happy cinco de mayo, everyone:-)
Vienna is.... what I expected, and not, at the same time. It's got all the elegance I would expect of it, yet I haven't bonded with it the way I expected to, which is odd because it does remind me a lot of the things I loved when I was little. I think the city puts me in a sort of dreamy state where I can't quite put anything I'm feeling into words properly...which will probably be quite evident in this email. So, apologies for any writing in circles!
It is so pretty here, even though it poured today. We've gotten to see two palaces, though I'm blanking on names at the moment. One had a really awesome labyrinth that we played Sardines in, and the most awesomely creative playground ever- the coolest thing was this giant bird you could sit in, but to go up and sit in it you had to climb a rope ladder about seven feet up. The trick of it was that the rope ladder made the bird move as if it were flying, so once you were up there people could make you bob up and down and swing from side to side. There was also a fountain with all sorts of ways to squirt water at people, a xylophone that used a Japanese scale, and a four person teeter totter-ish thing that amused us.
The other palace (the Hapsburg Palace, I think?) had all sorts of gorgeous dining things and paintings and dresses and old calligraphy things. An aside- the calligraphy pens in the gift store there were AMAZING. You could get them in any color and with any sort of nib you might want, and you could buy the wax for sealing envelopes and a huge array of... those things I'm blanking on the name for, that you use to make the wax have a shape and design. I feel like Kimberly or Marilyn will know that one. Google is no help. Anyway, I can't even explain how difficult it was for me to not just splurge, but the cheapest set was $50 and I guess this trip has given me -some- common sense. *sigh* I'll get one, one day! And I'll write you all letters with it when I do. ...*anyway*, the palace was cool. The weirdest thing about it was there was this one room that I guess the empress Elisabeth liked to use to exercise, so there were random bars and rings that could be used for exercises. I guess it would be a bit cold a lot of the year to do that sort of thing outdoors, but it was just weird to see the red carpets, gold trim on the walls, chandeliers, and wooden exercise bars.
We've also seen a really awesome church...St. Stephen's maybe, or something similar to that? A lot of the stained glass windows were blown out in World War II so the replacement ones aren't as pretty, but the architecture is so intricate and beautifully done. What really made that particular church interesting, though, was in the crypts you can see the bones of people who died during the Plague. Pretty morbid, huh? We thought it was insanely cool.
We saw an opera as well, Daphne by Strauß (I can do the double s on this keyboard without alt codes or anything- nifty!) and the music was phenomenal. I have never seen bass players' fingers move so quickly; it was insane. Seeing the opera in Vienna is pretty brilliant, by the way- you can get standing room tickets (about 300 go on sale nearly every night) an hour and a half before showtime for less than $5. We were packed like sardines but it was totally awesome.
Okay, I've been away for over a month now, and I do want to try to keep up with everyone, so I scrolled through all your names and thought of what I wanted to hear about in your lives, and wrote few general questions that everyone is welcome to answer; though of course if you're too busy I understand. I just love getting to hear from everyone! So, you can answer all of these, or just a few you that interest you, whichever you prefer. (If it's my turn to write you back...I've read your email, but it's probably now lost in my inbox so if you want to get a new chain going, go ahead and respond to this. I'm doing the best I can, sorry!)
-What is the funnest/most exciting thing you have done recently? Tell me about it.
-How is your family/significant other doing doing? Anything new to report?
-How are you?
-Who have you gotten to see recently? What did you do or talk about when you saw them?
-What are you looking forward to?
-What are you working on right now? (This could mean a project, a show, a musical piece, a new book, etc.)
-Tell me something you've realized or noticed recently?
-Anything else on your mind, or that you want to share?
loads of love,
Sara
St. Mark's Square in Venice is awesome; Randal and Jill and I split a bag of bird feed and Lori and Mel and Mo took pictures of us with pigeons all over us which I will definitely send out once they're developed. I'm still getting used to a non-Italian keyboard. It was probably the biggest culture shock of the whole trip to arrive at Atlanta's airport for our layover: not only was everything suddenly in English, but it had a twang. LA sure is cloudy. What's up with that. It was HOT in Milan and HOT in Georgia...where is my sunny California? We landed and Mo and I looked out the window in dismay and wondered what on EARTH these gray clouds were, and I hypothesized they were smog and we both looked at each other with dread. I think they're clouds, though. I have now been awake for over 24 hours...I woke up at 6 a.m. in Italy, and over there right now it is 7:42 a.m. Thank goodness for Mel and Mo's no-jet-lag pills, but that would explain the mishmash of topics in this paragraph, oui? I simultaneously want to take a bath, sleep, and run all over the neighborhood because I've been sitting for nearly that entire time and the ten jet lag pills I've taken are I think basically homeopathic caffeine pills. So anyway, I'm going to go for now. 
