It’s been a busy couple of weeks in Austria. With classes, travelling, and hanging out at the Kartause, I’ve definitely had my plate full.
Last weekend was our excursion to Salzburg and Munich. To get geared up for that, two days before we left, there was a showing of The Sound of Music, and someone even brought a drink suited to the occasion: Edelweiss beer. The bus ride to Salzburg included a group rosary and most of the movie Sophie Scholl – Die Ietzten Tage (Sophie Scholl – The Final Days), a 2005 film about a famous member of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi non-violent student resistance movement in the 1940s. Sophie, her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst, were executed February 22, 1943, for treason. They all attended the University of Munich, and there are now memorials in Munich dedicated to their courage in opposing the Nazis. Thus, it made a fine and thought-provoking introduction to Munich.
Friday in Salzburg was a fairly open day: there was Mass, lunch, a tour, and a concert. I spent most of the day wandering the streets of Salzburg with some friends, finding interesting locations and stores. One place we discovered was the Kollegienkirche, an absolutely beautiful church that, although in the middle of renovation, was stunning in its decoration. Unlike most baroque architecture we’ve seen, its decoration was based around white instead of gold, and it lent an air of breathtaking simplicity to the church. I’d highly recommend a visit there for anyone visiting Salzburg.
Salzburg is just a gorgeous city (one of the professors keeps saying it’s the most beautiful city in the world, although she might be somewhat biased: her father is from Salzburg), so just wandering around was a treat. Since the day before was Mozart’s birthday, my friends and I stopped in to see Mozart’s birthplace and home in his early life, which was filled with artifacts, even down to Mozart’s wallet and hair. After some more walking around town, and a stop at the Augustiner, a popular beer garden in Salzburg, we went to the Schloss Mirabel (Mirabel Palace) for a classical music concert, consisting of works by Mozart, Beethoven, and César Franck. They were all chamber pieces, with the only three instrumentalists being two violinists, one of whom also played the viola, and a pianist. My favorite piece was a collection of themes from Mozart’s operas Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and Don Giovanni arranged for two violins; it included one of the most well-known themes from these operas, “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” from Die Zauberflöte, popularly known as the Queen of the Night aria. To the end the night, my friends and I shared a bottle of what we believed at first to be wine, but turned out to be champagne, filled with 23-karat gold flecks.
The next day was spent in Munich, which, again, involved spending most of the day wandering with my friends. We saw the Glockenspiel, an old clock with many moving figurines that dance at the hour. We also visited St. Michael’s Church and St. Peter’s, where you can find the body of St. Munditia, patron saint of single women looking for husbands. After climbing the tower of St. Peter’s to get a good view of Munich, my friends and I wandered to an open market to find lunch, which for me included weißwurst, a sausage that is a Bavarian specialty. Following lunch, we ventured to the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest museum of science and technology.It covers 47 square kilometers, which is roughly 18 square miles. There are sections in the museum for almost any topic you can think of. One of my favorite parts of the museum was a simplified theremin, an early electronic musical instrument played by moving your hands in the air near the instrument’s antennas: there’s no need to even touch the instrument. Its eerie sound is often associated with old horror or science fiction films: for instance, it was used in the scores for The Day the Earth Stood Still and the classic Charleton Heston film The Ten Commandments (which is neither horror nor science fiction). The simplified theremin at the museum was actually allowed to be played which, I must say, I was very excited about. On the way back from the museum, my friends and I ate some fast food Turkish barbeque. Back in Salzburg, I went with a group of students to eat kebaps, a Turkish dish that is the basis for Greek gyros, and then visit an Irish pub.
The last day of the weekend, in Salzburg, began with Mass, but my friends and I decided to start the day slightly earlier. At a nearby church, there was an advertisement for a performance of Mozart’s vespers at 9 AM. To our surprise, the performance was not actually vespers: it was a Mass involving Mozart’s music! To make it to the Mass the rest of the group would be at, we had to leave early from the first Mass; to our even greater surprise, the other Mass also included Mozart’s music! Following Mass, we drove to Mondsee for lunch and a bit of sightseeing. The most well-known sight in Mondsee is the church where the wedding scene from The Sound of Music was filmed. After all of this, we safely returned to Gaming for a well-deserved rest…until class the next morning.
This past weekend, I stayed back in Gaming. At first I had trouble finding any events going on or any people to hang out with, but I learned that that’s just a symptom of the morning: after noon passes, people seem to be a lot more active. Friday night, I attended the Divine Liturgy with a group of hikers/skiers from Britain. The Divine Liturgy is, in a sense, the equivalent of the Mass in the Byzantine Rite. The Byzantine chapel on campus was created by students from the International Theological Institute, who used to stay at the Kartause until a few years ago. It’s an awe-inspiring chapel, featuring icons of saints from both the Western and Eastern Church. I hope to be able to find some more Eastern Catholic services before the semester is through.
Yesterday, Saturday, I joined a few other students for a hike up Book Mountain. The name is a bit of a misnomer: my household brother from Alaska claims that it’s not tall enough to match the technical definition of a mountain, and supposedly it’s not even the original Book Mountain. Its German name is completely different, but the students here refer to it as Book Mountain because, well, it’s a tall natural structure with a book at the top that a hiker signs to prove he’s survived the climb. Due to the warmer temperatures lately, the snow has mostly melted, making the trail a bit slippery with its mix of mud and slush, but it was still a pretty quick climb for me: it only took about 2½ hours to go to the top and back. Of course, I was going fairly fast, so others took longer, and my household brother made it in much less time (although he does everything quickly).
Now it’s Sunday, and I’m just resting, following a Mass concelebrated by a Slovakian priest who spent many years in Siberia, a British priest, a Chinese priest, and an American priest. It feels very international to hear them all reciting the Our Father in German. That’s been all the excitement I’ve been involved in lately: hopefully in another week or two I’ll have even more things to blog about. Until next time, God bless! Auf wiedersehen!
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