An Update from Vienna

Well, I'm settling into my sabbatical routine here in Vienna. I get up each morning, fix myself breakfast, and go to the internet cafe to check messages. I've attended two operettas so far, seeing Lehar's "Land of Smiles" in Bad Ischl on Aug. 29 and Johann Strauss's "Zigeunerbaron" in Baden on Sept. 6. Both were excellent performances. I also have been walking around Vienna, taking lots of pictures and I hiked in the Vienna Woods yesterday.



I'm going to hear the Vienna Choir Boys this Sunday at the mass they sing for in the Hofburg Kapelle in the center of the city, and then also at a Friday afternoon concert at the Musikverein. Also will attend the Staatsoper's performance of "Die Zauberflöte" on Sept. 14. So I'm immersed in music here in the city of music!



I also attended church this past Sunday at the Vienna Community Church, an ecumenical congregation of English-speakers from all over the world who are living or visiting here in Vienna. It's a congregation that "nests" in the Evangelische Kirche of Vienna, in the Inner City, and I found it very friendly and a great place to meet people when you're a stranger and a foreigner in this somewhat forbidding and overwhelming city. The worship service at the "VCC" made me appreciate our worship services at House of Hope all the more, but I would say that the Vienna Community Church is a very friendly and welcoming congregation that could teach us a thing or two about making visitors feel genuinely at home.

After a stenuous hike in the Vienna Woods yesterday, I wound up taking the bus back down the hill and having dinner in a "Heuriger," a restaurant in the Grinzing district of Vienna where they serve the "new wine," (a heady vintage), and where they have roving musicians playing wonderfully schmalzy Viennese music. I loved it! They even played my request of Emmerich Kalman's operetta melodies. I was in Seventh Heaven! Of course the new wine helped!