On September 29 Nancy and I were off to Vienna…I left myself MORE than enough time to catch the train. (Burned once….) There were three tram lines which used the Kavalirka stop; one would be along in 46 minutes-luckily it was not mine!
Once onboard I found out that there was a dining car! I texted Nancy I was going there for lunch, if she wanted to join me. I had a huge chef’s salad and Czech beer. (They are famous for their beers.) The huge windows made the flying by countryside much more visual! My first dining experience since I was eight was NOT disappointing! It was very relaxing, as I talked across the tables to Todd and his wife and the young family from Atlanta Nancy had met in the train station.
By the time Nancy got my text and came to the dining car, I was half-way through lunch. Melissa from DC joined us, as she was traveling alone on a four month trip in what she described as her second mid-life crisis. It was great fun!
Eventually I returned to my compartment to join the conversation. In addition to Todd and his wife, there were Julie from Toronto, and a couple about my age from Wayland, MA! How curious to travel to another continent to meet people from the next town! The nearly six hour trip went very quickly!
Sunday night Nancy had tickets to “Don Giovanni” at the famous Vienna Opera House at 6:30. They sell 257 tickets nightly as SRO (standing room only), so I went over with Nancy to see if I could get one of these. The clerk at the first ticket window told me he only had one ticket for €172! Luckily I could buy one SRO ticket for €3.
I am not an opera fan, and I had not even looked on-line to get information about the opera. So I was very delighted at how much I enjoyed it even if I did have to stand for four hours! There were small screens at each space with the lyrics in German and English. I doubted that I could stand for four hours, but I was very glad that I did. During the intermission, the man from Argentina standing next to me assured that it was a great ending; he was right! Afterwards Nancy (from her loge seat) and I met outside to find a place for dinner. There was an Italian restaurant across the street, where we could eat outside. We were joined shortly by a Canadian couple by way of Croatia, so we got yet another chance to learn about people around the globe. They had moved to Toronto because of the war in Croatia, and Nancy has been to Croatia, so there were-once again-no pauses in the conversation!
Monday I went to the Schonbrunn Palace, which is 8 km from the center of Vienna and was the summer palace of the Franz Joseph and his family. His mother had built it and wanted it to rival Versailles. THIS is the way to learn about history for me! I was especially intrigued by Franz Joseph’s wife Sisi whom he married at 15. While she was his “one true love", she clearly regretted her decision to marry at such a young age! The palace has 400 acres of grounds so there was a lot to see. It even has the world’s oldest zoo! I visited the Carriage Museum with more information about Sisi also. It was a wonderfully warm day, so I even took the Hop On Hop Off locomotive to see more. (South of France, Melissa!)
Afterwards I was considering going to find Beethoven’s home, so I asked a young mother with her daughter Anna and dog Bella sitting in the courtyard if she knew where it was. She didn’t know, but we had an interesting discussion anyhow…She is from Vancouver, and has lived in Vienna for 6 months after 9 years in Scotland. Her mother is visiting from Canada, so she and the other two children were in the Palace. It turns out that Anna has to have surgery (something to do with her spine) every 9 months; her mother said, “She is a very sick little girl.” She was lovely and sweet with a wonderful spirit-wise beyond her 7 years for sure!
That night we had tickets to go to Porgy and Bess, a local jazz club, which had great reviews on-line. A Norwegian group called The Thing was playing….we ate dinner and left. Their “action jazz”-deafening and so far from any traditional jazz-was nothing we could enjoy AT ALL. We were not the only ones who left, but they did have a local following.
Tuesday morning I went to the Hofburg Palace, which was the “winter” palace near the center of the city. It included the silver and kitchen service (maybe fifteen rooms!), Sisi’s apartment, and the Imperial Apartment. The kitchen display made what is shown in some of the Newport mansions meager by comparison. THEN I was “palaced out”, but it was a lovely day to enjoy Vienna and get ready to move on to Salzburg!
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