summer in vienna

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Fin de siècle.

It’s the day I didn’t want to come. We have our last class. It is basically wrapping things up. Tate talks about bringing it back to the States. There is nothing bittersweet about it. No one says anything, and no one cries, but there is a mutual feeling of disappointment that the time has come to say goodbye. We are all dressed in black today. It is a sort of inside joke; Gregor always dresses in black, and we are meeting with him today to go out to a house he has designed on the outskirts of town. We take a bus out to the house. The bus drops us off in front of a fairly typical-looking house. We are all a little incredulous. Then we start walking, and finally we get to the house. It looks like something out of Lost In Space. The first thing we do is walk out to the back to the dock on the lake adjoining the property and view the house from there. Gregor insists we see the house from the lake. After this, we go on a tour. We start with the guest house, which is constructed of wood. Th...

Treasure.

We have a day off. Scott and I get up late, and have lunch at the nearby Café Hummel, one of the old Viennese cafés. Then we set off for the city center on a quest, he to buy gifts for friends and family, I to acquire a fountain pen. One Friday morning earlier in the trip, a group of us had met up with Tate, and he had showed us some bookstores and pen shops of interest. According to Tate, Vienna is the only city where you can find brown ink. Also, during one of our classes, he spoke of taking things back with us to remind us of the mindset we are in now, to guide us in the right direction, to bring back things we see and make us think like we are thinking now. I decide a fountain pen is an appropriate treasure. We hop on the J, and get off at the Opera as usual. It takes Scott all of ten minutes to find gifts. Then it’s pen time. We wander for a bit, trying to find shops at first. The only shops we find are along the main drags, Mont Blanc vendors who sell pens at prices way beyond pr...

Ring King and Pichler & Traupmann.

In the morning, we visit the Ring King. I almost missed out on this. The group tried to go yesterday while I was still traveling, but to my luck he was not there. Today, he is. The Ring King is a man named Max who, aside from creating beautiful rings, practices general mayhem. the ring king, max. Max and a few of his friends hold photo shoots and cause general , including one called “Pool Massacre,” a sort of macabre poolside party, complete with a chainsaw-wielding maniac and a beautiful girl eating a severed leg. He leads us through his studio/shop. There are display cases, postcards, artwork by an artist with whom he shares his space. In the back of the shop, he shows us a computer program connected to a handmade mill that produces whatever design he creates on the computer. He says his friend, who built the mill from spare parts, used motors from a car window because they are quieter. homemade mill He takes out a box of t-shirts, some of us buy them. A few of us buy rings. I take s...

Unbelievable weekend.

The feeling of meeting someone extraordinary is like few other feelings in the world. This weekend I had the good fortune of meeting several. Friday. Scott and I get up and chat with Jeff for a while, then we exchange e-mail addresses and say our final goodbyes. Suddenly we are on our own, if not for a little while. We spend the afternoon packing and getting ready for our trip. I get somewhat jealous as I see Scott pack his bike helmet. On the other hand, I am looking forward to meeting up with my family in Ireland and being at my brother’s side as he marries the girl of his dreams. I only wish the timing had been better. At three o’clock, we meet in front of the Institute to board the bus for Gars, a small town near Horn. In Gars there are castle ruins in which opera is performed every summer. Tonight we see Don Giovanni under the stars. The bus ride doesn’t last long, and we get to Horn ahead of schedule. We eat dinner in a restaurant, also contained in the ruins, and I explo...

The beginning of the end.

Today is the last day with Jeff for me and Scott. He leaves tomorrow for a water polo tournament, and we won’t see him for the rest of our stay. We meet tonight for a final dinner. Class today is short. We talk about cameras, drawing, and bikes, in preparation for our weekend trip to Horn. I feel somewhat excluded from the discussion, as I will be traveling to Ireland for my brother Will’s wedding on Saturday. I am profoundly excited about the wedding, but I can’t help but suppress a tinge of disappointment as the buzz generates for the bike trip. We finish up class, and don’t have anything scheduled in the afternoon, we are extremely tired, and it is unbearably hot, so we do what any reasonable person would do in this situation: travel a ways out to the Danube to go swimming. It is important to remember there are three iterations of the Danube in Vienna: one is the Donaukanal, or Danube Canal. This is closest to the city and moves quickly. No good. The second is the Danube proper....

Hollein.

Today begins with followup to yesterday. After Kevan and I present briefly to the group our experience with Erwin Bauer, Tate instructs Naomi to go up to the whiteboard at the front of the room. “Draw every dance you saw last night,” he says. At first Naomi is a little overwhelmed. But then, sure enough, she starts. She makes a stick figure of the very first sequence, a man using stilts of some sort to move across a beam used for support during rehabilitation. Someone chimes in: “The one where they had their legs tied together like a three-legged race!” Another: “The one where she’s on the harness and she’s walking across people’s hands!” This goes on for about twenty minutes. When we think we are finished, Tate thanks Naomi and she sits. “Let’s get a picture of this board.” all the movements we could think of. It is impressive to look at. “I’ve never seen anyone move like that,” Tate says. I think we tend to agree. The subject today is Hans Hollein , a modern Austrian architect who he...