Settling in at Marburg

So it’s been a minute.

It’s been two weeks since I last posted, but in my defense, I’ve moved to another country and had a week packed with a college orientation program. Next week, I’m starting classes at the university, so I will probably switch to a biweekly schedule of posting until things cool off a bit more.

Goodbye, Vienna

The famous Prater Ferris wheel!

I’m trying to keep this post from getting too long, so I won’t go into too much detail here. In my final few days in Vienna, I made a final trip to Prater with my friends Dottie and Connor in the BCA group. We only went on one ride: the Prater Ferris Wheel. There were cute dioramas before you enter the ride depicting the history of the Ferris wheel. I was actually surprised by how high the Ferris wheel went, and how much of the city we could see. In a weird way, it suddenly placed Prater on the map of Vienna in a more concrete way — I could actually see the Stephansdom from the top, among other notable sights I visited during my two months in Vienna.

One of the last places I visited in Vienna was the Hofburg Palace, with my friend Kamil, from Poland. Our ticket included the silver collection of the palace, the Sisi Museum, and the Imperial Apartments. I don’t have much to say about the silver collection beyond that there was a lot there, but I found the Sisi Museum and the Imperial Apartments very interesting.

Hofburg Palace

My family may remember watching the Sisi movie (both the shortened English dub and the longer German original). It was interesting to learn more about her life, and the way perceptions of her changed following her death, and the sort of mythology surrounding her now. She strikes me as unlucky, to have been forced into a role she did not wish to have. Not the most unlucky person in history, to be clear — royalty had a number of perks. But as I went through the museum, I just kept coming back to thoughts of what she might have done, had she not become empress. I suppose that’s part of her appeal to people now.

The Interim

From Friday to Monday, we traveled to Marburg, Germany, with a couple of stops along the way. We spent a day in Salzburg, and then a day in Frankfurt.

Salzburg

I’ve visited this city once before, back in July, with a group from my high school as a sort of late high school graduation present. I fell in love with the city then, and coming back was something I had been looking forward to for a while. And being back in the city definitely gave me some nostalgia for the trip over the summer.

We had an afternoon to explore the city as we wished, and because of our summer trip I knew my way around pretty well already. I pretty much led the other BCA students around the city, pointing out sites like Mozart’s birthplace, and suggested a couple of interesting restaurants in the city that I had visited the last time I was in Salzburg. At one point, I stopped to search the Lock Bridge for the lock the South group had attached. No one in the BCA group thought I’d be able to find it, which, that’s fair, there’s hundreds of locks on the bridge. But ten minutes later, I’d found it!

We all caught our breaths at the peak, and took lots of photos.

The next day, we took a trip up to the Untersberg, one of the mountains outside of Salzburg. We took the gondola up to the top, and it actually changed its angle of ascent part way through. Once we arrived on top, we had a short hike to get to the full peak of the mountain. The peak of the mountain has an elevation of 1,852 meters (1.15 mi), and we were walking among the clouds. Thankfully, the clouds parted just enough to give us a hazy view of the countryside and Salzburg far below us.

Frankfurt

Frankfurt was certainly unlike most of the other European cities I’d visited so far. It was far more metallic and industrial feeling than I had actually expected, to be honest. But our brief time in Frankfurt showed me that I’ll have to come back again at some point — there’s certainly a lot to do there!

Museums!

While in Frankfurt, BCA paid for a day pass to visit many of the museums in Frankfurt, 35 museums in total. Of course, we couldn’t visit all of the museums in a day (I doubt we could visit all of the museums in a week, to be honest). I went to three museums: the German Film Museum, the Städel Art Musuem, and the Liebieghaus Musuem.

Film museum

I think the Film Museum was probably my favorite one of the three. It had exhibits on the history of film, as well as the different processes that go into making movies. All of the exhibits were very interactive — one of my favorite things was where you could adjust the loudness of audio elements of a movie scene (the music tracks, the dialogue, the sound effects) and then see how it changes the scene. The museum also had a lot of really cool movie props on display, like the Alien from the movie Alien, as well as artifacts like storyboards from films like Star Wars and Jurassic Park. In the basement of the museum was a theater, and I went ahead and saw the movie they were showing, a Kenyan movie called Rafiki. It was a good movie, and I’m glad I had a chance to see it!

Stäbel Museum

This was one of my favorite paintings there, The Eruption of Mt Vesuvius in December 1820, by Johan Christian Dahl.

The Stäbel Museum was enormous, and definitely easy to get lost in. There were artist-specific exhibits, like the ones on Victor Vasarely and Lotte Laserstein, in addition to exhibitions of medieval art, modern art and everything in between. While it wasn’t as large as the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, it was still one you could spend days inside. I think some of my favorite pieces I saw were the landscape paintings, as well as some of the portraits by Victor Vasarely.

Lieblieghaus

The Rimini Alterpiece, in transition

The third and final museum I went to, the Liebieghaus, was a museum of statues. Unfortunately, they were in-between exhibits, so I only got to see half of the museum. One thing I found really interesting is that they are restoring the Rimini Altarpiece. You could see into the room where they are doing the work, and there was also a video that showed the process of the restoration. Apparently, although alabaster looks like marble, it’s much closer to plaster, and is therefore more likely to wear. The exhibit also had three of the figures on display to show the difference the cleaning process makes: one not restored at all, one half dirty and half cleaned, and then one fully cleaned.

The Opera

Frankfurter Opera House

That evening in Marburg we attended the Frankfurt Opera, to see a production of Tri Sestry, or the Three Sisters. It was performed in the original Russian, with German and English subtitles. As the title implies, the play was about three sisters, who lived in Tsarist Russia. Each section of the opera focused on a different sibling, which was interesting.

While the entire performance was impressive, I was honestly most impressed with the stage production. Between acts, they completely switched the position of the two rooms, right down to the floors and doors. I’m still a little puzzled by how they managed it, but I’m okay leaving it to the magic of theater.

Impressions of Marburg

The view of Marburg from the castle at sunset!

And at last, we arrived in Marburg, the city I will be calling home for the next 10 months! It’s beautiful here, not only because of the style of the town itself, but also its location on and around the mountains.

Which, speaking of mountains, I live at the top of one. In the castle, specifically, which is a self-governed student dormitory. It’s been great so far — as long as I ignore the climb to the top. There’s a bus to the castle, but it has pretty limited times. As a result, I’m doing a lot of climbing. One thing is certain: by the end of my year here, my legs will be ripped.

Shakshuka (foreground) and Huevos Rotos (background) being cooked!

During the Orientation program, I also had a chance to meet a lot of the international students who are studying in Marburg this semester and make friends. In addition to the “get to know people” type events, I also got to go on a tour of the old city, and a scavenger hunt to find many of the university buildings scattered across the city. The best event of the first week, however, was easily the international dinner at the end of the week. Each orientation group met up and cooked dishes from their home country, to bring to a large potluck dinner. All of the food was delicious to try.

I’m trying to keep this post from getting too long, but overall my first impression of Marburg has been a good one. Everyone I’ve met here, and I really do mean everyone, has been incredibly friendly and welcoming. I’m excited for what this year will bring!

What I’m listening to this week: Wenn du tanzt by Von Wegen Lisbeth.