Salzburg

I started painting again...
Artwork in a platz in Salzburg
Walking up to the fortress
Applause for the Mozart Requiem
Marionette Museum

Sorry to be so long between posts; school has started and I'm relieved to be busy again. I've had a hard time getting a hold of the horn professors, I guess they just came back from a tour.
Classes are great but involved;
Mahler has hundreds of pages for reading every night...so much Schopenhauer and Nitzche...
Art and Arch/Modern Art: Taught by the same teacher for now, so I'm having a hard time distinguishing the courses. All I know is I have a lot of museum visiting to do and more reading.
Music Workshop: Baffling, someone keeps leaving music for me all over the institute-Easter egg hunt? I don't know, but someone has lost their mind.
German: Going well! My speech is getting much better, even when I'm not expecting to talk.

I just got in contact with my language exchange partner-she seems really sweet and I think we're getting together Friday afternoon. She's 17 years old and prepping for upper division/college courses.

I came back last night from a trip to Salzburg with Jacy and Julia for my pre-bithday. We went to the big fortress, which is the best preserved Medieval castle in Europe. It was really fascinating; we saw the war museum and the marionette museum. The scenery was gorgeous. We also walked up to a set of catacombs placed into the mountains. The catacombs were connected to a very beautiful cemetery and church. There were wonderful street musicians, many playing Mozart-but there were some interestin Clapton, Beatles and Rossini performances. We went to a restaurant where Jacy and Julia bought me a birthday dinner-I tried tafelspitz for the first time (boiled beef with creamed spinach and potatoes) which sounds questionable but it was quite palatable. We also ordered a dessert called "hot love" which was pretty embarrassing at the request, but well worth it (vanilla ice cream with whipped cream and warm raspberries). One of the greatest experiences was seeing the Mozart Requiem on Saturday night, the church was unlike anything I had seen (ornate yet colorless)-although the music was muddied from the seating in the back :(
We also visited Mozart's geburtshaus (birthplace) and museum; which contained some amazing relics-like the silhouettes of the original Opera cast members, original pianos and walking sticks. Some of the stuff was so weird; there was a crib with a Mozart's adult head on a child's body lit up by a flourescent halo thing. It was put together with some collaborator of Philip Glass...I didn't understand some of those exhibits. There was another with a black chalkboard room with illuminated doors and small women's costumes walking toward bright lights, the walls were adorned with Mozart's characters, plays, cities of residence and comrades. There was another room that was constructed upside-down, which was charming but far-fetched.
The city was incredibly photogenic and it was nice to be in fresh air.
It was funny because my Art and Architecture class today was focused solely on Salzburg and I felt very 'in-the know.'

Funny story: We went to lunch in the fortress before the train ride home-and our waitress was a lesbian who was very impressed with my awesome ordering skills/accent. She made it a point to only talk to me for the rest of the meal and handed my change back to me very sensually at the end of lunch. So, I was hit on in a medieval palace. Flattering, right?