So I haven't taken any pictures so I haven't had the need to post anything, but I thought I would write about my many adventures since then.

So on Saturday, my roommate and I decided we felt like going to a concert, so I looked up all the concerts in the area and there were a lot sold out, but we found one that was in a place called Alte Schmiede and it was free. So we went and it was in this out of the way place and in the basement of a building and in a smaller room that only would fit about 20 people and I felt like they were about to tell poetry and we would all snap our fingers. But what really happened was this experimental music that was really modern and had a lot of random notes and no tonal center. It was odd, but definitely an experiment and I think it's good to be exposed to all types of music...if that's what you would call what we listened to.

On Monday I had my first cello lesson here and it was with a member of the Vienna Philharmonic. It was a bit tricky to find it, like everything here, the only street signs they have are on buildings and they don't really show you what street is what. Anyways, so I made sure to be like an hour early and I was and so I just sat and played solitaire on my ipod and thawed down til my lesson. When it was finally time, I walked up to his door and I wasn't sure if I should knock or something, but I figured I should let him know I was there and not late so I knocked a couple times. Finally, I decided he probably couldn't hear me and slowly opened the door to find out that there was another door behind it. So I was kind of awkwardly standing there when he opened the other door and he was finishing up another lesson. So long story short it was the best lesson ever...he made my right hand a lot looser and it sounds a lot better and he was really good at showing how the Bach was supposed to sound like. It was nice, because I was the last lesson, so he went over a bit, because he could. I was told that if you get a lesson with a person in the Vienna Philharmonic they could take you to a rehearsal and he didn't mention it during the lesson, but I of course really wanted to go, so I asked him and he just looked at me and said what!? then I realized I was so nervous I said it like a million miles a minute and I said it slower and he was way cool and showed me their rehearsal schedule and told me he would email me with the exact schedule when he gets it. So that was pretty cool and now I'm way excited to see them.

Tonight, I went to a group that meets every week and it's called the Folk orchestra and this girl said it was the funnest thing and I need to go to at least 2 hours of rehearsal a week, so I thought I would try this out. So when we got there it was just like a restaurant with the tables to one side and a tiny orchestra of really old people. There was one other cellist, besides me and the other girl from BYU and he apparently is 100 years old. They were all really excited to get more cellists and were all babbling in German and were really cute. The only had one dynamic and it was loud, so I really couldn't hear myself, which was good, since my endpin is totally dull and it was sliding like crazy and I just had to wrap my legs around my cello to keep it in place. The conductor was talking in German and I didn't have anyone to interpret the measure numbers, so we just guesstimated where they were and when he had to talk directly to us he could barely remember the English word for things and later when we were talking with him he spoke English fluently, so I don't know why he was having so much trouble. He was pretty cool though, I think his name was Victor and he is a conducting student at the university here and I think he was from macedonia, or something that sounds like that.

Anyways so that was cool and I have been daydreaming about this chocolate cake that everyone is talking about...or really I just bring it up with everyone, but apparently it's like famous and called the Sacher Torte, named after the Sacher Hotel which has a cafe thing that made it first, but apparently it's really dry and expensive there, so it's better to get it somewhere else and if I don't get it soon, I fear that I might go crazy. I also got tickets for My Fair Lady on Friday and I'm pretty excited for that. and that's all I have to report.

Hundertwasserhaus

So at breakfast Aly mentioned she wanted to see the countryside of Vienna or Austria and our host ended up taking us to the top of this hill where he threw us off a cliff...no just kidding, but we saw the whole city pretty much. There was a lot of fog, but it was pretty cool and the picture does not do it justice.

Afterwards I decided to go on a little excursion by myself, so I went to the Hundertwasserhaus, which is an apartment place thing that was created by a guy named Hundertwasser. I saw it on pinterest awhile ago and I really have been dying to go and it was definitely worth the wait! It was pretty cool. The last picture is a picture I took of a picture that had it all together.

On my way home I passed this park that was pretty big and it had this big hill off in the distance that was white and I was confused for a couple seconds until I realized people were sledding down it and it was covered in snow. I don't know how it got there, because it certainly hasn't been snowing, so they must have imported it or something and it is really cold here, so it will last. They sure know how to do it here.

Happy Birthday Wolfgang!

It is Mozarts birthday, so naturally we had school off and took a tour of all the Mozart sights here in Vienna. The first picture is of his house he spent a few weeks in, but wrote The Magic Flute in. Along the way we saw some random moustache's with mirrors. I tried to get a picture with me and the moustache, but lets just say getting the angle right is very hard. We also found a Zorro one too. The next place is where he spent a lot of his time and it is where he wrote the Marriage of Figaro.

The glass building that happens to be a department store is where Mozart died. Dying while shopping couldn't be that bad of a way to go...

There's also a monument of him.

Of course there is also Mozart cafe, which is the place to go after an Opera, since it is the only place open besides maybe Mcy D's

I also took a picture of my dinner that was a lettuce salad with potato salad type thing on top and then chicken on top of that. I have come to find that most of the chicken here is breaded. The picture makes it look gross, but the whole thing really was not that bad.

We also visited the cemetary where Mozart was buried. He was buried in a mass grave, so no one really knows where he was buried, but a hundred years after he was buried the groundskeeper of the cemetery decided to make a memorial thing for him, so he took the parts of other grave places and made one where he thinks Mozart is. It was by far the coolest cemetary I have been too and the gravestones were all big and cool and some were covered in ivory.

After visiting all the Mozart sites we went to the outreach center which is just the church institute building and had some waffles which were delicious and hung out. The cutest elderly couple made the waffles for us and were really nice.

Violin Makers, Cathedrals and Operas

So I'm too lazy to switch all these photos in order so we'll start with the opera. I could have gone to a random orchestra rehearsal or pay $3 and see The Barber of Seville and that was by far more appealing. So
I finally got a chocolate croissant and it was DELICIOUS and we waited in line for about half an hour and then got our tickets and waited for the concert to start. We got standing room and after spending all day taking a walking tour of St. Stephens Cathedral and walking across Vienna pretty much, it was kind of painful standing there for three hours with just a rail to lean on, but it was so worth it. The music was amazing and I loved it! At the end all the actors come out of the actors entrance and I was expecting like a mob of people there, but all it was was a handful of old people that have books that have signaturs of actors way back. So we got our tickets signed and I got a picture with Juan Francisco Gatell who was the count.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6l5ND0Vc0I ^This is a link to a Mormon Ad video thing for this lady that we visited. It's darker, but it's there. I watched it a few weeks ago and was way excited to meet her. She has a violin shop and she showed us how she makes the violins. She also had a five string cello that I got to play, the cello was out of tune and it was bad, but the actual cello sounded so cool playing Bach with. She was a really cool lady and at one point was talking about Chinese instruments and was saying how they make them and why they generally sound not so good and I totally remember trying some Chinese cellos and thinking that same thing, so it was cool hearing someone say that had the same opinion as me about that.

I got a picture of her shop and her holding the five string cello. There was also this cool magic shop that I got a picture of.

I also found some cool buildings and streets on the way so i got some of those.

Finally, we went to St. Stephens for a walking tour class that I'm taking where we download this file to our ipods and listen to it as we go. So we went inside and it was the coolest thing ever, I've seen lots of pictures of cathedrals, but it is just so much cooler actually being in them. While we were there they were about to start a tour of the catacombs, so for

4.50 Euro we went and it was WAAAAY cool! I couldn't take a picture, but they had coffins of dead people and apparently it was a big deal to be buried under the church, so they had rooms full of dead bodies and they had bones laid out that you could see. Also, during the black plague 9,000 people died and they just threw the bodies down to this room and after awhile there was just too many bodies and stuff and they got people to move all the bones and put them in this room, so you could look inside this room filled with bones. Creepiest thing every and so worth 4.50.

Also I got pictures of an old church and some buildings from our tour and I even found the statue thing that is in the middle of the road that is on my cover picture thing on fb. I also found Alice's long lost twin. I don't think Vienna is the best place for dogs, since everyone pretty much lives in apartments, but there sure is a lot of them.

So I'm a bit off my game...it's been pretty crazy busy, but hey, I finally got it all up here.

I noticed the other morning when the radio was on that they kept mentioning presidential candidates. It went blah blah blah Mitt Romney blah blah blah Obama blah blah blah Gingrich blah blah blah blah blah North Carolina. The host guy told us what they were talking about and I thought it was pretty crazy that these people who lived all the way over here cared about who got elected that much. I felt pretty proud that I could vote at that moment.
Yesterday we had to go register with the country and pretty much just say that we are here and I passed by a lot of cool places so I took some pictures.

We passed this stairway and it must have led to an art museum, because they were depicting some art piece, because there was an advertisement with it next to it. At the place the guy in charge of us was talking about maternity leave and you get a certain amount of money that the country pays when you go and you can have it paid to you at certain amounts of time and you have up to two years where your job has to wait for you. He also was saying that it is pretty rare to find someone that has three kids and really really rare to find someone with more than that, because they don't get paid much here, because the difference between people who go to college and the people who don't isn't much and most families the mother works too. Also it's a bit crazy getting all your kids through public transport which everyone takes. Some people have found a convenient way of getting around though and the answer to that is called Razor Skooters. I don't know if they just got here, I've heard that they just got nerf guns, but I've seen a ton of them and mainly adults who used them.

I also got my cello from this guy that lived in this awesome flat. A lot of people live in apartments and from the ones I've been in they've been pretty big and the ceilings are tall. This guy had two stories and a room with ton of awesome instruments that he repaired and rented or sold. We had to take a street car there and it had wooden seats and totally reminded me of being in a roller coaster...it went pretty fast and I was waiting it to take a dive.

I also got a picture of me and my cool new accessory. I also finally made it to McyD's and after a bit of confusion I found out that they have a whole different counter for hot chocolate and such and they have a few different types of hot chocolate, so I'm definitely going to have to try that out.

I think I should let this made known that actually I did not come to Vienna to learn music, but rather to open my own boutique and I also got a picture of it's awesomeness.

I also went to the Academic Orchestra of Vienna and was surprised to find that none of them were students..."Academic"? They were all older folks who still wanted to play, but didn't do it professionally and I was surprised how good they were for not doing it all the time, but they still weren't PYP...I'm gonna miss that one...kinda.

I also saw a few of those stars things that they just have all around the city and on my way to orchestra I saw a few of my favs. They also had a few cool buildings that are just massive and the pictures definitely do not do them justice.

Finally I also got a picture of my new best friend. I don't know who made it, because it doesn't have a sticker inside and I think it might have been the guy, because he said it was made a little bit bigger to fit him. (Even though the guy didn't seem that big to me) I don't really notice the difference.