A French Thanksgiving

*Jane in Paris*

On Thursday the French Fulbright Alumni group put together a Thanksgiving dinner for any alumni, students, exchange teachers, distinguished chairs, and UNESCO Fulbright interns that wanted to come (I've learned that "Fulbright" actually encompasses a wide variety of exchanges). At my families' houses Thanksgiving is always a rather relaxed affair, but it would figure that the French would have to take our casual American holiday and make it a spectacular gastronomic affair.

The dinner was held in a restaurant at Les Frigos, a 6-story meat cellar turned artist work space. The structure is a plain white factory-looking building built during one of the World Wars to house the tons and tons of cows that had been slaughtered as the Germans advanced. The picture to the right shows the menacing pipes that pervade the building. In the 60s, I think, the French government decided to give the building to artists, who quickly began to decorate the building inside and out.



Not only was the meal in an incredible place, but the mostly French contributers to the meal made sure to add a sophisticated, gourmet twist to their dishes. The turkey was cooked like a steak, and it was served covered with a sauce. The mashed potatoes were sweet potatoes with just the right spices. Of course there was lots of wine and Perrier to drink. The tables were adorned with festive, fall centerpieces.

I was oddly the only Fulbrighter of my kind (U.S. Student is my title), and one of just a handful of Americans at all. This disappointed me because I haven't seen the other American students since late October, but it also gave me an opportunity to practice my French, because the crowd was mostly French alumnae of the program who had once been on a Fulbright to the U.S. I talked with a couple passionate about music and art in general for an hour, and they eventually gave me their contact information and suggested that we visit the various composers' museums in the Paris area in the Spring, once the leaves come out on the trees. I had read before coming here that the French like to engage in lively conversation, and that interruptions are actually encouraged because this shows enthusiasm. I was very proud of myself for being able to do this, and therefore take part in the discussion in an appropriate way.

One other great part of the night was that one of the alumni there was a sculpter that had a studio at Les Frigos. In groups of 20 at a time he gave us a tour of his studio, where several of his original pieces were on display.

At first they seemed bizarre, but the artist explained that he was interested in geology and archeology, and that he focused on the layers of the Earth's surface, because we humans are intimately connected to it. The sculptures in the pictures are made of pieces of iron that are either oxidized or burned to create color, and the artist welds small pieces of something, I think more metal, carefully on the surface to create the appearance of soil. A single tree typically adorns it. I loved the sculpture in the picture on the left because it's all gray.

What a unique experience! But still, it felt strange to not be in the U.S. during Thanksgiving. Besides family, the thing I missed the most was all of the football.

Weekend in Vienna

*Nick in Vienna

This past weekend Jane came to visit me in Vienna. We decided that we were going to relax the whole weekend, meaning no research or writing, because of the grant applications we recently turned in. We probably have not had a weekend without research since last spring when we went on a climbing trip, so it was very nice to relax for a couple days.

On Friday we went to a modern art museum in Klosterneuberg, which is a small suburb about 20 minutes north of Vienna. There is a bus that leaves from downtown Vienna every couple hours that goes to the museum and is free if you buy a ticket for the museum. When we arrived we found out the museum was free that Friday (not sure why), so the bus ride and museum entrance was free, which was pretty great. The museum was quite nice and typical of a modern art museum. Lot's of really cool stuff and lots of stuff that is like, huh, well, that sucks. They were doing a special exhibit on Daniel Richter, a German artist, with some of his stuff as recent as a few months ago. There was also a sound installation that was terrible. It was some guy with a laptop making lots of weird sounds and messing with them electronically. It bugged us quite a bit because it was so loud it could be heard throughout the museum, plus it wasn't anything people haven't been doing for years. Why is it that when some people buy a mac they all of a sudden think they are artists?


On Saturday we did a bit of shopping in downtown Vienna - well, we mostly did looking, though I did buy one thing. The sun goes down here at about 4 and there are some amazing Christmas lights up all around downtown. It is really something to see and next time I'm down there I'll bring a camera. We then went back to my place to make something like a Thanksgiving dinner. We won't be together on Thursday (though we should each be with new friends) so we wanted to make something, which can be difficult in a foreign kitchen. We made mashed potatoes (with no masher) and Jane made egg noodles cooked in chicken broth that have been made in her family for who knows how long and have become a staple of our Thanksgivings. They were very good, but there was no rolling pin and we couldn't find one in the store so we bought a hard salami and she used that in its package. Not sure if she is the first person to use salami instead of a rolling pin, but really it seemed to work quite well. We also substituted cherries for cranberries and minute steaks for turkey because I have a tiny oven and we didn't really see any turkeys anyway.



On Sunday we went to the opera. This time we did standing room for Richard Wagner's Die Walkure. It's the one with the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" that is in Apocalypse Now. We got there 3 hours early to get in line and the opera itself is around 5 hours. So yeah, we were pretty tired afterwords. I kind of considered it earning a music badge because you can't claim to be a musicologist unless you are willing to stand through a Wagner opera. Actually, we were by far in the minority age wise. Most people were probably at least 50, with quite a few that seemed to be closer to 70. They have probably been doing standing room tickets their whole life. I wonder if there heels hurt as much as mine did? Jane got bumped out of a spot by an old woman pretending to be confused. We had heard about crafty old women at the opera always getting there way, but it is different to experience it. She also got in trouble jogging through the halls to catch up (things move very fast after tickets are bought as people jostle for standing places) The performance itself was incredible, and came out to way less than a euro and hour.

Today we went climbing and then Jane had to go back to Paris. I'll be going to Paris in about 3 weeks and then my family is coming here for Christmas. We've got more grants due in a few weeks, so it is back to work for us.

Paris Spectacles

*Jane in Paris*

Last Friday I went to my first opera in Paris. The state opera here actually has two houses, one that looks really ritzy and is in an affluent part of the city (Palais Garnier), and one built in 1989 in a lower middle class area with a modern design (Opera Bastille). The opera hall itself was designed to have no obstructed seats (Garnier does because of all the decorative architecture) and to evenly disperse the sound so that there are no dead spots. Some people roll their eyes at the idea that the French government did this, but I actually think it's a pretty brilliant idea. While opera started out as a genre for the incredibly privileged few, there's no reason why it can't be both a high art activity and an art "for the people" today. The Bastille site offers free concerts once a week, and standing room tickets to all of the operas and ballets shown there. Furthermore, the Palais Garnier tends to show the more classic operas.

Unlike the vast majority of opera goers, I like to see modern operas - the more recently it was written the better! So it was fitting that the first opera I saw was at the Bastille, the newer, modern opera house, and that it was Salome by Richard Strauss, which was composed in 1905. Most people reading the blog don't know this opera - it's really wonderful. The music is beautiful. It sounds like Wagner, but its better and gets to the point much quicker. The entire opera is in fact only one act. The singers did an excellent job - in particular the soprano who sang Salome. The libretto is based on Oscar Wilde's telling of the Biblical tale of the death of John the Baptist. Since Salome dances for Herod in the story to bring about John's beheading, the singer in Strauss's opera has a big dance scene. It was amazing. You know that an opera is good when what the composer has done makes you really think about the words, and as I was listening to the opera I was struck by the beauty of Wilde's libretto. It's actually pretty profound from a spiritual point of view.

I bought a standing room ticket, which required getting in line several hours before the performance like in Vienna. But there were several procedural differences: each person can buy two tickets and not just one, when you first arrive a worker hands you a number with your place in line on it, and the tickets are dispensed by machines and not a box office. Oddly, there are still workers that operate the machines for you - this is perhaps so that no one can buy more than one ticket.

Just as the line was moving, finally allowed to proceed to the machines, I heard someone shout my name. I turned around and there was an Ohio State student I had I taught last year, a violinist. This caused me to lose my place in line, but luckily I had my number 10, so I just went through the line showing it to everyone, who seemed to take it very seriously - "oh, you're 10, please..." This student, Leah, just happened to be in Paris this weekend and also just happened to have bought a ticket for Salome. What she was doing there 90 minutes early I don't know. She hung around with me and the people I had come with before the show, and then I invited her to dinner on Saturday. Ryan Stewart, who some of you know, was also in Paris on Saturday, so I ate dinner with him, one of his work colleagues, and my student Leah. It was pretty random - but I feel like a lot of things that have happened to me in Paris feel like that. I can't explain why; perhaps its just such a bustling city and it draws such a diversity of people that magical things are bound to happen.

On Sunday evening I went to another, very different performance. I met a Scottish jazz guitarist here in Paris last month, Tam de Villiers, and he played a show in the jazz district of Paris with his quartet. The name of the club is Le baiser sale, quite a racy label fitting for jazz music.



The quartet's music was very complicated, and I had to listen very closely or I really had no idea what they were doing. I went to the show with my German friend Andreas, who Nick and I met on the train when I moved to Paris, and his friend Carouli. Andreas is a drummer, so we had to sit right next to the drums. Luckily, though, this was jazz drumming, so there wasn't a lot of banging. All of the players were amazing, but the drummer caught my attention the most because of his proximity. He hardly ever played a groove, but was instead constantly improvising. For one piece he played the snare drum with his fingertips, and in one hand he held an egg shaker that would rattle whenever he hit the drum, and then he also had a stick made of a bunch of little sticks tied together. The drummer, whose name I eventually learned is Karl, is from Manitoba. Like many of the North Americans I meet here, he married a French person.

So this was a busy weekend for me! I'm visiting Nick next weekend, and we're going to try to put away the books while I'm there, so for the next few days I'll be hard at work at the Bibliotheque Nationale.

Viennese Christmas Markets

*Nick in Vienna


It turns out that Vienna is lousy with Christmas markets. I've seen tons of adds for various markets already and have gotten some stuff in the mail. There is a huge one outside the Schonbrun Palace that we're going to check out when my family visits and another huge one downtown that I'm sure we will visit as well. These markets are unlike any I've been to in the states (not that I've been to many) in the sense that besides crafts, ornaments, and a billion santas, they also sell all kinds of food and alcohol. This means my Mom is going to have a wonderful time when she visits, and if the rest of us aren't loving it we can have a great time with cheap beer, wine, and whatever that fruity alcoholic drink is with actual fruit in it - it is really good and I've never seen it stateside, but I can't remember the name.

The picture above I took today at a little market pretty close to my house. There was also a one-man band there who was very good. He was playing "I Heard it through the Grapevine," and right after this picture played a really good harmonica solo (I compensated him well for the picture, don't worry). Probably because Vienna is such a musical city the level of the street performers here is really high. When Jane was here a couple weeks ago we heard this grizzled old guy singing the blues and playing guitar. It was so good. I commented to Jane that this guy could open for Wilco right now and hipsters all across america would eat him up. If I was a talent agent I would start rounding up all the hairy old Austrian blues playing men and form an incredible band. I bet I could get them on Austin City Limits in no time.

Where we've been

*Nick in Vienna

As all you loyal readers have noticed things have been a bit quiet here on 9 months of solitude. My Dad even emailed me and asked if we're already bored living in Europe. Alas, we are not bored but have been completely absorbed is grant applications for our dissertation. "But I thought you already had grants for your dissertation?" you might ask. Well, even though, yes, we have fellowships for this year we have to start thinking about next year. It seems that the main trick to make it in academia is to know how to properly beg for money on a years basis, at least until we get tenure. So, we just applied for money from the American Council of Learned Societies to fund us from next summer 2010 to summer 2011. In another month we have an application due for the American Musicological Society, and then we're pretty much done until April and just have to wait for the money to roll in. Oh, this year we are directly competing against each other which is kind of exciting. Last year we applied for different grants because of where we have to do our research, so this is the first time we are competing. We are actually rooting for each other because at least one of us needs to get a grant so we can eat food next year, and also our dream of teaching at the same school hinges on us being a dream team.

*Jane in Vienna*

I have been in Vienna visiting Nick since the 22nd, and we've done a lot of fun things. Last Monday was the Nationalfesttag in Austria, the National Day, which celebrates the departure of the last occupying soldiers after WWII, in 1955. All of the stores are closed that day and no one works, so we did something a little special and visited the Donauinsel.


There is a long, skinny island that runs down the Danube for several miles in Vienna, and it is a great place for bikers, walkers, rollerbladers, and roaming pups. We mainly went for the last reason. Mason had a great time, and even the U-bahn ride to and from the island didn't bother him that much. We were impressed with how blue the water was, which unfortunately doesn't come across in the pictures.

On Tuesday night we went to our first opera at the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera House). We wanted to get standing room tickets, which cost between 3 and 5 euros, and allow the ticketholder a spot behind a velvet-covered bar. These are located on the first floor under the balcony, on both sides of the balcony, and then somewhere on the gallery. We had a decision to make, because there are pros and cons for each area. We decided on the balcony, because that would guarantee that I would be able to see, and it was rumored that the acoustics were better up there. The process for getting these tickets is rather strange: 1) up until 2 hours before the show you wait in the first line 2) at about 2 hours before a new part of the line is opened up, closer to the box office, so the line scoots up 3) at 1:15 the box office opens and you buy your ticket very quickly, and immediately run to the line that starts for the area you have chosen to sit in 4) then at 1:00 our balcony line was moved up closer to the balcony entrance 5) finally at 45 min. before the opera starts you are allowed to go to your area, where you jostle others for the best spots and then claim them by tying a scarf to the railing. Then you are free to go. The rules are very strict and everyone follows them exactly - no one would dare disrespect someone else's scarf or take too long buying the tickets.

The opera we chose was Lady MacBeth of the Mtensk District, by Shostakovich. This is actually a very historic opera, because it was so scandalous that it provoked Stalin to clamp down publicly on composers, and Shostakovich in particular, in 1936. Shostakovich wrote in his memoires that for several nights after the article criticizing the opera in Pravda was printed, he slept in the hallway of his apartment building, so that when the KGB came to arrest him his family wouldn't witness it. Nick and I are both fond of the music for the opera. The sets were rather simple, but there was an interesting use of light and shadow, and the thoughtful color scheme for everything was white, black, and gray. All of the singers were excellent, especially the lead soprano. And it's really not difficult to stand for several hours if you have something to lean on.



The opera house looks incredible. We only took one picture of it ourselves, but you can view more pictures here (need latest flash installed, look for "360° Panoramatour"). During WWII it was severely damaged by Allied planes, because it was thought that the Nazis were hiding something in the building. After the war this was one of the buildings that underwent renovation as soon as possible, and it was actually re-opened in 1955. The extremely ornate surfaces of the old opera house were retained, and its sumptuous appearance gives an indication of the importance opera holds in Austrian culture, and also of how closely this art form has been allied with past and present Austrian governments.

My favorite part of any musical performance, as long as I enjoyed it, is the end when the audience finally expresses itself and applauds. For me this is the chance to give the performers some sense of how much you appreciate that they have dedicated their lives to giving others the experience of art. In the U.S. the applause period can be very heartfelt, but the right kinds of people have to be there, and enough of them, so that the applause will keep going for sometime. Even though many people at the Shostakovich opera didn't know this work well, the applause still lasted for at least five minutes at the end. I have to say that there were several Americans, who all seemed to be "studying abroad" (partying) in Europe, who also bought standing room tickets, and they all left either well before the opera was over, or in the middle of the applause. I think this shows the contrasting view that Austrians and Americans have of art. The Austrians still understand art as a lofty thing, whereas for so many Americans art has become just another commodity, to be consumed quickly and cheaply. The students probably felt that since they had paid for their tickets they were entitled to treat the performance however they liked. This is a perspective that is perfectly fair in terms of money, but really guys, you just got to see an entire opera by an amazing composer, at one of the most beautiful opera houses in the world, for 3 euros! Isn't something more than an exchange of goods and payment taking place? Let's take the chance at a performance to celebrate art itself and all of the humble people who bring it to us!