-Opera
-Vienna night life
-learning german
-nursing chocolate
-the ball
-nashe market
Well, I guess I just have to begin with the ball!!! Yes... A BALL!!! I went to a ball a few nights ago! I real ball, in Vienna, oh and did I mention that it was in a palace???!!! Yes, the palace that the royal family lived in! That palace! Ball season in Vienna means that there are about 300 different balls before Ash Wednesday starting with New Years eve! The preparation for this felt like prom all over again! Everyone was talking about it at school and all of the girls were asking about dresses. The guys had to wear tux/suit with a bow-tie (the best kind of tie!) and only long dresses were allowed for girls! I got back to my house with my roomie and some friends and we started to get ready haha, again, it felt like a dance for school or something! After about 10 some odd attempts of trying to put my hair in a bun and secure it with bobby pins ( I even watched some youtube to try and learn a "simple" updo! Such a thing does not exist!) I was ready to go! Some friends came over to our house and we all went on the tram together, which was quite a sight! Seeing people in full length dresses riding on the trains! Lesson learned from that journey: it is REALLY hard to walk in heels on cobblestone! Another thing that added to our ridiculous picture!
When we got there it was SO surreal!!!! I could not believe it! When we walked in we were surrounded by fabulous looking people, beautiful people, dressed to the nines! There was a grand staircase covered in red carpeting with beautiful, large flowers at the top! (Actually, the largest flowers that I have EVER seen!) It was so amazing! We walked in and were greeted by the opening ceremonies, which is basically a deb ball! We started to walk around and found the jazz room! Oh yes, one of many rooms that I would stumble upon that evening! The room was beautiful with people all magically knowing how to swing dance! (The whole evening actually seemed like something right out of a dance scene from Pride and Prejudice.) We then found the jazz room, which had a small jazz trio! After some dancing in both of those rooms, both of which seemed to require a man to dance with (there was not girl group dancing like I was used to) we went back into the main ballroom. OHHH MY GOSH! Is all I can say to that! I tried to take pictures, but honestly, nothing can capture the pure grandness and amazingness that was that ballroom! It was purely magical! The entire ceiling was so high and painted with beautiful murals. There were tables surrounding the wooden dance floor. And yet again, everyone knew magically how to waltz. (I later learned that people start to take dance lessons here at 16 and it is pretty regular and normal!) The crazy thing about the ball was that it was like prom in some sense because everyone was so dressed up, but there were people of all ages there! The ball was put on by the Technical University here, so there were a lot of students, but there were a lot more adults! Soon a 30 piece orchestra entered the stage and began to play various waltz musical tunes! The dance floor was so crowded, despite the sheer size of it! I kept bumping into people! It was so magical! The whole room, all of it! And that was still just the beginning of the night! Like any female, my feet got tired and hurt due to the heels on my feet! So, I stashed them in a plant and we went on to find other rooms!
We also stumbled into the jazz room, the piano lounge, multiple small bar and table rooms, and the salsa room! The salsa room was thriving with energy, and it was filled with people from our program and more people our age. So, we stayed there for a while and danced! The drinks cost money so I had the clever idea to take empty unused wine glasses and champaign flukes and fill them with tap water from the bathroom! woop! The evening was then filled with some more random wandering throughout the rooms of the palace and some more dancing! Then, I got caught not wearing shoes by a man that was working the ball! opps!!! He said "This is the Hofburg, you need to wear shoes!" Ya...I guess that statement does make sense... haha! Well, another interesting thing about this ball...it went until 5 in the morning! Something that I am not used to about Vienna night life yet! The late hours!!! Back at school I am usually in bed between 1-2! Here, you would never think about leaving a place that early! My friend and I were exhausted and ended up sitting down for a while before we could regain the energy (and the legs) to dance! Despite my best efforts to stay for as long as possible, I ended up leaving at 3 am! There were still so many people going strong at the early hour! Including many adults!
The entire experience was wonderful! And yes, we did all have class the next day! Sometimes I would just be dancing but watching other people, watching the ceiling! Rarely would I look at the person I was dancing with, not because I was not enjoying myself or trying to be rude, but because I was so in awe of everything that was going on around me! It was seriously so amazing! I really could not get over it! The whole evening was wonderful and I really had the most fabulous, surreal time!
Well, can I really top that? I am not sure! This is going to surely be a long post!
Maybe I can talk about the opera now?
This post is just making my life here sound so classy! Which is not really the case! The Vienna Opera house is RIGHT by my school! Sooo awesome, right? YES! Now, I am the type of person who has always wanted to see an opera! I had created this grand thing in my head about them and how much I would enjoy them and not fall asleep despite their long hours and foreign languages! Well, although getting a standing room ticket and standing the whole time may not be the most glamorous thing, it is WELL worth the 3-4 Euro that I pay! Oh ya thats right! I payed 3 or 4 Euro to go see an opera! So what I had to stand the whole time? There was a railing and I was leaning on it! It was all well worth it! And everything I imagined was so true! The singing was beautiful, the sets were amazing, and the building itself...WOAH! I mean, again, my camera can not possibly capture the sheer beauty that is the inside of this opera house! There is an orchestra seating section right behind the orchestra, surrounded by probably 5 or 6 rows going up in height. A huge chandelier is on the ceiling and it continues shining the entire performance because it has hundreds of thousands of crystals on it! I have only seen two operas so far, but they have both just been amazing! It is such an experience and something completely wonderful! I know that they are not for everyone, but they are for so many people on this program and I LOVE it!!! I also love how I can see one for so cheaply! I plan on going to many more this semester! It was simply wonderful! Thankfully they have these small screens in front of you that read the subtitles of what is going on! So you are able to understand what is going on even if you do not speak the language! The first opera that I saw was in italian and the second in german! I really could not get over them when I was there! The whole thing was just so elaborate!
And now I am blabbering AGAIN! I often find myself blabbering when I talk about things here! If you know me at all you know that I love adjectives! I use them too frequently, and often in strings so that I can describe something using many of them! Well, I am using so many adjectives here because so many things I simply cannot describe with words or even pictures! The beauty and amazingness of them are simply too much for me to handle!
Well, perhaps I should move on now to talk about more things here! I might have to come back to them! However, I made a list at the top of the post for me to remember as I type :) awesome! Since this is getting super duper long! I'm going to update the picasa pictures (link on the top right of the page in the column area) and then I'll save the rest of the journeys for another time!
In the meantime:
I LOVE Vienna! I am having the most wonderful time!
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