A Night at the Opera

No, not that one.

State Opera from the Northeast

That's the one...  Looks even better with the rain on the streets doesn't it?  I learned that filmmakers like to shoot night scenes with wet streets, so I had a crew hose them down just for this shot.  Do you like the added touch of the pedestrians holding umbrellas just to make it seem more realistic?

Yesterday was the second time I'd gone to the Vienna State Opera, last time for Turandot.  This time it was Tosca, a Puccini opera set in 1800 in Rome, as Napoleon is threatening the city.  It's as tragic as you might expect, with murder, double-crossing, dramatic suicide, and lots of melodic screaming.  I know almost nothing about opera, but I enjoyed myself, and that's going to have to be enough.

Central entry staircase from balcony section

A big reason to go is just to see the theater, which is gorgeous and of course designed specifically to hear opera.  Built in the mid-1800s in that burst of public building I mentioned before, the house was initially offensive to the Viennese (for its opulence, if I recall), and the architect killed himself before the first performance.  Kind of like an opera plot, actually.

Inside are 5 levels above the main floor, the decor soaked in cream, rich dark red, and gold.  I was on the 4th level above the floor, in what we'd call an obstructed view seat.  Basically, if I leaned over all the way, I could see the left half of the stage.  Unfortunately, most of the action in Act 1 took place on the right half.  Fortunately, each seat comes with a little translator that looks like one of those little LCD screens on 1980s-era word processors.

For the second act, an elderly German lady asked if I'd like to switch seats with her because of her bad knee.  (I was on the aisle)  So, I could see everything from Act 2 on with a bit of a lean.  Photo from the Act 1 intermission below...


Some dork who thinks he's all cultured now



Falling Apart at the Mouth

Anybody else out there ever chip part of his tooth while eating soft bread?  Anybody?  Am I the first?

Yeah, so, this morning I got a soft roll, some cheese, and a banana from a local market for a quick brunch, and on my seventhish bite, I asked myself, "self, what the heck did they put in this roll?"  It was like a rock.  Turns out, it was a piece of my tooth.

Actually, I found out later that it was a piece of a filling I had in there some time ago.  Turns out the tooth is decaying from below, and the filling is coming out as a result.  Pretty soon I'll be a Looney Tunes character who just took a bomb to the face and has that one tooth left hanging that plays like a piano key.

So...I didn't know all that when it happened, and there wasn't any pain (Ich habe keine Schmerzen), but against my ADHD tendencies, decided I'd better get it checked out.  I got a recommendation for a place that fit me in at 4:30, went in and got 2 x-rays and the filling done in under an hour, and for that same-day visit they charged me 144 Euros.  Not bad.  I had to pay cash, though, and see about getting reimbursed when I get home...

I should point out that this dentist does not use Novacaine.  I didn't catch the full name, but it has a bit more of a kick than I'm used to.  It didn't just numb my mouth, it numbed the left side of my nose.  I know what you're saying, you don't really move your nose, but when it's numb, you also can't feel yourself breathing through it, so it feels like you can't even though you're doing just fine.  A weird sensation.

Problem is, the filling I got today was stopgap.  The doc says I probably need a root canal and two other cavities filled when I get home, and she wouldn't be able to get that done before I leave.  So now I just hope the thing holds until February, I guess.

Hitting the Ground Walking

Miles walked today: about 17

Vienna is kind of like Paris, except that it's a bit cheaper, the food isn't nearly as good, and it's not crawling with Frenchmen.  (Again with the kidding!)  But, they both have that aristocratic beauty borne of being the capital of an empire that at one spent huge amounts of money on making it so.

Vienna was at one time walled like most European cities.  After the Ottomans sieged it in 1529 (abruptly calling it off less than three weeks in because of impending bad weather), Vienna upgraded its old flat, vertical walls to accommodate the latest in fortress technology of the time - star-shaped wall sections to improve fields of fire, angled walls to deflect bombardment, etc.  They were ready for the tougher siege in 1683, and came close to losing anyway, but their eventual win sealed the long-term decline of the Ottomans.

But enough about the Turks.  The point I'm getting to is, the system needed to have a lot of open space outside the walls to be able to kill lots of invaders, so the inner part of the city was separated by maybe a few hundred yards from the suburbs.  And, wall systems like that became obsolete with military technology where it was in the 1800s.  With the Austrian emperor in the mid 19th century much more interested in showing the his empire's grandeur, he decided to take them down, and fill the space they used to take up with a whole bunch of museums, palaces, public gardens, and a major thoroughfare that circled the inner city.

A person can probably walk around the whole old city of Vienna in 90-120 minutes.  Just following that road, the number of buildings one would see with international reputations is a bit mind-numbing.  The Hofburg (the main Habsburg palace), the State Opera House, the Parliament and Rathaus (city hall), multiple famous gardens, the Kunsthistorische Museum (loaded with art from great masters)...  One can get a lot done.

And I will, but the first half of today was about getting bearings and sausage, in that order.  I'm staying a bit west of the city, so I set out about 9:00 to walk through all the way through downtown, to the Danube Canal (a southern branch of the river that forms the north end of downtown), and then up to the main Danube, which I haven't seen before.  Got a couple of great photos along the way, which I'll post later.

Coming back, I toured the St. Stephan's Dom, which has dominated the skyline of the town for centuries (since the 1100s, I think).  It's a gigantic sandstone gothic cathedral that is made even more imposing because sandstone attracts air pollution like a magnet, making it look like there's a creeping blackness all over it.  I even went to the top to take photos of the town, which with my fear of heights involved repeatedly psyching myself up to bring my camera to the edge to avoid getting mostly pictures of high-grade chicken wire.

Lunch was a return trip to a sausage stand in the St. Stephan's square where I got a Kasekrainer (sausage with cheese in it) and mustard last time I was in town, partly to see if it was as transcendentally awesome as I remembered it.  It was, and more shall be making their way down my gullet before moving on to the next stop.

From there, to the Judenplatz (plaza for the old Jewish Quarter), then the Roman Museum, which is tiny but is sited where ruins of the ancient Roman fort was built, which one can see part of in the basement left where it was dug up, intact.

Then, a walk to the southeast across the Ringstrasse (the street that old emperor put where the walls were, if you didn't skip that part) to the Wien Museum, which covers the history of the city.  I was most interested in the two Turkish sieges, if you hadn't guessed.  They had some great 500-year-old maps there, and a fair amount of Klimt pieces.

Finally, a walk around the Ringstrasse to the west to get some more photos, and to three museums at the Hofburg: one with Greek and Roman ruins from the ancient city of Ephesos (were they a gift or "borrowed"?), a collection of old musical instruments, and a pretty amazing collection of arms and armor from the 1400s and 1500s, mainly.

Then to the Naschmarkt (Munch Market) to find what I've been told is the best Indian food in the city.  It actually was pretty decent, but they didn't make much of a show of it.  They spooned my entree and rice out of a buffet pot and put it in the microwave right behind the counter.  But, it was actually spicy, a rarity around here.

From there, a survey of coffee houses, for which Vienna is more famous than any city in the world.  That I don't drink coffee does not present a problem, since I can always get apple struedel and enjoy the atmosphere.

Ok, that's too much already, but I did cover a lot of ground today.  Tomorrow: Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Natural History Museum, and Tosca at the State Opera.  And more Kasekrainer.  Does that count as a vegetable?  Germans don't seem to eat a lot of those, at least the ones that aren't the color of earth tones.

In Town and Lagging Jet

I don't usually have a problem sleeping on airplanes.

Flying from DC to Paris was a problem for some reason, perhaps the grim anticipation of being in France for a couple of hours.  Ok, it's not bad, but France and I, we like to kid.

Anyway, having had no sleep in a very long time is not the best way to experience Charles de Gaulle airport.  I believe I walked 16 miles from my arrival gate to my departure gate at this extremely busy hub, and discovered a boarding process that has all the charm of a normal airport boarding process, with all the added chaos of a discount fare airline crush to get on the plane.  I slept the entire way to Vienna.

Now, I'm at an apartment/hostel off the Burggasse, just west a bit of the city center, writing on a tiny keyboard unable to figure out how to switch from the German to English layout, and I could swear I have done it.  The practical problems with this aren't immense, but are annoying.  Mainlz the y and z kezs are reveresed.  See?!?  And where the semicolon and colon normally would be, I have an ö and a ä.  This makes it harder to type contractions, but easier to type heavy metal band names.

The hostel here is excellent, with a lot of extras relative to a hostel, and a communal and stocked kitchen, for example.  It's hard to find, being inside a building which entire facade is under long-term reconstruction, and can be found winding through tunnels that make it look like a bombed-out building.  But, inside it's great.

It's not full either - its 16 beds, small to begin with, hold 6 people now, two friends from Mexico, a girl named Hong Kong from Vietnam (I wonder if it's a nickname), a guy named Joseph from...not sure, actually...and Amanda from Australia that strangely enough worked for their version of the Democratic Party over there until a few years ago when they were voted out of power.  We picked each others' brains a good bit last night trying to better understand each others' political systems.

Went last night to Zu den Zwei Lieseln, which is a beisl (a bit like an Austrian pub that focuses on local food rather than drinks), that is somewhat famous an been around for decades.  It's just around the corner, and I thought, hey, let's start off with a bang and get some schnitzel.

For those that don't know, a schnitzel (not necessarily the famous wienerschnitzel) is veal pounded out thin and then deep fried.  Yeah, I know, don't fall all over yourself finding a recipe on the Food Network's Web site for your next dinner party.  But, it has a certain comfort food charm once in a while.  I got the house version, which is supposed to be the best, and is stuffed with gorgonzola, ham and pepperoni.  Sounded like a new Pizza Hut calzone, really.

The thing took up half an acre on my plate.  It was several pieces of veal tied togeter underneath with toothpicks too...sort of like stumbling across a bone eating fish.  One thing I forgot is that in most of Europe, pepperoni means pepperoncini peppers, not sausage. So, that's what I got.

And I have to say, I didn't know blue cheese or hot peppers came in flavorless varieties, but apparently I havent't looked hard enough in my grocer's freezer.  If you like breading, you won't go wrong at this place.  Otherwise, well, just enjoy breading and meat.

One thing I read before I left on a blog I subscribe to is that when one is in Berlin at, say, an Asian restaurant, tell the waiter that you're not German, and you'll get better food.  I'm getting the impression that ordering spicy food in the German countries may be a lot like ordering it in Minot.

Now,time for exploration, and maybe a nice Indian place for lunch.

Coming Soon: Bits of My Internal Dialogue

Posting begins tomorrow about the trip to Europe.  These posts are not carefully written, they're pretty much stream-of-consciousness, at times hindered by an international keyboard that resists punctuation and non-umlauted letters.  Caveat emptor.

Ready to Hit the Road

The plane leaves for Vienna tomorrow just shy of 10:00 pm out of Dulles.  Got just about everything ready, and can't wait to see one of my favorite cities again.  On the tentative agenda:

• Get a Kasekreiner (cheese sausage) from a street vendor
• See Tosca at the Vienna State Opera on Thursday
• Visit the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Museum of Military History
• Convince the natives to make me speak German...most of the time, anyway
• Watch "The Third Man" at the Burg Kino

Lots to do in about 3-1/2 days.  I'll post again when I get across the Atlantic.

Birth Announcement

My sister's first kid was born at about 11:00 pm EDT Sunday night.  Parameters:  6 pounds, 10 ounces, 18 inches.  Optional exercise: convert to metric.  Discuss.

No name yet.  One hopes they choose something that's briefly funny, and becomes more an more of a burden to the child as the years pass.  Like, something very topical that no one will understand in 5 years, like Snookie or something.

Anyway, congratulations, Steph & Matt.