Experiences with Klimt

Belvedere Palace

German classes at IKI have been going well, and I’ve been getting all of my ducks in a row to start classes at Marburg next month. It’s been a little stressful, picking out classes and figuring out which ones I can get credit for at Etown. But things are slowly coming together.

It’s strange, to think about how I’ve been in Vienna for a month and a half. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been here that long. I’m just now really getting the hang of living here and yet in just a week and a half I will leave. While I’m sure Marburg will be fantastic, I know I’m going to miss Vienna.

MAK Wien

Fun fact: The black on this porcelain is actually silver; it turns black when fired.

On Tuesday, IKI took a trip to MAK, or the Museum of Applied Arts. The museum had a ton of ceramics and porcelain. There were also several exhibits of furniture and carpets from different periods of history.

As we went through the museum, Benjamin acted as our tour guide, explaining the history and details of the various pieces we were looking at. The history surrounding porcelain in Europe was pretty interesting.

One surprising exhibit at MAK was Klimt’s Magic Garden. They had four virtual reality headsets in one room, with attendants to assist in putting them on and off. When you put them on, you could navigate through this world that looked like a Klimt painting. You only had five minutes in the program, but the long line was worth it.

Volunteer Work

This month I started doing some volunteer work in Vienna. In August, I found that I had too much time on my hands and thought that volunteering would be a good way to spend some of that extra time. Benjamin directed me to some volunteer work search sites, but many of the jobs I found required a higher level of German than I have.

The group I eventually contacted was looking for someone with good English skills to lead a conversation group for people to improve their English skills. So now, once a week I go to the Nachbarzentrum and will talk for an hour with whoever shows up. I try to have a list of discussion questions around a topic prepared, but I try to let the conversation go wherever. So far it’s gone pretty well!

The Kiss at Belvedere

This view is called “The Canaletto View” because of the painting by Bernardo Bellotto.

On Saturday, I visited yet another castle museum combo, this time Belvedere Palace. The grounds and gardens were beautiful, with perfect weather to enjoy them. The view of the gardens and Vienna from the palace is actually pretty famous — while at MAK, I saw at least ten porcelain plates, bowls, and cups with that exact view painted on it.

The inside of the palace was an art museum, which had a variety of works, from medieval to 20th Century art.

The most notable piece was The Kiss, by Gustav Klimt. You can’t go a day in Vienna without seeing the The Kiss painting somewhere. Really! Every souvenir shop and every museum (regardless of the type of museum) has journals, umbrellas, t-shirts and scarves, cans of tea, pencil and glasses cases with The Kiss printed on it.

But seeing it in person is an entirely different experience. I finally understood why it’s his most famous work. The gold and silver detailing in the painting was beautiful, and the way they reflect the light is hard to transfer to a t-shirt. It’s hard to transfer to words, too, now that I’m trying.

I’m not sure if the picture really does it justice.

What I’m listening to this week: Nina Cried Power by Hozier (though honestly, the whole EP is fantastic).