First Week of School Reflections

Sophie is helping me learn my Bach Chorales.

Our first week of school is behind us. Only fifteen more weeks until the end of the semester. It really doesn't seem like that much time. From my perspective last week was a breeze - probably because I spent a total of 2 hours in class. We don't start with our conducting class and lessons until the second week so I had a lot of time on my hands during the first five days of school. This was not a problem because I managed to fill them up studying scores and getting ready for conducting seminar so don't worry about me being bored.

I have three classes this semester for a total of twelve credits. On Monday and Wednesday I'm on campus from 9:30 AM-5:00 PM. I have Problems and Methods at 9:30 AM (a research class) and conducting seminar at 1 PM. Wednesdays I have a lesson at 11 AM and we have orchestra Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 3-5 PM. Tuesdays and Thursdays are free so I can travel to observe student teachers. This gives me lots of time to study scores and learn repertoire. Right now we're trying to see if we can make it without me having to get a part time job. If we don't starve we should be okay.

All things considered the first week of classes went well. I think it's going to be a great semester in the conducting studio. I really like my colleagues (we've already had several get togethers - we're hosting the next one) and I think it will be a great working environment. It will be nice to get to know some more people as the semester moves along. It's hard to move to a town and not know anyone at first, luckily I know my fellow conductors, and I'm sure things will get better as we go along. Plus I'm excited to start with my full schedule tomorrow. I'm going to conduct the first movement of Beethoven 9 in seminar.

Aside from school Kaia and I have been exploring "Chambana". We've tried several restaurants (there are tons of them in this area) and have enjoyed the variety. There are some great Italian places, Indian food, and nice places to get coffee or dessert. Two nights ago we tried out "Cakes on Walnut," a cupcake/dessert place in downtown. Yum. I had a brownie that was out of this world. As the matter of fact my mouth is watering right now just thinking of it. We've also been to the farmers market, joined the local co-op grocery, and have explored many of the parks in town. We're also in the process of finding a church that we can attend regularly. There are four catholic churches in town, one on campus, two in Champaign, and one in Urbana. It's not like home but hopefully we will like one of them enough to want to go back. We've been to all and we've narrowed it down to two finalists. We're going to need to make a pro-con chart or something for this decision!

School Daze

I just got back from four hours of music theory testing at U of I. One hour of aural skills from 11 AM to noon and then three hours of written theory covering functional harmony, tonality, and twentieth century techniques. I think I did pretty well on most of it but there are some glaring holes in my music theory training, particularly when it comes to the twentieth century. You see, I was never very good at math, nor did I enjoy it, so I've never really gotten into serialism or tone rows or matrices. Now that I'm 31 years old and a bit more mature than I was as an undergrad I will probably feel a little bit more like learning these things. Either way theory testing is a great way to spend a Saturday.

This week I've had a bit of stuff to do. On Monday and Tuesday we had TA orientation and the U of I Graduate Academy. It was basically a two day workshop that tried to cram an entire teaching degree program into twelve hours of sessions. Additionally I had to teach a mini-lesson or "microteaching" on Friday to a class of five other grad students. I taught them how to write a major scale in bass clef. Unfortunately my eight years of public school teaching did not get me a "pass" so I had to take all of the classes just like everyone else.

I also met with the supervisor for my TA position this week. He and I sat down and talked about my responsibilities as a student teacher supervisor this year. It turns out that I'll be driving up to Chicago quite a bit this semester to observe student teachers in middle and high schools. I have four student teachers under my observation: three of them are placed in the Chicago surrounding suburbs and the fourth is in town here at Champaign Central High School. I will make three observations of each student this semester which means a bit of commuting. The university will pay for my gas and hotel when I go up to Chicago and I will get to check out a car from the school as well. I'm looking forward to getting out to the schools, to watch the teachers, and to see all of the different programs. This will be a great experience. Let's just hope that I don't get lost in the Chicago suburbs!

Classes start on Monday for us, but my first full week won't really hit until the second week of the semester. Conducting lessons and seminar start once the orchestras are up and running. I'll be helping out with the auditions on Monday and Tuesday so this week I'll only have one official class. Once the semester gets under way and all of my classes begin I will have class Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I've set aside Tuesday and Thursday for observations and studying. It's a pretty sweet schedules - a far cry from those 6:45 AM jazz band rehearsals everyday!

Waiting for Cooler Days

It's hot. That's about all there is to it folks. Our apartment sits on the edge of the research park, a relatively new addition to the U of I with very few trees, and the agricultural testing fields. As a result, our place bakes in the sun all day long. Couple this with the fact that we're on the third floor of the building and you have a recipe for hot. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

As a result we've been hibernating for the past two weeks in the relative comfort of our living room, making forays into the community for things like food and other supplies. We have managed to check out a considerable number of sights around town and also figure out where we need to go to get everything we'll need. This has been done mostly in the cool of the evening when the sun is mostly down. Otherwise going out is pretty miserable.


Last weekend we checked out some of the restaurants and bars in downtown Champaign. There are some really classy places to get a drink and hang out on the weekends. We found a restaurant that offers live jazz every Saturday night, a brewery that makes its own beer, and a bar that reminds us a lot of Wisconsin bars. Plus we've managed to get a couple of meals out. We tried an Indian restaurant last weekend and last night we went out for Italian at The Great Impasta.


We also made a trip to the U of I bookstore this week, got our student ids, and took a stroll and bike ride through campus. It's a beautiful campus with lots of stately buildings, a great quad, and some really nice landmarks. We also checked out the city bus system (we get free rides with our student ids) and found that there are several bus stops right outside our front door that take us to campus in about ten minutes. This is great because I don't really want to have to worry about parking if I don't need to. We also purchased some school supplies and I got myself all decked out with Illini wear.


This week we also got library cards at the Champaign library, went to the farmers market in Urbana, and checked out some music events at the Krannert Center and an outdoor music concert at the Research Park last night. On Thursday night we even went to the Quad and watched date night on a big screen that was set up. I guess they show movies once a month on the Quad in the summer. It was nice.


Next week things get rolling towards the school year. It's still summer vacation but I have some meetings on Monday and Tuesday for my TA and then again on Friday for the school of music. One week from today I get to take placement tests in music theory and history. This will determine what levels of theory or history I need to take. Classes start a week from Monday. I'm excited to get started.

Settling In

(Gene at his new favorite place to hang out - Jarling's Custard Cup)

What a difference a few days can make! We arrived home on Monday night, cats and all, exhausted from our long trip. Jet lag coming back from Europe is different than going over. We've been falling asleep early (8:30 PM) and waking up early (5:30-6:00 AM) ever since we arrived. Last night was the first night we were able to stay awake past ten. I even got to watch The Daily Show in its entirety.

It's been a long week of unpacking but we're finally finished. This morning we unloaded the last box of stuff and took our last trip to the box recycling bin. Now we need to clean up and straighten things a bit. Thus I am procrastinating by typing this blog. It's a small apartment but we've managed to get a lot of stuff into the space. We are on a first name basis with the staff at the local Target since we've been there every day for the past week buying storage items.

Here are some pictures of our mostly finished place:

Living room

Dinning room/kitchen

Bedroom

We also have a second bedroom that is our basement, office, music room, and general storage area. It's actually a pretty nice nice space and I'll upload a picture of that once it's finished.

As I mentioned in my last post, we got home on the hottest day of the summer and our air conditioning wasn't working. It was 92 degrees in our living room and there was nothing coming out of the vents when we turned on the air. Luckily the maintenance staff is awesome. We managed to get it cooled off to 80 degrees by the next morning with fans but it was still unbearable. Well it turns out when they remodeled this apartment over the summer they crossed wires with the thermostat in the apartment in the basement. So for the past three weeks our thermostat has been telling the air conditioner in 104 to blast cold air into the basement. The maintenance staff came by and fixed it right away. It was nice to not have to fix it myself by the way.

By Tuesday afternoon we had cold air coming through our vents and all was well. Thank goodness because it was in the upper 90s for the past several days. Yesterday we finally got some relief and we even opened the windows last night! This morning when we woke up we heard some sheep baa-ing from the agriculture research barns just a few blocks from our house. Thus far the winds have been favorable by the way and we haven't smelled any of our neighbors. Let's hope it stays that way.

Last Day in Vienna

We awoke on Sunday morning, exhausted, after our two frenetic days of sightseeing. Since we were both tired we decided to take it easy. The lady in charge of our pension was nice nice enough to allow us to keep our luggage there after we checked out so we didn't have to lug it around the city until our 6:30 PM flight. Baggage free, we set out to take in a few more sights in the city.


We started with a walk east from our pension to the Stadtpark. This is the former emperor's hunting grounds now a city park. It's full of trees, ponds, fountains, and statues. It's also the park where Johann Strauss used to give his famous waltz concerts at the Kursalon near the grand entrance. On our way to the park we found the last remnants of Vienna's city wall which was torn down in the 1850s and replaced with the Ring. This remnant is at the entrance to one of the U-Bahn terminals near the park. We also saw a great big statue of Beethoven and a Gymnasium where Schubert went to school.


After a nice stroll we continued south toward Karlsplatz. This is a gigantic square that has an enormous baroque style church (Karlskirche), the Wien Museum, and the Succession, an art museum that is home to a famous mural by Gustav Klmit. We visited the museums and had a picnic lunch of sandwiches that we bought from a little booth in the subway in the square. Afterward we had some coffee at Cafe Tirolerhof near the Opera and made our way back toward the hotel. We stopped for ice cream at Zanoni and Zanoni in Hohermarkt and then visited the Jewish Memorial in Judenplatz.


We got back to our hotel around 5:15 PM, picked up our bags, and headed toward the U-Bahn. There is a direct train from the Landstrasse U-Bahn stop to the airport so we took that. It's a 15 minute ride and we were dropped off at the terminal. Check in took forever and they had to close down one of the terminals due to some unclaimed baggage but we eventually were on our way.

After our flight we had a 12 hour layover in Amsterdam so we got a hotel room right next to the airport at a place called Citzen M. After staying in nice pensions and the Hotel Garni for three weeks, this was kind of weird but it was cheap and close so we didn't mind. The room was the width of a king size bed and probably twelve feet long. The shower and the toilet were encased in a couple of cylinders with sliding glass doors. The closest thing I can compare it to is the transporters on Star Trek (you know, beam me up Scotty). At least it was a room and we weren't sleeping in the airport.


Our flight left the next morning and we arrived in Chicago at 12:30 PM on Monday. Kaia's aunt picked us up from the airport and we came back to Champaign that same evening, cats and all. When we arrived at our apartment it was 92 degrees in the living room. Our air conditioning was broken. Welcome home!

Vienna Day 3

Our third day in Vienna started with a tour of St. Stephan's Cathedral. We walked by it plenty of times in the first few days and even climbed the south tour, but it took us a while to work the cathedral into our schedule. It was definitely worth the wait. The cathedral dates back to the fourteenth century and even earlier than that in some spots. Much of it was destroyed in WWII due to fire but the outer walls and quite a few of the inner details remain. It's a beautiful space.


After our tour of the cathedral we headed to the outskirts of town to visit the city cemetery. This is the final resting place of Brahms, several of the Strausses, Schubert, and it has important memorials to Beethoven and Mozart. It's a lovely place and a quiet contrast to the bustling city center. It was fitting to visit the grave of Johannes Brahms especially after grappling with his first and second symphonies over the last few weeks.


From the cemetery we had lunch at the Naschmarkt, this time not in the pouring rain, and then toured the Kunsthistorisches Museum (the collected artworks owned by the Hapsburgs including Renaissance and Baroque art as well as Roman and Egyptian art) and the Hofberg treasury. The highlight of the treasury, for me, was the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor which is about 1100 years old. It was made in the 900s and was worn for the coronations of all of the Holy Roman emperors.




After the museums Kaia and I enjoyed a Sachertorte at the world famous Cafe Sacher and then finished up our day at the Rathaus. The Rathaus is Vienna's city hall and every summer they have a music film festival each night. The city of Vienna sets up an enormous screen in front of the city hall and shows concerts, mostly classical, for thousands of people who show up to eat, drink, and enjoy the festivities. The night we visited we enjoyed Teppanyaki and Radler (it's German/Austrian beer with lemon) and stuck around for the first act of Carmen on the giant screen. It was quiet an event with thousands of people and it happens every night in the summer. It's something to behold.


After we watched a bit of Carmen we hopped on a tram that took us part way around the Ring and back to our hotel. What a lovely evening.

Vienna Day 2

After a good night's sleep Kaia and I began a rather frantic day of sightseeing on Friday morning. We had a hearty breakfast at our Pension and set out to see a number of different sights within the Ring.


We oriented ourselves to the city with the Rick Steves walking tour which brought us to the Vienna Opera House as our starting point. We decided to see what the daily tour schedule looked like and lo and behold we were able to get into the 10 AM tour which began shortly after we arrived. We ended up taking the fifty minute tour which included some sneak peaks of the backstage area and other interesting parts of the building.




After the tour we continued on to see of the other great sights within the Ring. We went to Albertinaplatz, walked north along Kartnerstrasse toward the cathedral, climbed the 343 steps of the south tower for some great views of the city, walked down the Graben and began to head to the Hofburg Palace. Along the way we went to Buffet Trzesniewski (Gesundheit!) for finger sandwiches that only cost 1 Euro each.


Following our lunch we visited the Hofburg Palace, home of the Habsburg rulers of the Austrian empire. We toured the Royal Apartments and also the palace proper where we saw lots of dishes, place settings, and cutlery, a museum to Empress Sisi, and recreations of the apartments from the era of Kaiser Franz Joseph. It was mind boggling and also a bit dull in places (especially when we were viewing the fifth set of silver plates from the early 1800s) but impressive nonetheless.

Once we finished our tour of the apartments we recovered with some apple strudel and coffee at Cafe Mozart and then visited the Haus der Musik. This was one of the surprising highlights of the trip. It's an unassuming museum tucked away off of Kartnerstrasse with four floors of musical exhibits. One floor is about the history of the Vienna Philharmonic, another floor is about the great musicians who lived in Vienna, another floor is about the science of musical sound. We spent a couple of hours there and I even had a chance to conduct the virtual Vienna Philharmonic. I can put that on my resume I guess.


To conclude our thirteen hours of sightseeing we had dinner at Cantinetta La Norma, a little Italian restaurant Nobu recommended to us near the Haus der Musik, and then we strolled down Kartnerstrasse back to our hotel.

Zlin to Vienna

We awoke, feeling slightly the worse for wear, on Thursday morning ready to board a train to Otrokovice, and head to Vienna via Breclav. The entire trip took roughly four hours with connections but was remarkably smooth. We went with a group of the conductors from the workshop to the train station and then shared a compartment on the train on the three hour ride into Vienna.

When we arrived in town we all said our goodbyes and parted ways. I was sad to say goodbye but I was very excited to get the last leg of our vacation, and time together with Kaia, underway. After arriving in Vienna we took an incredibly easy U-Bahn connection to a stop just a few blocks away from our hotel (the Schweitzer Pension) on the northern edge of the old town inside the ring.



After checking in and getting our bearings Kaia and I decided to head out to explore the city on our way to see Die Fledermaus at Theater an der Wien that evening. We took a walk through Hohermarkt (a busy square) on the way to Stephansplatz (the square with St. Stephan’s Cathedral). Once we arrived at St. Stephan’s it began to rain and the skies opened up as we continued our way down Kartnerstrasse. Luckily we had Kaia’s trust 50 Kc umbrella so we were not totally drenched. We took a moment and ducked into the U-Bahn Station to get our bearings and finally decided on dinner at the Naschmarkt right in front of the the theater. We had our first non-Czech meal in two weeks and our taste buds exploded (I had forgotten about ginger and spices other than salt)!


After dinner we went to Theater an der Wien and enjoyed a very entertaining performance of Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss. We met up with a couple of the conductors at the intermission and talked for a bit. I also had my first completely German speaking transaction when I ordered a couple of bottles of water at intermission. It was great. After opera we headed back to our hotel and collapsed, soundly, into bed.