Wien! It kinda splits the difference between Praha and Berlin. Lots of old world charm, lots of big city amenities. My hotel here has set the newest and highest standard for breakfast. Plenty of everything including sheep’s milk yoghurt. I hit the ground running. Ate a good breakfast, asked the concierge, Philip, a slim elegant young man, to set me up for a morning tour and an evening concert. I told him I wanted to go to this concert that features an orchestra in period dress. Philips nose crinkled slightly,
“May I suggest this concert instead Mr. Perez?” (he used the Spanish pronunciation “Pedez”)
He showed me a flyer for a concert by a group in modern dress called the Wien Salonorkestra.
“I’m grateful for your recommendation Philip. May I ask why you think this concert is more desirable?”
“Well sir, that other is very…touristy, and the musicians in this group have excellent reputations.”
I think he was trying to tell me that the really good musicians in town wouldn’t dress like clowns and play for a bunch of lumpen provincials. He didn’t actually say that but his nose crinkle spoke volumes.
“Well then please arrange a ticket for me for tonight”
“Just one ticket? You go to the concert alone sir?”
For a moment I thought he was going to offer to set me up with a date,
“Yes just me”
“Very good Mr. Pedez. Your concert ticket will be here for you when you return from your tour. The tour will pick you up at 9”
And I was off to my room to get ready for the tour.

The tour sent a van to collect me. A few folks from other hotels we already aboard. The van took us to meet a bus which had even more people aboard. The bus took us to a central tour bus depot where we got off and were divided into groups, as we did in Praha, only with German accents which was slightly unnerving. I got on the English/French bus. It was a really nice bus, big and blue and sleek and shiny. Ere was a Strauss waltz playing on the speakers as we boarded. As I was making my way to my seat I noticed two smiling young women, one blonde, one brunette, both with blue eyed and with expressions of pure joy, sitting together holding hands and whispering to each other, they glanced at me and I nodded and smiled, they nodded back. I found a seat by the window and settled in. Very luxurious. Our tour guide, Maria looked like a woman who had completed a successful career and now was doing what she wanted. She had a dry wit and could tell jokes in several languages. I liked her.

The bus ran us by all the proper monuments, the museum quarter, the statue of Johan Strauss, the really cool open air market the Naschmarkt, and an amusement park that looked interesting. I noted those as places to hit on foot. Maria was dispensing knowledge in English and in French which was good for me to help my French a bit. Just to show you how incomplete my education is, Maria let us know that Arch Duke Ferdinand, the man who’s assassination Led to World War I, was a Hapsburg! I associated the Hapsburg family with 16th and 17th centuries. It amazed me to learn that the house of Hapsburg lasted into the 20th century. I should have gone to college.

We went out to Schoenbrunn Palace and there we got a real look at the power and wealth of the Hapsburgs. The ballroom and ceremonial rooms were stunning, the grounds Expansive and perfectly kept the art was large scale and imposing. Maria Theresa Hapsburg had 16 children, one of the youngest was Marie Antoine, who married into French royalty and was called Marie Antoinette by the French. On piece of art that really struck me was a huge tapestry of a tavern scene of the period. we see people eating, walking around, smoking laughing, and in one corner of the scene we see half doze or so people queued up in front of a monkey sitting on a raised platform. At the front of the queue is a man with his head resting on the platform in front of the monkey and the monkey appears to be picking lice and fleas out of the mans hair. I wonder what the tavern keeper charged for that service. The palace impressed the heck out of me. The Hapsburgs didn’t become royalty by divine right. Noooo they earned it, with wealth dug from the ground, with violence applied when needed, but mostly with really cagey and strategic marriages. Great story.
At a photo stop on front of this palace called The Belvedere, the two girls asked me to take their picture they took mine in return. It was then that I introduced myself and learned that the brunette is called Katya, and the blonde Irina. They are both from Moscow, but Irina has been living in Washington DC lately and the sisters have been separated. Since they both love Wien and had visited together before the decided to have a reunion. It was a beautiful thing to see these sisters so loving and affectionate with each other. It made me think of my sister Dori and the close relationship we have maintained. Ai actually got a little misty watching the Russian sisters as they walked the grounds of the Belvedere arm in arm.

The tour ended at the Wien Opera house, and that is when things went a little sideways. We stopped at the opera house, Maria and the driver wished us well, and that was it. No passage back to the hotel. I didn’t bring a map and I was kinda lost. I showed Maria my address and her advice was,
“Go past St. Stephan’s, cross the Danube canal and ask again there.” I decided to take that as a call to adventure and set off. Saw a good bit of the old city, loved St. Stephan’s, another gorgeous cathedral. Just soaked up Wien ask I trekked. When I crossed the Danube canal the crowds thinned and I didn’t want to as directions. This is one of the upsides of solo travel, no discussion of whether or not to ask, but after a long while and a few neighborhoods that were utterly foreign I finally asked a cop to point me in the right direction. She turned me around and told me to follow the street I’m on “for a long way” until I get to “carolkadestrasse” and turn left. Another call to adventure.

I set out again, and after a half hour or so things started to look familiar, and after another 20 mins I was seeing street names I had seen before. What I didn’t see was the street the cop had mentioned.
My dogs were barking and I had concert tickets for that night and the afternoon shadows were starting to lengthen, and I was starting to weigh my options when I looked up and saw a restaurant ahead called Vapiano, and past it a place called Optik, and past Optik… A McDonalds. I was only a few blocks from the hotel! I made it!

Got back to the room, and got ready for the concert. I figured I mould take the metro this time and brought along a map. Then I headed out to find a place to eat near the concert venue so that I wouldn’t be late.

Two stops on the metro and I was back near the Opera House where my afternoon adventure began. The venue was a short walk away. When I could see the concert hall I looked around and there was this total dive bar whose sign had a painting of a drunken cavalier. I didn’t hesitate. This was my kind of place. It was staffed by these tall blonde sweaty statuesque Austrian girls, who were slinging beer and food hard and fast between drags on the Lucky Strikes they keep lit and ready at strategic places under the bar. Julia, Hieke, and Dagmar are the big breasted, wide hipped, hard drinking deep voiced answer to every underfed fashion model that has ever been the sorely under qualified leading lady of all too many American adolescent fantasies from sea to shining sea. It was such a delight to watch these aryan amazons work that I almost forgot that I had a ticket to a Mozart program down the street. Truth is, Mozart would have loved these girls.

I loved the way Dagmar would put her fists on her hips and let her smoke dangle from her lips while she scolded the bar back for… Well I don’t know why she was scolding him and it didn’t matter. It was hot though. After scolding the barback, with eyes squinted against the smoke rising from the smoldering Lucky dangling from the corner of her mouth, she glanced at me, pointed a gold ringed Crimson tipped pinky finger at my near empty glass and said,
“Anozzer?” I smiled and nodded yes slowly. Mozart can wait a little longer. I had the Black Pudding and a couple of beers. I ate quietly and watched Dagmar light another smoke, pull another beer, dab on more perfume, and just generally do her thing. she was the truth behind every cliche about the big German barmaid. Her badassery eclipsed the St. Pauli Girl, a million times over. But it was time for some music.

Went over to the concert hall. My ticket had been properly arranged. Got a seat and in no time out comes the Wien Salon Orkestra.
This 13 piece “salon orchestra” Consisted of piano, flute, clarinet, trumpet, flugelhorn, percussion, bass, cello, viola, 4 violins. This was a tight band. No conductor, but the concert master ran the show. He was a crusty old pro who has probably played more concerts that he can remember. He limped onto the stage, but when he was leading the band from that first chair he was a dancer. Such passion, such energy. They played the hits, some Mozart some Strauss, some Puccini. For the opera numbers a pair of singers came out and really belted. For the waltzes a pair of ballet dancers came out and waltzed but with ballet style. It was a great show, very classy, and not too “touristy”. Something I’ll never forget is the concert master introducing the next time in English and German. But his accent was so thick it was hard to tell where the German ended and the English began. They played three encores, the last being that really sweet theme from “The Third Man” with Orson Welles. I was humming it all the way back to the hotel while thinking of the day’s adventures. The Hapsburgs, the Russian sisters, the Aryan barmaids, Mozart, the cop. They all combined into a day like none other in my life!