Sunrise, Sunset, Rain, Art and Gulasch

The Belvedere

This week I worked really hard on "being a good girl", a phrase I remember vividly from my readings in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. The disadvantage of this behavior is that there isn't much exciting adventure to tell, so it remains to me to write you about the beautiful mundane moments of the week (as mundane as they come here in Vienna lol).

The weather has been almost unbearably hot and sticky, unbearable because there is hardly any air conditioning in Europe, so I've enjoyed swimming in the pool (yes, we have a small pool in our front yard) twice this week. I went jogging a couple of times at sundown, and have found the perfect running stretch along a little stream that creates the perfect thinking atmosphere.

Wednesday night I was walking home from institue in a light rain shower, and my flip flops were giving me a blister. Finally I couldn't bear it any longer, kicked my silly shoes off, and walked home in the rain splashing through puddles as I went. It felt so satisfying to feel the rough texture of the ground under my feet... it made me feel alive... young... joyful... connected. I would reccomend it to all of you as something to do in the near future.

I finally made the aquaintance of the turtle that lives right outside of our window. I had dragged a chair next to the window sill to set some chocolate milk on for me to enjoy while I was doing some research. I kept hearing slight rustling noises from the bushes, and got nervous. My imagination jumped right to a snake, and as soon as it did I climed through the window back into the apartment. A few minutes later I peeped out and found Pünktchen crawling out of obscurity. She is a big and beautiful turtle to behold. She crawled away the other day, escaping her little compound, but Assini luckily found her nestled in the bushes.

Tuesday morning I got up around 5am, and after a shower I left the house for a quick run to see the beautiful sunrise. Even though all of our man-made architecture and art is beautiful and inspiring, I have yet to find something that makes me love life more than a sunrise.

Even so, the Art history museum here in Vienna never ceases to facinate me. This week our assigment was to pick three pieces to do three different assignments on. One of the assignments was to spend at least 15 min. in front of a painting writing about someone in it from first person perspective. I chose a painting of David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio, and amazed myself

with my own discoveries as I sat, looked at and really pondered the painting. David's face isn't full of triumph at his conquest. His mouth is set, his eyes turned away from the gruesome head he holds as far away from himself as he possibly can. His eyes look upward, above the darkness he is surrounded with. Light almost seems to eminate from him. The two other pieces I selected were Bruegel's Tower of Babel, which I tried to examine in detail, "reading" it from left to right, asking questions and answering them, and then Rafael's Madonna of the Meadow that I mentioned in my last letter for a formalist analysis.

The other art museum we saw this week was the Belvedere, which has a collection of the beginnings of modern art. Our focus group was Schiele, Klimt and Kokoschka with a smattering of the impressionists. I think I had one of my first aesthetic experiences with art when I saw The Kiss by Klimt. this picture that I got from online conveys only the merest shadow of the beauty of this paiting. The texture gets lost in the photograph, and it is precisely the texture that gives the painting life when you look at it.

I spent most of the weekend alone doing research since Chelsea lives in Justin land, Lillian lives in Lloyd land, and Tasha was in another part of Austria visiting relatives. It felt good to know that I've made some more progress on that. I watched a couple of episodes of sesame street in French, to help me remember some of it for the coming semester. Saturday evening Charles (one of the other study abroad people) and I went to Pizza Bizi for a delicious slice of Italian amazingness, sprinted to Sanoni & Sanoni for some ice cream and barely made it to the Minoritenkirche for a free concert by a youth orchestra from Texas. They were amazing, and the accoustics of the church made it an unforgettable experience. Phil called when I got back to Alterlaa and invited me to go to a movie night at McKay's house, so we took the U-bahn there to see the last little bit of Kung Fu Panda, which I had never seen before. I really enjoyed it.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! Tuesday night our whole study abroad group went to the Gulasch (German word for stew) museum. I got a turkey gulash, and was transported into a world of delicious wonderfulness I had no idea existed. The chocolate gulasch that followed was also delicious, a little too rich, but it had an interesting kick of pepper in it that I might try adding to some of my chocolatey recipes in the near future...

I can't believe how fast this is all winding down. Just a few more weeks of amazingness... till the new adventure begins!

Love and miss you all!

Margaret