Another Reason to Love Vienna...

Despite yesterday being Fashing (aka Carnival, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras...whichever you prefer) and having stayed out much too late on a Tuesday, a few friends and I decided that we wanted to go to an opera tonight, Carmen. I had class until six, so the plan was my friends would get in line for the tickets, then I would just walk the 5 minutes from IES to the Staatsoper building, just in time for the ticket booth to open. But as I left class, my friends called to inform that tonight was opening night for Carmen, so the line was out the door and around the block--which is not particularly ideal when standing tickets are first-come-first-serve. Now, perhaps in a normal city, we may have just had to have given up at this point, perhaps settling for a quiet dinner at our favorite restaurant, our maybe meeting up with friends for Happy Hour at our new favorite bar, but no. This is Vienna, beautiful classical music is being played even from the OperToilette in an U-Bahn station. So walking past the Staatsoper a few blocks, I arrive at the MusikVerein, a concert hall for all kinds of music (I'm going there for a jazz festival in March). Tonight there was a performance by the Vienna Symphony, and even though the show was starting in less than an hour, we got standing room tickets for 5 euro. We then proceeded to eat a picnic dinner of sandwiches, chips, and cookies on the front steps of the building, enjoying the relative "warmth" of the day--still needing to warm our hands after every few bites. 

After checking our coats and backpacks, we made our way to the standing section, which was basically just a little lobby at the back of the concert hall with a gate up to my shoulders blocking us cheap-o's from getting to the seats out on the floor. I then made small talk with the guy standing next to me after he asked me to tell them what the German words on his ticket were--which I could do quite easily! He was from China, studying economics in Paris for the year, spending a few days here in Vienna. I was sure to tell him to go the Belvedere and Cafe Central...but who knows if he'll remember. But anyways, the symphony first played Haydn, then there was a French Horn concierto, and finally one of Beethoven's symphonies...#3 something or other.  Somewhere during the piece, it dawned on me how great it was that we had started out the evening with planning on an opera, but when that didn't work out, we could just hop on over this beautiful concert hall and listen to some absolutely wonderful music for so little money. It really just gave me a whole new appreciation of Vienna, and it's just one more thing to add to me growing list of "loves" in the city.

This last weekend, I went to Budapest, in Hungary. So hopefully I will get to telling you about that soon!