienna feel much, much safer.  But I did manage to successfully navigate the ridiculously confusing Paris metro system (really, are 14 lines necessary?), to the Paris regional trains, to Charles de Gaulle Airport, then into Vienna VIE, onto another train, and onto the U-Bahn by myself starting at 6:30 AM.  

Classes suddenly became a bit more real.  It looks like I might actually have to do work sometime in the near future, rather than just continue the extended vacation this has been so far.  I went to Greenpeace once, and then slept the next day because I was sick, so I really still need to get started on that.  But my work will be fairly easy, I just have to work on better comprehension of German so I can understand everything they are saying to me very quickly.  I am just going to grocery stores, buying products, and then entering lots of information about them into a computer database.  They are keeping track of products that have genetically altered ingredients or ingredients that are in other ways not organic, or were tested on animals.  They are also tracking who uses recyclable packaging.  In other words, way to go Greenpeace.  My project is here: marktcheck.greenpeace.at

Yesterday was a good day.  We went to the Prater, a very old, famous amusement park.  A nice, 20-minute trip on the Riesenrad (the giant ferris wheel) gave us a view of most of Vienna.  You cannot actually threaten to push anyone out of it Third Man style, because the door won't open.  We then also decided it would be a good idea to go on the Dizzy Mouse, which is usually not a good idea, but I always forget.  It spun the whole time and was expert at the look-like-you're-falling-off thing.  I also tried out an absolutely insane ride called Extasy, which I imagine might be what it feels like to actually be on ecstasy.  It just turned me in every direction and kept me upside down for awhile, all the time spraying smoke and strobe lights and other colors into my face with a strange German soundtrack going on loudly.  And it was in front of a creepy 80s superhero type mural.  The Prater is full of some of the scarier thrill rides I've ever seen, most of which I'm too afraid to touch, but would stand there and wonder why people ever thought that would be fun.  

Before the Prater, we went to the Third Man museum.  It basically just made me want to watch the movie repeatedly.  The museum is comprised of a few rooms, all full of pictures and memorabilia from the movie, the makers of the movie, and Vienna immediately following WWII.  They start out by showing you a short clip from the film, on a projector from 1936 which is huge and loud and amazing.  People are more obsessed with this movie than I imagined.  There are also an appropriate number of pictures of Orson Welles looking ridiculous and Joseph Cotton looking suave.   And now I just want to play the zither.  I'm hoping to go on the tour next Friday, or some soon Friday.  

Last night we found a bar under a train station that was pretty, and sat there till somewhat late talking.  About space and science fiction and such...my friends all like the same things.  Then Rachel and I actually managed to make it home by employing some night buses, since the transportation mostly stops running at midnight.

Prague is coming up soon.  As is possibly a four day break, but I'm not sure about that yet.  I'm over halfway through abroad.