Android Animation: Wait until finished?

The easiest way would be to post a (delayed) Runnable to the UI thread:

Animation fadeout = new AlphaAnimation(1.f, 0.f);
fadeout.setDuration(500);
view.startAnimation(fadeout);
view.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        view.setVisibility(View.GONE);
    }
}, 500);

That will do the job painlessly. And never (never, never, never!) try to block the UI thread in Android. If you did so, the phone freezes and you would not see the animation anyway.
If you need to wait some time, use another thread.