I have Wednesday mornings off, so I got to sleep in (yay!) and plan my breakfast while I allowed myself to slowly wake up. It was definitely a french toast morning, and the French have nothing on me! It is officially fall-fruit season, so I have left the berries in my past, and moved on to highlighting pears and apples. I made a caramelized pear sauce to go over thickly sliced, extra egg-y, nutmeg and cinnamon spiced french toast. I think in heaven there will be French toast for breakfast EVERY Wednesday.
Wednesday afternoon I had my usual class schedule. Our museum excursion this week was to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum). We spent our time looking at the collection of ancient Egyptian art, as well as the early Greek and Roman collection, then into the collections from the migrations period. Some of the pieces are truly remarkable. I especially enjoyed learning about the progression of dimension. Throughout the 3000 years that the Egyptians were creating, their style changed very little. And you may remember that they always depicted more important people as larger, and children were tiny adult figures, rather than the proportions of a child. Although the Greek sculpting started out in a similar style, it progressed to the "perfect body" proportions (body=8 heads tall, shoulders=3 heads wide, one eye width between the eyes, etc.) in less than half a millennium. However, the Greek sculptures also placed a large emphasis on perfection and flawlessness, so they only depicted muscular men, or ageless women. They also knew how to break laws of proportion to make the art more pleasing to the eye. For example, we saw a tomb-stone for a woman, that had a woman (presumably the deceased) sitting down and shaking the hands of another woman and a man as if saying goodbye. At first glance the sculpture looks perfect, but I soon realized (although many didn't) that the sitting woman's proportions were way off! If she were to stand up she would be at least a head and a half taller than the other two. These features are some of the reasons that the Romans were so keen on imitating the Greek art. Sometimes they would copy exact pieces. Eventually, however, the Roman style developed to a realistic representation, such as with age and natural human flaws, which I prefer to the unnatural perfection.
A quick tid-bit on my early music history course from Wednesday's section. We were discussing the development of consonance and dissonance, and the acceptance of thirds and sixths into the world of consonance at the end of the middle ages/beginning of the Renaissance. This led to the topic of temperament (the system of tuning). This is an area of music theory that I have had very little instruction in. What I did not realize is how differently our 20th century method of tuning (equal temperament-such that every octave is the same distance, and every 1/2 step within the octave is the same distance) is from tuning methods in the past. I'll try not to get into too much detail, but the outcome of equal temperament is that every key sounds the same. However, before this method of tuning (there have been several others) each key had a distinctive color, or mood. A composer would specifically pick a key that portrayed the color desired. For example, Beethoven chose to write a lot in C minor for its dramatic effect, and G-sharp minor was regarded as a sad key. I feel like I am missing out on so much of what these compositions have to offer!
On Tuesday I was uncharacteristically directionally challenged. I rarely mess up with directions, even when I am going somewhere for the first time, but on Thursday I did twice! It all worked out in the end. I just did a bit more walking than usual.
I spent an hour at the elementary school working with the children in small groups. Third graders are pretty funny! I would ask them to draw a pink sheep, or a red turtle; it was fun to see their creations! The hour on Thursdays is going to be completely my own time to do whatever I want, so I'll have to brainstorm some ideas!
The second time I messed up my directions on Thursday was not completely wasted, because I ran into a grocery store that carries ingredients that are a bit harder to come by, so I decided to splurge!
Adding some Thai flavor to my Vienna immersion!
Apparently the sky was sorry to see the week coming to an end, because it started to rain last night and has kept up pretty consistently through today/tonight. Oh well, we need the rain, so I can't complain.
This afternoon I had an appointment pretty far west into the 19th district (north-west of where I live). I allowed myself an hour to get there, but I had a little trouble...although this time it wasn't quite all my fault. I had to take the tram, subway, and bus to get 0.3 km from my destination. Like, I said, it is quite far west of the city. Although still within the city limits, it is much more rural, with rolling hills covered in vineyards, quieter streets, and a small-town feel, it was the sweetest neighborhood. I found the street and general area where the house should have been located, but there didn't seem to be a house, so I walked around both sides, one had a long driveway that I followed up a hill, but it dead-ended at an apartment complex. I spent a decent amount of time wandering around until I found the house number.
Sorry the photo quality is bad, I was in a bit of a hurry, but do you see the white house number sign? Barely visible, even in person, is an almost completely grown-over stairway up to a gate, then followed by more stairs. Was my meeting in the secret garden?!
The building at this address is a run-down palace with some broken windows that is clearly uninhabited! Even if this was the right address, there was no way I was going up there! At this point I decided to check another document to see if perhaps the first had a type-o, and sure enough, the address was 2-4, not 24. From there I found where I was supposed to be without any trouble.
On the way home it was pouring rain and cold, so I decided it was a grilled-cheese and potato chip night! Don't worry, I had some carrots too, still, it was all yellow.
Well, that's all folks. Stay dry this weekend!
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