The highlights from last week include:

Swan Lake at the Staatsoper. The performance was amazing and absolutely beautiful. I was so happy simply to be at the performance of an actual professional ballet company, rather than watching one on PBS, that I was teary eyed through the first few dance numbers. The dancer who played the prince was excellent and expressed all of his emotions through beautiful pantomime. My favorite moment of his was at the end of his first encounter with Odette. Odette dances off the stage and his hand follows her path as she transforms into a swan (off stage, of course) and soars into the sky (over the audience). You see nothing be the prince during this small part, but the way he acted it out made it absolutely magical. Another highlight was the Prince’s death. Different versions of the ballet have different endings. In this version, only the Prince dies, which I think is rather pathetic.

The evil sorcerer arrives at the scene and suddenly the stage is billowing with turquoise waves (a large blue sheet was stretched over the entire stage in the blink of an eye) and the prince struggles to stay afloat in the raging water. He drowned very gracefully—with all the grace of a ballet dancer. He would reach upwards, in vain. He reached up, gasping for air, again, and again, and again, until finally I couldn’t help but crack a smile thinking, “well, he’s not dead yet.”

The last highlight of the ballet were to two small kids sitting in front of me in the box. They were either Russian, Czech, or Hungarian. The older of the two boys became very involved in the story. At the end, after the prince died, when the Prince and Odette came onto the stage to take their bows, the boy jumped up, threw his fist into the air, and cheered, “Yeah! Yeah!”. It was adorable.

Also last week we toured my favorite building in Vienna, the Rathaus. It was my favorite before the tour. And now I love it even more. It is simply one of the most beautiful and magical buildings in Vienna. And they have the coolest, step-in-step-out elevator ever! I rode it multiple times after the tour and felt like I had been transported into a Harry Potter musical.

On Saturday, Kristian and Kelly invited everyone to come to their apartment for a games and chocolate dipping party. It was a blast. I’d only been to one other person’s apartment from our group. Their little apartment was really adorable. It reminded me of a fairytale cottage. The whole house has really low ceilings. Both Kelly and Kristian are pretty short and didn’t realize how low the ceilings were until Daniel, one of the boys from our group, stepped into the room and looked like a giant. We played a lot of games and laughed for hours. It was a great evening.