Walking around old Vienna is a fairy tale. Or at least a Disney movie. You have a palace (including lots of fancy gold dishes), a museum dedicated to "Sisi", including the special tub used to wash her ankle-length hair in cognac and egg yolks, fancy cafes, and lots of rich old ladies in fur coats.
I've rarely seen Americans in fur coats, but maybe I've never lived anywhere fancy enough. They are very popular in Bavaria and Austria, it would seem. I know a grandma who wears a fur coat nearly every day in winter, even when bicycling. I was pretty surprised to see this protest when walking though Vienna
We didn't stick around long enough to see if the protesters went to all 20 shops that had fur coats in the window.
The very last night we bought standing-room tickets at the opera. I was going to spare Ryan, but he was actually pretty eager to go. And I'm glad we did. I'm no opera expert, but the quality of the Vienna Opera was astonishing. It was like hearing music for the first time. We saw "Fidelio," Beethoven's only opera. It is about a woman who dresses as a man to save her husband from prison, except a woman who's really a woman falls in love with her. Ryan remarked, "In the old days people really had to worry about falling in love. Half of Shakespeare and opera is people pretending to be the opposite sex." The opera was great, at least the first half was (we could only stand standing for about 90 minutes). Before the opera we had the chance to wander the Opera House, and noticed that almost all the balconies are private boxes
Vienna sure has a lot of rich people.
2 comments:
REBUTTALS (in the kindest of spirits):
*In NYC there are plenty of fancy women in fur coats. They also throw their cigarette butts in the faces of janitors sweeping up trash outside the Natural History Museum. SEEN IT!
*There are still plenty of people looking like a biological sex that is perhaps not the one they are. Watch out KATHARINE.
Yes, perhaps so, I've never been to New York or anyplace so fancy in the US. Pretty gross.
The second comment is rather confusing to me, I assume you mean a person who'd identify his or herself as transsexual? After reading so much Shakespeare in college, it seems like every comedy involves disguising one's biological sex. Why don't playwrights use that one anymore? Too fraught with issues?
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