I spent most of Thursday night packing late into the night. I couldn't sleep. My apartment temperature was hovering around 90 with about 10000% humidity. It was ridiculous how hot it was. Sweat was pouring off my body when I woke up to my 8 different alarms that I set. I needed to wake up so we could leave in enough time. So I made sure I had motivation.
Ahh a beautiful US of A sunrise over Happy Valley.
My Friend Casey Hounsell (Tuba) drove from PSU to JFK International Airport in the center of the world, New York, New York.
The plane ride was dull and long and full of airplane food... so let's fast forward..
We are here! At the Vienna International Airport!
We then rode a shuttle bus 45 minutes across town to a train station where we ate some of our first Austrian cuisine. I had a schnitzel sandwich and fries.
We took a train from Vienna to Linz. It was actually a pleasant experience. We thought it was going to be a large challenge, but it actually ended up being fairly easy. We are starting to figure out that in order to travel successfully with large instruments, just arrive early and talk to the people work there. And as long as you have a smile on your face, they usually help you out. We have had good luck as far as euphoniums fitting in overheard compartments etc. So hopefully that is a trend that continues.
Those were just some of the pictures I took during our traverse to Linz on the train.
Once we got to Linz we had to walk about a mile to our hotel. The hotel is erm, different. It's kind of like a mix between a hostel and a hotel. Our room has three beds and a bathroom. There are also a lot of areas to gather. There are 2 fairly large lounge type spaces. I will post more pictures when I get a chance to take some.
After we were checked into the hotel and settled in, we took a subway type train to the middle of the city, about 10 minutes travel time away. When we got there, we went and registered for the conference and met up with our teacher, Velvet Brown. She had been eating with friend and colleague Dan Burdick. We all ended up moving inside and eating together. It was very good.
When I turned around near the end of dinner, I saw Miss Brown talking to one of the worlds greatest (if the the greatest) tuba soloists, Øystein Baadsvik. He is the only tuba player to ever make a career strictly as a soloist. Meaning, he never taught at a university and he's never had a job in an orchestra. He's frickin' cool.
He told us a story about how his taxi never came and how he had to store his tuba in the cockpit of the airplane on his way to Austria. What a cool guy. Then he walked with us to the concert that we were going to, tuba soloist Roland Szentpali.
Roland is also an amazing tuba soloists and actually wrote my jury piece from this last semester. His music is jazz influenced and very cool. It's also very cool how he explains all of his pieces before he plays them. He played his jazz suite, Pearls 3. It was very very cool. I didn't get to take any pictures, but it was very cool. It was also amazingly hot in the room he was in.
After the recital we went out for some food and drinks. We just hung out in a bar type restaurant and watched a soccer game. After that we headed home because we were all tired.
So, tomorrow we have sectionals and that's it. So we basically get the whole day to explore Linz and get ready for my birthday.
Tomorrow is my Birthday Eve :)
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