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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