Vienna, Part 2

Saturday morning I got up a little bit panicked. I had to turn something in for the law journal that I’m on, but the hostel wifi wasn’t working. It wasn’t due until Sunday, but I didn’t want to spend the weekend worried, so I decided to take my laptop with me. Plus, I’d realized that I wanted to see the Lipizzans and I couldn’t look up the times of their shows because I had no wifi. I decided to just head for the Spanish Riding School and bring my laptop with me. I was in luck, since the Spanish Riding School turned out to be across the street from a Starbucks with free wifi. I hadn’t had coffee for months, but I bought a mocha frappuccino so that I could use the “free” wifi. I may have to start drinking coffee-flavored things again. That frappuccino was pretty good. I emailed my journal thing and updated my blog, then went to the Spanish Riding School to see the horse show. I was pretty worried that I’d just wasted a lot of my money, but it turned out to be awesome. The Lipizzans are beautiful, and they’re just so fun to watch. I ended up grinning like a little kid. I used to have a book about the white horses from Vienna. I don’t remember the plot, but I do remember wanting to go to Vienna so that I could see those horses. I’m glad I finally did. 

They spelled my name right!

Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos while the horses were performing, probably because people are too dumb to turn their flashes off and it scares the horses. This is unfortunate, because I hate seeing something really cool and being unable to take photos of it for my blog. You’ll just have to google some youtube videos or something. 

The Interior of the Spanish Riding School

Then I did a quick walk around Vienna hitting many of the things the guidebook said were landmarks. I saw some nice churches, Mozart’s house, and got some delicious frozen yogurt. Then I went to the Easter market on the Freyburg square (actually more of a triangle) and it was awesome! There were so many eggs. I really wanted to buy them for everyone I know, but they were pretty expensive, so I was trying to decide who I really like, when I picked one up and realized they were not, in fact, wooden like I’d assumed, but were real hollowed out eggs. That solved my problem really quickly because I know they’d never make it to the United States without breaking, so you’ll just have to look at pictures of how cool they were. I also got two brezels, which are Austrian pretzels. One was covered in cheese and the other in cinnamon yogurt stuff. Amazing! 

Then, because I was in a happy mood, I went to the Prater to ride the Riesenrad, which is a really old Ferris wheel which is (according to my guidebook) a symbol of Vienna. The ride was a little bit annoying, as I kept tripping over little kids in my quest to stick my camera out the window to take photos for my blog (the things I do for my readers :-) , plus I actually got pretty scared when we got to the top. The cars are only attached on the top, so they swing quite a bit when everyone is moving around. I don’t mind heights, but like the Eiffel Tower, the Riesenrad was built more than a hundred years ago, so I’m not sure how safe it is. Plus it got bombed a lot in the last world war. I also got a sort of elephant ear, only instead of being covered in powdered sugar; this dough circle was covered in enough garlic to make me unpopular for hours. I actually felt sort of bad for anyone around me. But fried dough with fresh garlic on top is absolutely delicious! 

Then I went to the ballet in the Viennese State Opera House! This is really the opera house of all opera houses. I’ve wanted to see a performance there for years, so it was really cool that I was able to get a seat for under ten euros on such short notice. When I got to the seat I found out why it was only eight euros. I could only see less than half the stage for the whole first act. Luckily, at the intermission, the couple in front of me, no doubt annoyed that they could only see half the stage, left, letting me know I could have their seats. When I moved up I realized that while the guy had a seat nearly worse than mine, the girl’s seat had a clear view of about three quarters of the stage, and by really leaning, I could even see the edge. Awesome! The ballet was Anna Karenina, which was a bit annoying compared to Romeo and Juliet. I had to read the whole Wikipedia article on Anna Karenina just so that I could understand what was going on. The Wikipedia article was long, as is the book, and I still didn’t understand much of the ballet except that she seemed to be sleeping with more than one person, and I definitely got the part where she throws herself in front of a train. The ballet is modern, which was interesting. Parts looked more like modern dance than classical ballet to me (and that’s the limit of my ballet interpretation) but the music was Tchaikovsky, whom I’ve always liked, ever since my father used to play classical music to get me to sleep. So even though I didn’t understand much of the plot, I definitely enjoyed listening and watching. I could even see most of the strings section of the orchestra, which is always fun to watch. Interestingly, when I was booking my tickets I noticed that I recognized the name of the music director of the Vienna State Opera. I was trying to remember why, so I googled him. Turns out Franz Welser-Möst is the music director of not just the Vienna State Opera, but also the Cleveland Orchestra. Cool, right? I actually saw him conducting a year or two ago when Ted and I went to see Carmina Burana. (Which was really good. I totally recommend it)