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Hi, everybody!
I would like to invite you to check out some of the pictures that
Melody has taken of Budapest and other places in Europe. Here's the
link:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~mtc33/pictures/budapest/
Last weekend, Melody, Alethea, Amanda, and I went to Vienna! It's
about 3 hours away from Budapest by train, not much farther than
visiting other cities in Hungary. We left Budapest early Saturday
morning. In Vienna, we walked around the main, touristy area (Vienna
has a more cosmopolitan feel than Budapest does), explored the outdoor
food market and the Saturday flea market, and then went back into the
center of town to see the clock chime noon. Every hour, a different
carved historical figure moves across the face of the clock, and the
clock plays different music for each figure. At noon, they all come
out. Unfortunately, we didn't know which historical figures the
carvings were supposed to represent, but we still enjoyed seeing the
fine detail of the artwork. It took 15 minutes for the clock to go
through all 12 figures and their music!
After watching the clock, we had lunch--because we were in Vienna, I
had wienerschnitzel--and then visited Schloss Schonbrunn, a hunting
lodge-palace that the Habsburg family inhabited for 600 years.
Tickets
were 10.50 euro, quite expensive compared to tickets to anything in
Budapest, but it was worth it. This was the best palace tour I've
ever
been on. All the rooms were set up more or less the way they were
used
when the Habsburgs lived there, instead of being just a showcase for
assorted pieces of furniture. We also had English-language audio
guides that explained what each room was used for, talked a little
about the decorations (most of the rooms were decorated in a rococco
style from the time when Marie Therese was the matriarch), and
explained some of the family's history (I hadn't known that Marie
Antoinette was a Habsburg). It was interesting to learn that
Elizabeth, or Sisi, a woman who married into the Habsburg family and is
much-loved by Hungarians because she spent much of her time visiting
Hungary, is perceived by Austrians to have been shy and not cut out for
court life, which was why she spent so much time outside of Austria.
Throughout our weekend in Vienna, I was intrigued by evidence of how
closely intertwined the histories of Austria and Hungary are: In
the "traditional Austrian" restaurant where I had
wienerschnitzel,
goulash was also on the menu, and we saw a palacsinta restaurant near
the flea market.
After visiting Schloss Schonbrunn, Melody, Alethea, and I split off to
check into our hostel, while Amanda, who was heading back to Budapest
that evening, went to another museum. Melody and I had learned from
our experience in Krakow and made hostel reservations ahead of time.
The three of us stayed in--I am not making this up--the "Wombat City
Hostel." Based on its name and the description in Melody's
guidebook,
which began, "Despite this hostel's location next to auto-body
shops..." we were a little concerned about what we were letting
ourselves in for. However, "Wombat City: The Hostel.
The Place."
turned out to be a large, well-lit, friendly place, decorated with
Australian flags. It even had a bar with a foosball table, and when
we
checked in, the desk clerk gave us coupons for free orange sodas at the
bar. The 3 of us, along with 2 other students, were assigned to a
room
with 6 beds.
After we checked in, we went to Vienna's opera house, where we got in
line to buy standing-room tickets to "La Traviata." Amanda
met us
there. She didn't have time before her train to Budapest to see the
opera, but she kept us company in line and even bought sausages for us
so we could have dinner without losing our place in line! The line
was
so long that I really didn't think we were going to get tickets, but
eventually we made it up to the front and got our 2-euro balcony
standing-room tickets. Amanda said goodbye to us, and left to catch
her train. Melody, Alethea, and I went up to the 3rd floor of the
opera house.
>From the standing-room balcony, you had two
choices: Squish up against
the railing, standing up, so you could see the English and German
subtitle screens on the railing, as well as about half of the stage, or
sit down against the wall so you couldn't see anything, but could
listen more comfortably. I tended to stand during the first half of
each song, until I had a clear idea of what was happening in the plot,
and then sit down to just enjoy the music. I've seen "La
Traviata"
once before, on a high school field trip, but I didn't remember enough
of it to make an adequate comparison between the two performances. I
do think that I was more emotionally affected this time; this
performance moved me to tears. I think I'm more able to relate to the
characters now, just because I've had more life experiences that I can
use to compare with their situations.
After the opera, we went back to the hostel, drank some orange soda,
and went to bed exhausted. On Sunday, we grabbed breakfast from a
pastry shop (I had apfelstrudel), and then visited St. Stephan's
church, a gigantic Gothic church. After that, we each wanted to do
different things, so we split up. Melody went to the Museum of Music,
Alethea went to the Vienna History Museum, and I went to KunstHausWien,
a museum of contemporary art by Franz Hundertwasser. Hundertwasser
designed the building too; he tried to avoid straight lines whenever
possible. The walls are decorated with curving mosaics, and the
floors
even slope up at the corners and have strange bumps in the middle of
rooms. I enjoyed a lot of the art, although I think Hundertwasser's
conception of an environmentally-friendly city is impractical. (The
museum contained models of "ideal towns" built entirely of
curves, with
grass and trees on all the outside walls and roofs.) After visiting
the museum, I walked down the block to Hundertwasser Haus, an apartment
building that Hundertwasser designed. It was designed to be
whimsical,
with curving lines, mosaics, and misaligned windows. The style
reminded me of Gaudi's architecture.
I took the tram back to the Opera House (buying some pizza along the
way), where I met Alethea and Melody. We went to MUMOK, the
contemporary art museum in the MuseumsQuartier, a large block with lots
of museums close together. The permanent exhibits in this museum were
quite interesting--there was a floor of pop art, a floor of art
involving everyday objects (there was a name for this movement, but I
forget what it was), and a floor of assorted abstract paintings and
sculptures. The two temporary exhibits, however, were bizarre.
One of
the floors was devoted to "Viennese Actionism," a movement in
which the
creation of the art was the art itself. One of the interesting pieces
in that exhibit was a video showing an artist walking around town with
his head painted to look like he had stitches all the way down the
middle of his face, and how passersby reacted to him. However, it
seemed that another tenet of "Actionism" was to shock or disgust
people-
-as if this were an artistic end in itself--so I didn't enjoy looking
at a lot of the pieces in that exhibit.
The other temporary exhibit took up two floors, and consisted of
hundreds of books in which a woman had written a date on each page, and
filled the rest of the space with almost identical scribbles. (It
looked like a third grader had used the books to practice making
cursive u's.) Every book was like this, on every page, and there were
TWO FLOORS of this! To me it seemed like a fantastic waste of paper
and time.
By that time, it was afternoon, and just about time to catch our
train. So, we headed home, having thoroughly enjoyed our weekend in
Vienna.
The other notable event this week was that on Tuesday, our Analysis
class was cancelled (the prof was out of town), so I went to the
Vasarely Museum here in Budapest. I've been wanting to do this since
I
arrived; Victor Vasarely is a Hungarian who did fascinating "op
art"--
paintings in which it looks like a sphere is popping off of the page
toward you, or identical paintings of striped geometrical figures done
on plates of glass spaced a few inches apart, so that as you walk past,
it looks like the shapes are moving. I had the whole museum to
myself! I got to take as long as I wanted looking at each piece, and
I
could get right up close to examine detail, or stand all the way across
the room to take in the whole thing at once. It was wonderful.
I hope all of you have had a wonderful, art-filled week as well. I'll
write again soon!
Hello,
Abra
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