Happy Post-Chanukkah/Pre-Christmas!

Good thing for construction being very loud and waking me up and getting me out of bed early early in the morning, or else I'd never post here without prompting!


grr


Anyway, last Saturday, Melanie's mom's cousins, Bert and Jessica, came to visit for a week. We had dinner at our place on Saturday, dinner at erm..Müllerbeisl? something like that on Sunday, and dinner at I dont know where on Thursday. They were a blast, and I'd love to have them again, but I think they've finished Vienna. There is no more. Jessica managed to plan out their trip to the 15 minute mark, which meant that they've done WAY more touristy things in Vienna in their 5 days than we have in our ~4 months + 1 week + 1 week of tourism. If you have any questions about something in Vienna unrelated to school or landlord/tenant relations, I will be happy to forward it to them.

Vienna rewarded their busy schedule with crappy, rainy weather for most of the week, but it was snowing (finally!) on Thursday morning, and hopefully they got some as a parting gift as they went off to I think Prague.

We had two big performing events this week, a masterclass with pianist Malcolm Martineau on Tuesday and a Christmas benefit concert for kids with down-syndrome on Thursday. I got sick with a nasty cold/sinus infection on Monday night - awesome. So no singing for me on Tuesday, and I did a pretty good job of keeping my head above water on Thursday. Mr. Martineau was great (and he's hopefully coming back a couple times in the next year so I'll get to sing for him sometime it seems). I think the first thing he said was "You don't need to be together with your pianist or the beat." He's of the inspiring sort that strives to create something new with every performance, all the time, which is good to hear every once in a while. After countless hours of lessons and coachings where people tell you how to improve in little, important, but nitpicky ways, it's important to remember that the goal is to take all of those tiny details and forget them, and Mr. Martineau provides a strong voice in that direction.

We went to a crazy Christmas-tree-decorating party at Laurel's house (a friend of Shigemi Matsumoto's). There was much singing and much too much eating. We were pressured into singing improvised duets. If anyone has any suggestions of two duets with piano parts that Melanie can memorize without too much difficulty, it would be of great help to us in situations like these. I may have picked up my first math student at the party. Yep, looks like I might start teaching math out here. Weird. Apparently parents our here are in rabid search for tutors for their kids, and I, with my extensive teaching experience (help me! I dont know a *thing* about teaching!), am the man for the job.

I do believe that's all. Oh yeah, we went to a really great but *ridiculously* cold Bach concert at Karlskirche last night with Katja and Sarah. They passed out thick blankets. No really. Blankets. Hundreds of them. We took 6. People were in fur coats, fut hats, gloves, and covered in thick blankets. We were not appropriately dressed for the concert, because appropriately dressed would have meant being at home with the heater on, and by all means avoiding that church. (The church was the same temperature as the outside, where there was ice on the ground. Not snow, ice!). Then we went out for spare ribs and a heated indoor space.

We'll be in the states starting this 30-hour-long-Saturday and ending on a 15 hour Tuesday/Wednesday in January (we go back on different days). My cell will be with me at my old number, 818 633 4223. Mel's is no more (so call or send text messages if you want me to pass them on to Mel).

Pictures: (note the midgets in Santa suits juggling in front of the Chanukiah - awesome)

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Ow, my brain

Maybe not on topic for news of Vienna, but ow, my brain: http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/ladle/

It's Friday, and apparently the crew across the street figured out how to build a building using bombs.  Melanie's either figured out how to sleep through wars, or she's faking it.  I spent my extra-early morning listening for how people pronounce "R" in a very good recording of Handel's Semele (Sam Ramey, Kathleen Battle, Marilyn Horne).  Apparently, there's just no consensus to formal English whatsoever, even if you only listen to one singer.

From my mornings pleasantries (for those interested?), it seems that Madeleine Marshall's English Diction for Singers has it right most of the time where she would get rid of an R alltogether; words like "mirror", "horror", and "terror" all sound weird when they END with a rolled R (which  Horne, who seems to have the best English, [and sometimes Battle, too] does sporatically).  So that leaves how one handles an R in between vowels (miRRor, cuRRent), following or proceeding consonant clusters (LingRing, moRtality, gRave, tRemble), and leading (River, Rage).  Marilyn Horne does it the best so far, but I gots to listen to a few others before coming up with a grand unified theory of R.  

--Later that day...--

We went to Melanie's voice teacher's teacher's studio's Klassenabend (Studio recital night).  Lots of really great singing.  Inspiring to see.

Also, I got my visa today.  Here are the remaining steps:

18.  Go to central Finanzamt for Gebührungen.  Meet nice lady there.  She calculates that my Gebührung will be €187,00 or so.  Wait, I think, didn't I pay around €187 when I first did my rental contract?  Wait, I say, didn't I pay around €187,00 with my rental contract?  Why yes, she says, your receipt is right here.  Uh, I say, what do I give the people at the 8th district house of burocracy?  Why, she says, you give them the paper you have there.  But, I say, I did give that to them.  Oh, she says, they missed it then; give it to them again.  Thanks, I say.

19.  Go to 8th district house of burocracy, find original nice lady.  "Hi!  I have the stuff you requested!  Here's my identification paper"  "It's after 10am." "What?"  "This paper says you can only give me the papers from 8am to 10am."  "What?"  "You are here outside of paper-giving hours."  "...  Well ...  I guess ... I'll just go home then ..." "...  ... well OK you can just give me the papers now.  I'll call you when your visa is ready."

*Score: Gabe:1, Nice Lady:0 for awesome guilt trip level 5*

20.  Get call from nice lady: My visa is ready to be picked up!  Come in before 12pm

21.  Today:  11:20am - On my way to 8th district house of burocracy!!

11:40am - On my way to school...  

11:41am - Shit why am I on my way to school?! I'm gonna be late!

11:45am - Backtracking on subway

11:55am - Running to 8th district house of burocracy

11:58am - Run into nice lady's office.  Nice lady is on phone.  Smile at her, panting.

"Can I help you?" says nice lady's mean co-worker?

*gesticulates wildly at nice lady, panting* "Uh, she..uh..she was my.. uh..."

"What?" says mean lady with look of "What is wrong with you?"

*goodbye german* "I..uh...confirmation... uh... ...  I... visa ... visa pick up?" say I

"...  give me your passport and wait outside."  says mean lady.

"Sure!" say I

12:20pm - "MSDfhsdmfmd Wyner fmsdf shdshjffhuy" says the loudspeaker

*walks into mean lady's office*

"I didn't call you.  You arent supposed to be here.  Go to the cashier."

"Oh, ok. Thanks"

*go to cashier.  There's a lady who I assume to be mean there*

"Uh.."

"I already have your passport, and just need the €100 fee."

"Uh.. I heard... uh... is there some thingy that US...uh...I dont know how you say it, citizens?  That people who come from the US dont have €100 fee or something?  You know?"

"... Since Jan 1st, 2006, everyone has to pay the same."

"Oh.  Ok."

"You can ask questions for free!" She smiles.  Yay! It's a nice lady!

*pay for and receive visa*

*leave 8th district house of burocracy*

*realize I left my umbrella there*

*go back, find that door is locked (It's after 12pm).  Give up on umbrella, go home*

--The End (of Part 1)*--

*Part 2, entitled "How to get an Austrian Visa if you're Melanie Henley Heyn and have the exact same application and supporting documents as Gabriel Wyner but completely different burocratic requirements for no explainable reason" will be posted as soon as Melanie gets her visa, which will likely (and hopefully) be in about a month from now.

Nov 17 to Dec 5

Happy Chanukkah!

Last night, we pulled out our how-to-be-Jewish book, lit our first two candles, and had chinese sweet and sour chicken for dinner. Hurray! In the past few weeks, we got to go to a concert by the touring Duquesne University Chamber Singers (And meet the famed Mrs. Jordanoff and Ben Murray, people Melanie knew from PA but I did not), and see the inside of Karlskirche, a really neat, large church that tends to charge admission to see inside. We sang Happy Birthday to my mother over Skype (Happy Birthday, mom!), and we had a few Thanksgivings and met some of the expat community.

In Music land, we went to Tiefland at the Volksoper (Not so hot, 0-1-0 Volksoper), L'Elisir D'Amore (traditional staging, funny, great acting, great singing, just great, 7-3-2 Staatsoper), most of the final dress rehearsal to Boris Godunov (Feruccio Furlanetto is pimptacular, and an insanely complicated opera in Russian about Russian history is very difficult to understand without subtitles, but we'll probably see it for real next week, and so it gets a premature good rating, 8-3-2 Staatsoper).

We saw three concerts at the Musikverein, one including Berg's 7 Early Songs (Good singer, bad together-ness with orchestra, 0-1-0 Musikverein), one with Strauss's 4 Last Songs (Good singer, good orchestra, not alltogether blown away, but still 1-1-0 Musikverein), and one of a weird benefit concert for a Japanese choir where they sang Wiener/Japanese songs with a famous Japanese soprano (weird) and then Beethoven's 9th (good! 2-1-0 Musikverein).

Melanie sang a concert with the students in her studio and did an excellent job, I have an audition today for a baroque opera that goes up November 2008, and I have a masterclass next week with Malcolm Martineau, where I shall sing Schubert's "An Silvia" (woot), and we both have a Christmas benefit concert for kids with Down Syndrome next week (our first paid gig in Wien!). In school, we're hacking away at getting our scenes staged (6 for Mel, 4 for me), and learning rep for our Lied/Oratorio class.

Last weekend, Meredith came over from Berlin and we had a blast. We went to a concert, to a couple of cafés, went through a few packs of second-hand cafe smoke, ate foods, had some Christmas punch (Wien is full of little advent markets with hot punch stands everywhere), went to the zoo (Vienna's zoo is *GREAT*. A+ gold star. Highly recommended), and generally had a great weekend. Yay Meredith!

We're going home (both of them) in 2.5 weeks. Come say hi!

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Sunday!!

It's Sunday, our one day of weekend after a long week. I am now a Qigong master, having stood in place for an hour and a half on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Qigong is much harder than it looks; it looks like a group of people standing still, but you don't see the fact that everyone has been holding their arms up in the air for 45 minutes and their back is in agony and all.

Anyway, we did end up seeing Un Ballo in Maschera and Pique Dame. The former was pretty mediocre, which unfortunately means really boring. The thing about the Staatsoper is that when something is bad, it's so bad that it's still entertaining, but when it's just fine, it's just agony standing there for 3 hours (having stood for an hour and a half right beforehand in Qigong didn't help, either).

I thought Pique Dame was great (Melanie thought it was good, so now we're even on Arabella, where opinions were reversed). A review can be found here. I agree with it on most points. Anja Silja was fucking awesome. She's 67 now, and the extent to which she can act, both with her voice and with everything else is insanity. We had horrible standing room places off to the side of the gallery, so we couldn't see stage left, and when she first came onstage, we couldnt see her and I was hooked anyway.

We had Celeriac Croquettes for breakfast. They were awesome. This would be a good place to talk about Biohof Adamah.

Biohof Adamah is an organic Austrian farm that sells crates of fruit and vegetables. For €30/week, we get a crate of fruits, vegetables, crazy meats and cheeses delivered to our door on Thursdays. Its our favorite thing ever. This week, for example, we got a big head of some sort of lettuce, 2 Kohlrabi (awesome root vegetables that, to quote Lewis Lawyer, look like Sputnik, unless he was referring to fennel, I dont remember. Anyway, they taste really good and sweet and make a Puttanesca sauce really good), a mess of carrots, a celeriac (celery root, a 1.5 pound weird looking knob), ~8 small onions, a bundle of fresh marjoram, ~8 apples (we get a different type of apple pretty much every week and they're all great [and different!]), ~6 of the best oranges I've ever had, a whole basket of Medlar[Which Melanie thinks taste like apple sauce, and I think taste like apricot and glue paste mixed, but can be turned into something resembling lemon curd, says Wikipedia].

The meat/cheese packet has a big chunk of stinky, swiss-looking stuff, another chunk of different, stinky swiss-looking stuff, some salami-type stuff, and some honey/sunflower(?) flavored ham, I think.

All this stuff is ridiculously high quality stuff, which makes cooking at home yummy, nutritious, and very diverse, since the ingredients from week to week vary wildly (and the question of "What the hell is THAT and what do I do with it?!" is a fun one to answer every week). A+ Gold star. Anyway, celeriac/celery root looks like crazyness, tastes like awesome, and if you cut it up into 2" chunks, boil it for 20 minutes, mash it, mix it with a half cup of milk or cream, a half cup of parmesan, a quarter cup of parsley, some salt and pepper, an egg, and some flour, form it into hamburger patties, refridgerate for an hour, cover it with bread crumbs and brown it with lots of butter, it tastes friggin great. I also made some stuffed turkey cutlets. We'll see how those turn out.

In order, pictures of Medlar, Celeriac and Kohlrabi:

How to get an Austrian student visa for >6 months:

1. Go to Austrian consulate in Los Angeles.
2. Leave, since its obviously closed. It has Austrian hours, so its only open from 9-11:30. Not on wednesdays or weekends. Or austrian holidays. Or US holidays.
3. Come back, get the forms.
4. Fill out the forms, get everything in order.
5. Come back, give to lady. Lady points out that the Austrian consulate in LA is not equipped to handle >6 month stays, which are no longer "Student Visas", but instead "Student Residence Permits". She can mail in the forms, but says its no different from just going to austria and doing it there.

...ok...


6. Go to austria
7. Collect required items.
8. Go to 5th district house of burocracy. They don't know what I'm talking about.
8.5. Go to US Consulate in Austria. Get official notarized document saying I swear I have no police record.
9. Go to central distract house of burocracy. This guy charges me €3 for the form. Oh wait, it's not the form, it's the certificate I already have. Thanks, asshole. He tells me to go to the house of burocracy in the 11th district. He has a form that says "closed wednesdays". I say "Is it closed on wednesdays?" "No" "Are you SURE its not closed on WEDNESDAYS?" "Yes, it's open every day of the week"
10. Wednesday. Wake up early to go to House of Burocracy in the 11th district (don't worry, it's 45 minutes away). "Do you have an appointment?" "No" "Sorry, we're closed on wednesdays, unless you have an appointment" "Can I ask you a question about residence permits?" "No"

Let me point out at this point that austrian hours, (which are (sometimes) 8-11:30 on weekdays, closed one or two of those days, open on one of those days a little later into the afternoon) mean that you can only go to one place per day, since by the time you're done there, even if you failed, everywhere else is closed.

11. Go to 5th district house of burocracy, knowing that I will fail, but going anyway. They magically know what I'm talking about, and tell me to go to 8th district house of burocracy.
12. Go to 8th district house of burocracy (Thursday). Find the correct form(!) Take a number. Leave, go check out E-Pianos, come back in an hour, wait 30 minutes. Go in when my number is called. Give my stuff to super nice lady. She says I need to make a copy of my passport page with the stamp on it. Okiedokie. Get change from super mean lady, make copy, come back. Nice lady says to wait.
13. Wait for an hour
14. Name is called, go in, talk to another nice lady who gives me a list of missing documents. I apparently need a proof of enrollment, a more-current bank statement, and a Vergebührung from my rental contract, which I should get from the Finanzamt. "What's a finanzamt?" "It's a house of burocracy ('Amthaus')" "Is that the same as my district house of burocracy?" "No." "Do you know where it is?" "No, look in the telephone book")
15. Failure. Go to LA for a week. Get notified I might have problems getting back into Austria. Get on the plane anyway. No problems. Nice.
15.5. Make money transfer into our Austrian bank. If you haven't heard, the US dollar is now worse than the canadian dollar. Our government sucks balls.
16. Go to district Finanzamt. "Hi!! I need a Vergebührung of my Rental contract!" "You're in the wrong place" "What? This paper from the 8th district house of burocracy says I should go to a Finanzamt" "Yeah, but you need to go to the central Finanzamt for Gebührungen" ")@($*@#$&)($*((!*@()!!!!!!"
17. Today would be a good day to go the the central Finanzamt for Gebührungen. They're open in the afternoon on thursdays. Oh wait, today we're celebrating the sainthood of Leopold the third. Failure.

Not yet a month!

Well I almost let a month go by without updating, but it isn't in fact Nov 19th yet, so I totally win. Ha.

So! What's been going on since the last update...

Well I spent a week trying to get my student visa papers submitted before I left to visit LA.

I failed.

I got a whole set of weights and a chin-up bar and a big yellow ball, with which I can now do a real home workout routine! This is more exciting than perhaps it should be, but I'm very much looking forward to not having to drive 45 mins to a gym (and not resorting to silly, makeshift workouts at home, either).

I visited home (in Los Angeles)

I ate a lot of sushi

Melanie ate a lot of cookies at Katja's house

Melanie counted my €66 of change (oops)

I made plans to abduct a certain kitty as soon as I can afford to have a kitty (here's hoping that's in the 5-year plan :P )
I packed ~160 lbs of luggage from the storage room at home

I came back with the United elite status level of Premier Member, which gave me my very own empty check-in terminal, my very own empty security line, my very own bulkhead-3-feet-of-legroom-aisle-seat, and the feeling that I am definitely, totally better than everyone else who is not as elite as I am.

We found an ad for a used E-Piano the day we were planning on going out and buying one retail, saw it and bought it from a really nice australian girl. ("Na, spricht ihr auch Englisch?" "Ja, wir sind Amerikaner" "Oh, I'm Australian. Why are we speaking German?")

We sang a concert (Me - "See the Raging Flames Arise", Mel - "To This We've Come") where all the new opera students sing and are judged by their peers and teachers. We kicked ass. I recorded Melanie's Papers aria.

We babysat little Sofia for Katja and hung out, downing a bottle of Sturm (New wine, which tastes much like hard apple cider, except with grapes. Awesome) after Sofia went to sleep. Sofia is cute.

With the help of our new E-Piano, we're practicing up a storm, which (amazingly) helps us both improve and learn our music. Neat!

The wind blew and blew and blew and completely disrobed our nice yellow tree.

We spent a day of frivolity at Nick Martin's wishes and on his dime. It was frivolous indeed.

It snowed! And then I took pictures! And then it rained. Its still kind of raining

I failed AGAIN at getting a student visa.

The construction company operating outside our window realized that snow makes construction hard, and doubled the size of the workforce (and added a huge crane-mounted light that makes it possible to start working earlier and finish later [in weird, eerie light, as in some sort of sci-fi movie]). Dear God, I hope they're rushing to be done for the winter, because that would make the fact that I was awake at 7 today worthwhile. So far the ranking of construction operations, from irritating to horribly shitty goes: Sawing, messing around with metal rebar, Jackhammering, whatever else they do that's irritating, **CONCRETE + CONCRETE PUMP TRUCK**, ***HAMMERING BY HAND ON METAL***, ****DROPPING ROCKS AND DIRT AND GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE INTO A HUGE METAL BIN BUT MAKING SURE TO HONK THE HORN FIRST SO YOU KNOW ITS COMING THANKS****. That last one is thankfully over, but there are 2 more that are enough to get me out of bed, and today is concrete day.

Shows we've seen since last time...Arabella (mostly good! I would have put it in the draw category, but Melanie liked it sufficiently to tip it into the win category, ummmmm.... Melanie saw Electra (good! crazy!)...I guess that's it. We've been kind of busy. Staatsoper is up to 5-3-1.

Today is that most-important holiday, Heiliger Leopold, when Leopold III (1073-1136) was all..saintified and stuff. The nice thing about obscure catholic holidays is that you totally don't need to be in church for them.



So, upcoming stuff:

If we're really good opera students we're gonna go to Un Ballo in Maschera tonight and to Pique Dame on Saturday. I'm taking a 3-day intro Chi Kong (Qigong) class these next, well, 3 days. I'm not really going to be dressed for going out to the opera tonight, but we'll see.

Meredith is going to be visiting in a few weeks. Yay!

We're gonna be figuring out how to do thanksgiving away from home, without the day off. :P

I'm gonna update my website with performance dates and maybe a german translation, for those of you who don't speak english.

That's all I got. Pictures:

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