A Flying start

Dan! You just spend 12 hours on the train....what are you going to do next?

Take a train, of course.

So yeah, my wonderful 12 hours of train riding was actually really enjoyable! I saw lots of countryside, marked with the transition from Austrian rolling hills, to German mountains, to low hills, to the extreme flatness that is the Netherlands. Since crossing the Netherlands border, I've seen more livestock than I think I had in about 5 or 6 years combined! It's everywhere- cows, horses, sheep...all of them just grazing away in the vast expanses of fields separated only by starkly straight canals (which are also everywhere here).

Today for excitement, we left Marjorie's excellent apartment at about 8:30 to catch a 9:20 train en route to Texel Island, one of the north most points in the Netherlands. We needed 2 trains, a bus in Den Helder, and a ferry to get there, which took us until around noon to arrive. Once there, we stepped off the ferry and each rented a bike for the afternoon.

Unfortunately, the size of this island is not to be believed. Except roughly an hour break for lunch, we biked CONTINUOUSLY and still only saw roughly half the island. Yes, we covered over 20 miles by bike in about 4 hours. Most of the time was spent looking out over fields of emptiness, punctuated on the horizon by a scant row of trees. One of their claims to fame is their mountain, Den Burg, a whopping 50 feet above sea level. There was also a city there, but we were rushing to get to the North See side of the island....which proved to be extremely difficult. We weren't able to see the See by bike, but after the bikes were due at 5, we caught a bus to Den Koog, an excellent restaurant district really close to the water.

Anyway, I feel it's worth taking a step back to the beginning of our trek. About 7 miles in, we came to the lovely and charming village of Oudeschild on the eastern (Wadden See) side of the island. There, we found a hotel/restaurant and grabbed some unbelievable Dutch food. I had 'Bitterballen' which is pretty much a mystery meat paste inside a fried falafel-sized sphere. Very very good. Even better, however, were Marjorie's "hot snacks." Her lunch, of which I don't presently remember the name, was stuffed miniature envelopes of meat and/or stuffing. It was really, really good. We also got some french fries, which are apparently eaten all the time at meal or snack. Interesting?

Well, what an unbelievably long day. We got back here at midnight, so we're very tired. Tomorrow, I'm seeing Rotterdam, but beforehand, I'm taking some rest on my own and it's going to be great. Perhaps I'll discuss more of our sore details later, but for now, I'm really tired.
Dan

PS, Marjorie reminded me that we ate ice cream in Budapest too, so I ended up having ice cream 8 consecutive days! It was peerfect. Which reminds me...apparently Ben and Jerry's has its sole plant somewhere around Amsterdam. How cool would that be?

PPS - Les Mis has been and is showing in Dutch. Enough said.

Auf Wiedersehen Wien; Hallo Rotterdam

Good grief; it's Friday night (almost midnight), I haven't packed, and I can only think about how quickly this month went by!

Before that, however, perhaps I should recap the week:
-Mon- Leopold Museum featuring lots of art, specifically by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, two of the Secession's most renowned painters.
-Tues-Went to visit Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Johann Strauss, who reside in consecutive plots at the Zentralfriedhof. We had an excellent lecture on music (mostly about Gustav Mahler)
-Wed- The Vienna Museum, which has artifacts from the Vienna area dating back to the Roman Empire. Then, I took a tour of the State Opera House (somewhat disappointing) before going to the Musikverein to see the Vienna Mozart Orchestra play a concert. The only non-Mozart piece was the encore, On the Beautiful Blue Danube, by Strauss. Beautiful concert in a beautiful hall.
-Thurs- Went to the Nashmarkt, a sort of daily farmers market. I picked up a box of excellent raspberries and a box of Ribisel...aka Johannisbeere...aka currants. I don't think I'd ever seen raw currants before. They're apparently native to Austria, and they're very sour. yum! We also had our program-concluding dinner at a heurigen (winery) north of town. The food was great...as was the wine.
-Today, Friday- After our class's goodbye party/lunch, I went to the Instrument Museum at Hofburg Palace. There, the museum exhibits a huge collection of old and ancient (as old as the 11th cen.) musical instruments! The woodwinds were actually wood! I also saw an Edison wax-cylinder phonograph and listened to a recording of Strauss's orchestra, the only remaining original recording of that orchestra. Too bad I only saw 2/3 of the museum before closing. I guess I should have allotted my time better... Next, a few of us went to the Volksprater, an old amusement park. The highlight of this park is a 200 foot diameter, 111 year old ferris wheel (Riesenrad)! Also special is that each ferris wheel car is the size of a small tractor shed! What an engineering marvel for 1897.

I guess the other notable thing this week was my mass consumption of ice cream. I rediscovered the ice cream I ate on the 2nd day and decided that it's the best ice cream in the world. For only 2 Euros, I could get 3 huge scoops! Thus, I made it a point to go get 3 scoops of ice cream there every day this week! mmmmmmm...

Well, that was a ridiculously fast month. Tomorrow at 8:40 am, I catch my 12 hour train to Rotterdam. I intend to look out the window, read a lot of the Lord of the Rings, and write my Arts in Vienna final exam (200 words on each of 4 prompts, flexibly due this weekend by email). When I get home to VA, I'll put in some overall thoughts and discussions on my cultural and experiential impressions of Vienna, but for now, I just want to say that it has been such an AMAZING trip. I intend to also make a list of all the things I did while I was here, but I know that will take quite a while to compile. No one here can believe that we're finished up, but many here openly state that they're excited to get home. Admittedly, I'm excited to get some real sleep, since 6 and a half hours per night is starting to wear on me. Nonetheless, I have one week left, and I'm looking forward to seeing a lot in the Netherlands- Rotterdam, Amsterdam, the North See, windmills, the home of the Pilgrams...and of course Brussels and Paris.

If you have any sightseeing ideas, let me know by reply post or e-mail! Good bye for now, and good bye sweet city of Vienna!