Images of Venice

1. Can you tell I'm happy?

2. One beautiful view of many.

3. Our hostel room.

4. One of those really cool things I can't afford.

5. Our breakfast each morning.

6. Beach!

7. My favorite canal/picture.

8. A cheesy photo that I asked Danielle to take of me so I could share it with you.

9. Vivaldi's House

10.Kerry, Nisha and Me on the Gondola.

11. Our Gondola driver and the top of Brian's head.

12. Cemitiri Island - isn't it pretty.

13. Cemitiri Island from the outside... I told you it was curious looking.

14. Demonstration of glass blowing on Murano

15. A picture of the plaza near our hostel.

A Stranger in Paradise… Me in Venice that is!

Hello Folks,

It is true, I have found paradise. I have officially fallen in love with the city of Venice. Not to be confused, West Virginia will always be the place where my heart feels home, but if I am at home in WV, Venice can be my heart’s vacation spot. From the second we stepped off the train I was absolutely taken by the city. Words (and pictures) simply cannot describe the beauty of this place. I think what I loved most though was not the beauty, but the sense of peace that the water provided. Vienna is beautiful, but it definitely feels like a city with loud noises and all the hustle and bustle. But Venice is quiet and calm. It was just the get away that I needed in the middle of a busy semester.

Danielle, Brian and I left Vienna around 9 pm on Wednesday night after a successful few days of mid-term exams. It turns out that half of our program was also going to Venice because of the cheep deal. (Only 38 euro round trip) The ride was uneventful and we all slept well. We arrived in Venice around 8 30 am Thursday morning ready to take on the day. After a short ride on the water bus, we found our hostel which was very cute. The room wasn’t huge but we had our own bathroom and it was the perfect size for the 3 of us. They brought us breakfast each morning too, which was awesome.

After dropping off our stuff, we were pretty hungry and went to a nearby restaurant to get our first Italian pizzas. The weather was nice enough that we could sit outside. While eating, we saw Kerry and Nisha, two of our friends from IES who were actually staying in our same hostel and we met up with them again later. Then… we explored. So the way the island is set up: there is the grand canal that runs through the middle, and 300 or so smaller canals that branch off of that and the rest of the streets are ally ways, some narrower than others. First, we just explored the area around our hostel, which was filled with shops and souvenir vendors.

Then we made our way to St. Marks Square, which is pretty much the center of the city. We went into the cathedral, which was So Cool! For the non-musicians, St. Marks Cathedral is where any number of major composers held the position of Maestro di Capella, including Monteverdi. This church was the center of Renaissance and early Baroque music much the way that New York is the center of Broadway music today. We talked about St. Marks a lot in my music history class and I have sung a good deal of Monteverdi in choirs at UNH so it was pretty cool to know that I was standing in the presence of greatness.

And then… we got Gelato (or Gelati in Italy) = Heaven! You all know my allegiance to Kimball Farm Ice Cream in Carlisle, MA, but Kimball’s still doesn’t come close.  Simply put, Gelati is pure joy on a cone.

Finally, we met up with Kerry and Nisha and went out for dinner where I got pasta and we had a quirky waiter. That night we were all exhausted from the trip and it was raining so we crashed early.

Friday was exciting. First we took a short trip to the island of Murano. Still a part of Venice, it is known for its glass blowing. In fact… that is the only thing that happens on this island. After getting off the waterbus, we saw a demonstration for 2 euro that was very cool. It is crazy the way that they can just whip shapes out of half melted glass in the end of a stick. Then we walked around the shops and looked at all the pretty things that we can’t afford.

On the way back to the main island, the waterbus made a stop at a curious looking island and I asked if we could get off and see what it was. It turns out that this island was called Cemetiri and you guessed it, it is the Cemetery Island for the city of Venice. I know, it sounds like it would be morbid, but it wasn’t at all. Actually, it was beautiful and one of my favorite parts of the trip. Brian was joking around asking if I had picked out my plot yet, because I told them that that is where I want to be buried. In all seriousness though, I’ve decided that this island is what death should look like. All of the gravestones were close together, as a community and every single one had fresh, bright, colorful flowers. The sun was shining that day and it just felt like such a happy place, not dark and dreary at all. I probably could have stayed there all day walking around, but I didn’t get the same sense from everybody else so we headed back to the main island.

When we got back we got some lunch and began shopping. I got myself a couple of shirts, and a painting from a local vendor of a canal.  Oh! And then we went on a Gondola ride! (I almost forgot) For about 16 euro each, we got a half hour ride down the Grand Canal and through some other smaller canals. On the ride our gondola-man pointed out some important palaces and… Vivaldi’s house! We realized that we were being super touristy by going on a ride, but it was totally worth it.

After eating dinner, we went back to our rooms to chill for a bit before trying to go out and do something fun that night. We came to learn that there is no such thing as nightlife in Venice. We eventually found an Irish pub… that closed at 12:30. Well… we tried.

By Saturday, we had pretty much run out of things to do.  There were certainly museums that we could have checked out but didn’t totally feel like trying to find them so we just kind of wandered for a while. That is easy to do in Venice; the cool part is… you always end up at St. Marks. One of the things that Danielle’s guidebook recommended was to take one of the waterbuses all the way up and down the Grand Canal, which we did. Several of us fell asleep on the ride but it was beautiful. At the end of the line we got off on Lido (like the pizza place in Westminster!) one of the other islands that some of our friends were staying on. We walked around there a bit and found a beach! That was exciting. Then we headed back to the train station, got dinner, and got on the train to go home.

3 days was the perfect amount of time to be there. We had enough time to see what we wanted to without feeling like we were cramming it in or getting bored. It was all nice and relaxed with no complaints whatsoever.

I still can’t quite get over it all. I will probably rave about this trip for months.  The best part is that I woke up this morning (Monday) feeling totally refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the semester.  Hopefully that will last, haha. My roommate from home, Bridget, is studying abroad in France this semester and coming to visit me this weekend. We are both really excited for it. Then, 4 days after she leaves, my parents get here to spend spring break with me. So there are lots of exciting things coming up. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing about it. I’ll be sure to post again soon.

Love,

Caitlin

I promise to put up some more pictures with me in them. Most of them are on Danielle's camera, so I'll try to get those from her soon. 

1. Oh! And we had really good Sushi.

2. View of Bratislava from the castle on the mountain.

3. Primate Palace- we couldn't take pictures inside

4. We matched... and it wasn't on purpose, freaky?

5. The epitome of our day...

Sorry this took me so long!

Hello Friends and Loved Ones,

How are you all doing? I’m sorry to say that I do not have anything terribly exciting to report for the last couple of weeks. It appears that I have at last reached the state of “settling in.” But I will try to remember some of the fun things that happened or little tidbits that come to mind.

So of course I missed Aaron like crazy after he left, but my friends here were really great about keeping me occupied and having fun. It is great because now he knows all the people and places that I talk about.

Oh! I went to Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia) last weekend with Danielle and Brian for a day. It was an… interesting experience.  First of all we spent 8 hours in the city and that was more than enough time. Let’s just say there isn’t much to do in Bratislava. There is one palace, one castle, and one cathedral we saw them all along with A LOT of broken umbrellas. The weather was… somewhat less than desirable. Who are we kidding, it was miserable. It was cold, windy, and pouring the entire day, but we were troopers! We found refuge first in a café, then in a McDonalds (it was the first time I’ve been in one the whole time I’ve been here, aren't you proud?) and Danielle spent time documenting all the broken umbrellas around the city, I think she has about 15 pictures. I’ll put up a few that I have. All things considered we still had a really good time. We certainly made the best of it and made sure to laugh a lot both at ourselves and the situation.

I had a really great coaching with my accompanist a few weeks ago. She asked me what I wanted to do after graduation and I told her all about my passions for service work. Then we started talking about how I wanted to find music to work on in Vienna that related to those passions. So she invited me over to her house! I went over earlier this week and we went through her music library to find pieces that related to spirituality and hope for the future of the world. It was great! She is an amazing woman and I’m so excited to be working with her.

I had my German midterm this morning, which went well. I feel like I have such a better handle on general concepts than when I took German my freshman year. It is nice to feel like I get it. And the rest of this week we all have midterms and then a short break. I have my exam for Art and Architecture on Monday and The Lied on Wednesday. And then…

I’m going to Venice! Since we don’t have classes the rest of the week, everyone is traveling to different places. So Danielle and Brian and I are going to Venice for guess how much… 38 euros round trip! The train company was running a special deal. So we’re taking a night train Wednesday into Thursday morning then we’ll stay for two nights and take a night train back Saturday into Sunday. I’m pretty pumped. I’ll be sure to write about it when I’m back.

Let’s see... I went to see Carmen at the Staatsoper last weekend. I debated a lot because I had homework to do, but ultimately decided that I’d kick myself if I didn’t go. (Sunday was the last time it was playing while we’re here) The production itself was great. We were not that impressed by the mezzo-soprano singing the role of Carmen, but loved the staging, costumes and supporting characters. It was fun to see a show that all the music was so familiar.

On Thursday night, Christa, Angie and I had a somewhat awkward concert going experience. Our performance workshop professor got us free tickets to a Liederabend (Night of Song) at a local conservatory. It was a baritone and piano. They began by singing a number of songs by Hugo Wolf and then things got weird. The baritone then proceeded to sit in a chair and read us a 30 page story (in German) about Mozart, with musical interludes by the pianist. We legitimately tried to pay attention for the first five minutes, but the next 85 minutes were hopeless. There was a woman in front of us having a giggle fit with herself and a man sitting near us with very long legs in a very small seat. So it was still an entertaining experience, just not in the way we expected it to be.

Those are the big things I can think of for now. I’m sure other things will come to mind and I’ll be sure to post about them. I’ll also add some pictures from the Bratislava trip. Sorry for taking so long to post. I’ll try to be better. Thanks for reading. You’re all in my thoughts and prayers.

Love,

Caitlin

Pictures!

Okay, so they are kind of in reverse order of the trip, but I'll try to label them and see where the captions end up. From the top:

1-3 At the Ball

4. Aaron at the Naschmarkt

5. Me on the train on the ride home from Budapest

6. Us at our table at the Hungarian Restaurant

7. Our view as we walked into the restaurant!

8. Us on top of a castle-like thing.

9. Me channeling my inner Leo

10. Us looking out over Buda (this is one of my favorites)

11. Aaron and I on the bridge over the Danube

12. The relic of the right hand of St. Stephen

13. The copula of St. Stephen's Basilica

14. Parliament

15. Aaron sleeping on the train to Budapest, or at least pretending to

16. Aaron at the airport, ready to go

Aaron's Visit!!!

Dear Everyone,

I am writing with mixed emotions right now. I brought Aaron to the airport this morning for him to fly back to the states. So, as expected, I’m pretty bummed he’s not here, thinking about him a lot because he is flying home as we speak, but our week was absolutely wonderful and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. So for that I (and we) could not be happier.

Aaron arrived in Vienna around 2:30 pm last Friday afternoon. We had plans for him to take the bus to a train station closer to school for me to meet him at. But when I found out that I didn’t actually have class on Friday afternoon, I decided to surprise him at the airport. With help from his parents to coordinate, I stood outside of the arrivals gate just outside of the baggage claim. I had no idea what his reaction would be, it turns out that he was surprised beyond words… quite literally. He saw me, took me in his arms and it was wonderful J

From there we took a bus to the train station where we picked up a train to Budapest. Since this was Aaron’s first time in Europe, he really wanted to be able to see more than one city and it was really nice for me to get out of Vienna for a bit. So we went right to the train station and boarded for our 3 and a half hour ride to Budapest. Since we were a bit hesitant to just go exploring a foreign city at night, we just hung out at our hostel and talked and enjoyed being

We basically spent Saturday wandering around. Since we were only there for a day, we didn’t want to spend all our time running around to scheduled tours or locations. Our hostel was only about 3 blocks away from the Danube river (which runs through the center of the city dividing it into Buda and Pest) so we could easily see things on both sides of the city.

First, we walked along the water on the Pest side and found the GIGANTIC parliament building. It is beautiful too. Of course, my jaded European self initially thought: “Oh cool another old building”, but Aaron was fascinated. And then the more we walked around it, his excitement rubbed off on me and I realized… “yea, that’s pretty darn cool.”

Next we found St. Stephen’s Basilica, which was possibly the one thing that we did want to make sure we found. It was gorgeous! And it held the relic of the right hand of St. Stephen. It is pretty difficult to put it into words, but I’ll make sure to include a  couple of pictures. Then we walked a little more and found a park, where we sat, ate some crackers, and watched some dogs play. (Aaron really loves dogs)

I believe it was then that we walked back to the water, along the river until we came to the bridge and walked across that to the Buda side. Upon reaching the other side, we were confronted by a rather large hill and all the pretty stuff was at the top,  so we took a little trolley ride to the top and looked around at a whole lot of things that we had no idea what they were but were very pretty. One of these days we’ll sit down together and look them up and say, “oh that’s what we were looking at… cool!”

Around 4 we headed back to our hostel to get ready for dinner. We didn’t know where we wanted to go, but we had planed weeks before that to find a nice place, and find a nice place we did. We came across a traditional Hungarian restaurant on our walk back that had stickers that said things like “best of Budapest 2008” on the door and seemed to be in our price range, so we tried to remember where it was. Tried being the operative word.  After we got ready (me in my black dress, him in his suit pants and a sweater- we looked very fancy) we spent about a half hour to 45 minutes looking for it again, of course not speaking a word of Hungarian, but it was totally worth it:

We opened the door to the restaurant and heard live violin music. We then walked down some stairs into a brick arched cellar (observe the picture) with beautifully decorated tables and looked at each other in amazement. After the waiter took our coats and hung them up for us, he seated us at a table for two. The food was amazing too. Aaron got goose and I got duck! Both came with potatoes, mine also came with grapes soaked in something and Aarons had cabbage (and there was something grape about it). We finished off the dinner with a great chocolate cherry soufflé with ice cream to share, which was also fabulous. All in all we probably sat there for 2 and a half hours just eating and talking. It is truly an evening that I will never forget.

Our train back to Vienna on Sunday was at 11 so we were up and ready to go early. We got back to Vienna in the afternoon and went to my apartment where we hung out with my roommates for a little while. It was very fun. After we got settled in a bit, it was time to go to the Staatsoper. The ballet Giselle was showing that night so the two of us got dressed up again and waited for standing room tickets with Brian and Danielle. We had a lot of fun and the ballet was beautiful. It was really exciting for me to show Aaron the place that I talk about so much.

Monday, I had a couple of classes, so Aaron hung around the Center while I went to my Lied class, but he was able to sit in on my Art and Architecture class. After class, we took a trip to the Naschmarkt where we got the best cheddar cheese either of us had ever tasted, sun dried tomatoes, and hummus. Then we went back to the apartment and made dinner for everyone so that it would be ready when Danielle got in from class a little after 8.

Then the fun really began, as we got ready for the ball! And this one was a masquerade! Christa curled my hair for me, Danielle and I threw on our dresses, did our make up, and of course put on our masks. Aaron seemed to be taking a little longer to get ready than I thought he might so I started to get a bit suspicious of something. Then when he walked out of the room, I realized that he practically had a brand new tux! To my surprise, he had gotten a new shirt, vest, buttons, cufflinks and shoes and it looked amazing! It was very exciting. Then we made our way to the Hofberg Palace for a lovely evening of dancing and smiling. It was a totally surreal experience to be dancing with my Baby, all dressed up, in a palace.

Tuesday was kind of a busy day. I had German class, then a voice lesson, a break to do work, a coaching, another short break and then Coexistence and Conflict. So we didn’t get to do a lot together, but Aaron went exploring the area around my school and it was so nice for me to see Aaron sitting in the lounge when I got out of class. Then at the end of the day we shared Texas Tuesday with everybody upstairs.

Wednesday was busy again, but the best part was the very beginning. So of course it was ash Wednesday and we had planned to go to mass at 7 at the church across the street from my apartment. But when we got there we found out that the service actually started at 8 which didn’t give us enough time for me to get to my 9:00 class. However, the day before, while exploring, Aaron had stumbled upon St. Stephen’s Cathedral (which is very close to my school) and suggested that we go there. It turns out that there was a service starting just as we got there around quarter of 8. So yes, it is true, we got to go to mass on Ash Wednesday in St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna. Between that, and being able to share it with him, it was possibly one of the most beautiful services I’ve every been a part of. Even though the rest of the day was very long with classes, that experience really carried us through.

I went to my 9 00 class and Aaron explored a bit more. He made it to Naschmarkt and back on his own (not something that I could do after my first visit) and got some more cheese and bought me a brown patterned scarf that I love. That afternoon was great because I had two class excursions and Aaron was allowed to come to both. The first was to the Kunsthistorisches (Art History) Museum where we saw Egyptian mummies and Greek and Roman sculptures. Then from there we booked it to the Beethoven house… or one of his apartments, should we say. This museum wasn’t super impressive, but had some original scores and seriously… Beethoven lived there!

That evening I had my performance workshop class and Aaron got to see me perform. I sang a Clara Schumann piece that I sang at my recital and holds a lot of meaning for the both of us. I told him, not to be offended when I didn’t look at him because if I did, I’d cry. But I managed to keep it together. Later that night, we tried to go out in some way to a club or bar or something, but then realized (a little too late) why everything was closed…. because it was Ash Wednesday… oops.

Thursday was our last full day together. Unfortunately we were both pretty exhausted from the week, myself in particular. So after I got out of German class, I took a nap for a bit, but then we walked around the shopping district for a while and got dinner at a very cute Italian bistro. Then we stopped in St. Stephens one more time to look around a little more, because we didn’t get to the last time.  Then, since we didn’t get to the night before, we went to the Mexican restaurant down the street from my school to share one last drink together. I got a Margarita, he had a whiskey sour and called it a night. Because…

We had to be up at 3 the next morning to go to the airport. So I waited with him until he had to go through security and we said our goodbyes. Needless to say, it was a little rough, but we both knew that the time would come for him to leave and like I said at the beginning of the post, we had the times of our lives. It was truly a perfect week.

Vienna doesn’t feel quite the same now here without him, but it is so exciting for the both of us that he has now met my friends and seen the places that he hears me talk about so often. The next 10 weeks of being apart will certainly be hard, but we are both very positive about it. We both have very exciting things happening in the coming time: Aaron found out while he was here that he won a competition at UNH and will be the soloist for a concerto to be performed with the UNH Wind Symphony! (Can you tell that I’m proud?) and my parents told me at the beginning of the week that they are going to be able to come over and visit during my spring break!

All in all, we are so very thankful for each other and the time that we were able to spend together this week.  I’m convinced that I’m the luckiest girl alive to have someone who is so good to me and willing to come see me when I am half a world away. Aaron is truly a gift from God in my life.

Okay… I’ll end the gushiness here. I will put pictures up in a separate post with labels and such. Thanks for reading as always and I’ll write again soon.

Love Always,

Caitlin