Austria extended...a bit

I left Austria feeling rather cultured and ready to tackle any opera critics.

The first night I went to an orchestra playing Mozart and Stauss, as well as mini opera and ballet performace. The dress for the performace was casual, which is good cause if it had been even one notch higher than casual, I would not have had the appropriate attire. I was accompanied by my Japanese room mate, who I had spent the day with. She taught me about the Sacher cake, which was supposed to be a hugely famous chocolate dessert cake that comes out of Austria, I’s never heard of it but it sure did not sound like it would kill me to try. We went to the Sacher Hotel where it all started, and dined along with the rest of the extremely rich and high-class people at the café and payed a lot more money that I would usually on a coffee and some cake. The cake apparently is made in a wooden box and needs to the right temperature to do this and that and then layered with chocolate. It sounds and cool amazing, but I think I prefer homemade double recipe with fudge icing..half the cost as well!

The next evening I escaped to the opera. The guide book and fellow travelers I had met, all say that to got to the opera you will have to get there 2 hours early and stand in the lines that lead around the building if you want standing tickets. Being a pretty chilly three days in Vienna, the prospect of standing out in the night freeze didn’t appeal to me much at all, but I couldn’t go to Vienna and not go to the opera. I must have done something good during that day however, because when I got there I was able to walk straight in, was directed into a tiny corner of the opera house and went straight to the ticket counter and bought my 3 euro standing ticket to the Viennese opera, no waiting, no cold and no empty pockets. To add to this bargain of mine, the cloak room was even free!! Here I felt extremely underdressed, it’s not that I didn’t respect the art and therefore didn’t think it was worth dressing up for… its just that I honestly don’t have ANYTHING more classy to wear than a black skivvy and grey cargo pants that i should probably wash more often than I do….

The performance was very different to what I was expecting. When I think opera I think of overweight ladies with huge dresses and wildly overdone make up complete with black beauty spot, standing with their hands clasped in front and belting out ridiculous note. This, however, was more like a theatre performance with singing in the opera style. . I’m glad that the opera was in German, because im sure the fact that the singers trill and sing each word for about half an hour each would annoy me if it was in English. The best part is that I understood the play because they have nifty individual subtitle screens for each person, with the opera translated into 4 or 5 different languages. 

After getting my tiny taste of the music capital of the world, it was time to move on to another music capital of Vienna. I knew a little more about this music though.

I arrived into Salzburg quite late in the afternoon, and even though it was rather dark outside I could still make out the mountains and the amazing forests and lake that surrounded Salzburg. SO much beauty! Of course Salzburg is best known for its role in hosting the movie, The Sound of Music, a musical that I have seen so many times yet somehow have never actually owned.  So naturally, my first port of call was to do the sound of music tour, which I thoroughly enjoyed belting out each song in the bus accompanied by my fellow (mostly female) tourists. We made it to the gazebo where the famous I am 16 going on 17 song was performed, unfortunately the doors were locked because too many people had fallen while trying to reenact the scene, and broken their legs. We also went to the tree lane way where the kids were seen dangling from the tree in the movie while their father rode down in his car. The bottoms of these trees have been trimmed because too many people were climbing up them, and then falling hurting themselves, trying to reenact this scene of the movie also. The church where Maria was married was not blocked off however, and I was able to walk slowly down the aisle imagining I had a 30m long train and 30 nuns performing for me. And then of course the river where the kids fell from the boat while wearing their curtain clothes was there, along with the grand patio where max and the baroness sip pink lemonade. All up and very exciting tour! That day I also made it up to the big fortress which was quite large and fortressy, but most spectacularly just offered amazing views over Salzburg and beyond which was spectacular!

A few interesting things I learnt while in Austria. The edelweiss flower is grown all over Europe wherever there are alps, but Austria has sort of nicked the emblem as its own. When the Austrian president was greeted by the Ronald Reagan on a state visit they played the song “edelweiss” which is a song written for the sound of music stage musical, thinking this was their national anthem! The song brought tears to many of the delegates faces, all those except the Austrians who were wondering why a folk song was being played to welcome them on such an auspicious event….I suppose they didn’t have the internet back then to google what the Austrian national anthem actually was. Also, did you know that the sound of music is actually loosely based on a real story and the von trap singers AND Maria actually exists? 

Sorry for the slow upload of blogs these days,  if you want excuses just email me :P

Love you all very very much!

Lauren xox