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