Vienna

A few weeks ago, my good college bud Stacy came for a brief visit to Amsterdam. Stacy works for an American-German-Dutch publishing company, which means she comes to the Netherlands for work on occasion. So when she had a team meeting in Holland for work last Wednesday, we decided she come early and spend the weekend! Her and my other good friend Liz came to visit back in June and we did the whole Holland thing. So this time, Stacy and I decided to do Vienna.

We had heard some things about Vienna before our arrival: everyone walks around in fur coats, everyone is old, there are some beautiful palaces, and they eat sausages filled with cheese (we actually only heard this last tidbit from Matt). We also knew about the world-famous opera house, so decided our must-do for this trip was to see an opera. About a month before our trip, I see that Madame Butterfly is playing at the opera house the night we arrive in Vienna (Sunday night). This was perfect! A few weeks before our trip, I search the internet to order tickets before the show only to find that the show was sold out! We were so bummed! We tried some contacts, called in some favors, and found that our contacts were lacking and no one actually owed us any favors. We decide then to try going to the opera house as soon as we arrive, maybe swindling some old men and stealing their tickets while they go to the bar to get us champagne and chocolates. Luckily for us (and all the old men at the opera house that night), there was no need for that.

When we arrive at the hotel, our concierge informs us that if we were to arrive at the opera house 30 to 60 minutes before the show is set to begin, we could purchase standing room tickets without a problem. Phew! So by the time we had brought our bags up to our lovely little Viennese hotel room, it was around 3:30 in the afternoon. All we really wanted to do was just relax and get ready for the show at 6, but being in Vienna only until Tuesday afternoon, coupled with the fact that the big palace we wanted to see (the Belvedere) is closed on Mondays, we decided instead to grab a map and our cameras and hop on the tram.

The transportation system in Vienna is very reliable. There is the underground system and the tram (above-ground) system. The tram system is set up in a loop around the city, and our guide book recommended taking the loop around, which we did many times, albeit inadvertently!

Our first stop was touring the Belvedere Palace. Due to time constraints, we only visited the upper palace (the palace is divided into 2 sections), where there was an art gallery with famous works by Gustav Klimt. There were a couple of really magnificent pieces there, including Klimt's The Kiss and The Bride. Unfortunately the outside of the palace was a bit tainted by the construction to the gardens, but it was still majestic.

After touring around the Belvedere for a few hours, we head back to the tram stop so we can get to the hotel and throw on our cocktail dresses for the opera. On our way, we stop to look at some cheesy advertisements with pictures of Sharon Stone. The advertisements were for the souvenir shop across the street, and featured the words ''Sharon Stone's Choice" with pics of the pseudo-star and a short little Greek man. As we start to walk around these signs, I hear some yelling coming from the other side of the street. I turn to look, and lo and behold, it's the little man in the picture motioning for us to come into his store. I grab Stacy and among stifled giggles we start walking (fast) towards the tram stop. But he is undeterred. He follows us and shouts after us and eventually convinces us to go into his Greek restaurant attached to the shop with promises of free coffee. We follow him in, and the restaurant looks pretty legitimate. He quickly hands us 2 glasses of red wine filled to the brim and seats us at his best table. He leaves us alone for a bit, but keeps coming back and asking about our lives and telling us where he's been in the US. Now, Stacy was just getting over an ugly flu, and wine was the last thing she wanted or needed, so she hardly drank hers. And I could not let 2 full glasses of wine go to waste, so I drank mine. Seeing this, our little friend, Nico was his name, says "This one likes wine!" then proceeds to fill my glass to the brim again! He then escorts us into the souvenir shop, hands us postcards and dresses me in various tacky printed scarves. All Stacy could muster when he draped me in a The Kiss screen-printed scarf and looked at her for her approval was, "I think it looks better on Sharon Stone.'' Thanks, Stacy. We finally manage to tear ourselves away under the false premise that we would return later that evening. I really hated having to lie to Nico. At first we really considered coming back to eat b/c the food looked so good. But in the end, he was just too annoying.

By the time we arrived back at our hotel, we were much later than we had planned. It was 6:20 and we still had to get dressed. We called the cab and in record time were ready to be driven to the opera house. The cabbie was chatting us up, enough so to make Stacy really believe that he was really rooting for us to score some tickets. So I see her hand him a bill as a tip. Now, the smallest euro bill is 5 euros. So once we hop out, I gasp, ''Did you just tip him 5 euros for a 9 euro cab ride?!" and she replies, ''Yes, but I really felt like he was on our side. I thought it would give us good karma.'' And did it ever.

The Vienna opera house is magnificent. It is so ornate but not to the point where it's tacky. It's just very classy. The ceilings are gilded gold, and the chandeliers are pure crystal. After we had walked in, we headed straight to the back to check for the standing room tickets. These were still available for just 2 euros each, but it was really a horrible way to see the show, especially given our lovely outfits. Also, everyone else getting standing room tickets looked positively slovenly. Now, the time being 7:05, I decided to give a quick check at the box office to see if there are any seated tickets available. There were, but only for the 2 most expensive categories. We look at each other and decided, why the heck not, and nodded vigorously at the box office man. He goes on to say, well, the seats are not together. That was a bit of deal breaker, and he could tell that by looking at our faces. "How far apart are they?" I ask. "Let me check something'' he says. He shuffles what look to be tickets paper clipped together and then turns to us again. He says he has 2 tickets together, but they are in category 1. What else, we can only pay cash, ''because it was a cancellation." But, as a token of generosity, he would give them to us for the price of category 2. Due to sheer excitement, we look past the dodginess of the situation and pool together all of our cash, and are short by 80 euros. I can taste these seats now! "I can go to the cash machine if there is one nearby..." I murmur. He just sticks his hand out and counts the money, hands us the tickets and says "Enjoy the show." Score! Stacy earned a 1600% return on her cabbie investment!

Still giddy from our fancy seats, we take the elevator up to we-have-no-idea-where. At the first stop, everyone else gets off, and being as we probably looked a bit confused, the elevator operator asks to see our tickets. Then he makes a strange face. He puts his hand up to stop us from getting off and says, ‘‘you wait.'' Oh no, I think, did we just hand over a wad of cash for fake tickets? Not so. He takes us up another floor, smiles very agreeably and says, ''These are very good seats.'' Heehee!

Needless to say, the seats were phenomenal. Madame Butterfly is in Italian, but our seats (I think all seats actually) had a small screen in front where you could pick a language to translate the songs. Very convenient, as otherwise we would have had no clue as to what was going on. Even if we could speak Italian, the songs were sung so strangely and...well, opera-y...that there was no deciphering. During intermission, we ran out to the nearest cash machine to replenish our wallets. We run back with 15 minutes to kill, and grab champagne and chocolates from the bar and look out over the city of Vienna from the Opera House balcony. We felt to stylish we nearly had to pinch ourselves. After the show, we look for a cafe nearby the opera house, but the city is dead. The population of Vienna is mostly elderly people, and they don't have the siesta-provided energy surge of the Spanish oldies, so they are most definitely home at this hour (about 10:30). We then decide to grab some pizza slices and eat at our hotel.

The next morning we wake up early and go to the Schloss Schonbrunn. The Schonbrunn Palace was built by the royal Habsburg family between 1696 and 1712, and has 1,441 rooms. We took a tour of the 40 rooms that are open to visitors. This palace is also famous for the performance that then six-year old Mozart gave to the Empress Maria Theresa. The palace rooms are magnificent, designed in the white-and-gold Rococo style, with tall windows, crystal mirrors and chandeliers. The palace grounds have a hedge maze, a botanical garden, reproduction Roman ruins and the world's oldest zoo. We spent the afternoon in shopping and walking around downtown Vienna. The city is absolutely beautiful, and the weather was perfect. Vienna is famous for its pastries and its cafe culture, so we stopped in at Cafe Demel, one of Vienna's most well-known pastry shops. We had apple strudels and lattes, a most rewarding break from shopping!

True to the promise I made Matt, I stop at a kiosk on the way back to our hotel and get myself a kaiserkraner. A kaiserkraner is a big sausage injected with liquid cheese. Yes. To maximize my kaiserkraner experience, I get a Viennese beer to wash it down with. Stacy was still not feeling 100%, and she had the better sense to not risk her improving health by consuming pure grease contained in fried skin. I must say, the beer and the sausage, in and of themselves, were not very good. But the combination was quite striking, and I began to enjoy this unlikely snack! It felt like a brick in my stomach for a few hours though.

Later that evening, we head out for a typical Viennese meal, only to find that the restaurant our hotel recommended was full, on a Monday night! We find another place, and are reminiscing over our crazy college days when the two guys at the table next to us lean over and ask us if we're American. They were Americans doing a mini-tour of Europe, and ironically enough, they were from Maryland! One of them even went to Towson, Loyola's rival school in Baltimore. It really is a small world. After dinner, we head out to a bar with our new American friends, and drink beers out of mugs.
I am well aware that my luck in Vienna was nearly 100% contributed by Stacy.

“Have you ever been to an opera in Vienna?” you ask? Yes, I have.

Oktoberfest

'Thais & Matt - Oktoberfest in Munich - September 2006

Oktoberfest

I do realize that it has been over a month since the last blog, and my apologies for that. Things have really started to pick up around here. Matt and I are finally finding our place in Amsterdam. With Matt playing rugby and taking Dutch lessons and my writing workshop and book club and various other disturbances, we don't have much down time anymore. But I promise to make a better effort.

Nevertheless, the blog you have all been waiting for..

Oktoberfest - Munich, Germany.
First, some history: The first Oktoberfest was held in the year 1810 in honor of the Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig’s marriage to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The festivities began on October 12, 1810 and ended on October 17th. In the following years, the celebrations were repeated and, later, the festival was prolonged and moved forward into September.By moving the festivities up, it allowed for better weather conditions. Because the September nights were warmer, the visitors were able to enjoy the gardens outside the tents. Thus it has become the Oktoberfest of today which we all know and love.
The Bavarians regard Oktoberfest as the fifth season. There is autumn, winter, spring, summer, then Oktoberfest. And as any other proper season, Oktoberfest commands its own attire. This picture was taken around midnight on Thursday night, as Matt and I boarded the metro from Munich airport to our hotel. What a welcome! We giggled and took some incognito shots of these fine ladies, all the while reminding ourselves that soon enough, we will be in their beer-stained shoes.

Being that we experienced some delays, we didn't get to our hotel until past midnight, and we were beat. The next morning we wake up to a beautiful German day. We head out to the city center, grab some sausages and tour around briefly before going to the LaSalle office at 1pm. We met some of Matt's coworkers, who were all very friendly and excited. At 2pm sharp, we are at the Hobrauhaus tent. Since LaSalle had made reservations for us, we got in with no trouble. We then were promptly handed 1-liter beer steins. I have never seen beers this big. For those that can't drink a liter of beer at one time, or for those who just need a break from doing so, there is the option of the half beer- half lemonade stein. These look just like beer, so no one is the wiser. They also provide an oft-needed jolt of sugar to keep you awake.

Although we were in that same tent for over 9 hours, time really just flies by in there. We drank liter beers (several of them), we ate half chickens, we danced to stupid songs (notably that dumb West Virigina country roads song), tried our hands at the German language, and met some great people. It was an experience like no other. Then the beer tent closed at 11:30pm and we were forced to leave.

We don't really recall our walk to the subway; we pretty much just followed the mass of people for about a mile. Somehow, we find our way back to our hotel. The next morning my phone starts beeping and ringing around 8am. I was NOT down with that. After a few hours of being annoyed by its incessant beeping but being emotionally unable to leave the bed, I get up to dig around for my phone. I then remember that at some point the night before, one of Matt's collegues from the Munich office had insisted on dancing on the table (even though it's not allowed and the beer maidens kept yelling at her to get down). Inevitably she managed to kick over a beer stein and have a 1/2 liter of beer dump right into my lap and into my purse. Luckily, my phone still worked (I was reconsidering the ''luckily'' at that time though). Anyway, it was my 2 coworkers from Amsterdam calling to get us up to meet them at the fairgrounds. Ugh. More drinking was about the last thing we wanted to do. Nevertheless, we try to get it together, and at around 12:30, we head back to Matt has dubbed ''the house of pain.'' We arrive at the fairgrounds at 1pm, and try to find the tent our friends are in. Once we see it, we see that there is a line at every possible entry/exit to this place. We knew this was the most popular tent, so we decide to try another one, only to find that there are lines to get in everywhere. These people here (in the picture) are waiting on line to get into a tent, and they've been waiting for 4 hours. Those people on the grassy area are not just hanging out, enjoying the nice weather; most of them are passed out drunk. All this going on amongst the little German kids getting pony rides and eating giant cookies. It was quite a bizzare sight. Matt and I continued to stroll around, checking for tents without a line of people snaking out of it, but nothing. We decide to get some beers and sausages. But the kicker of this tent business, is that no beer is sold anywhere else on the fairgrounds! We decide to go back to the city center and find a beer garden there.

Funny interlude: We grab some fries on the way out of the fairgrounds. We reach the metro station, but Matt wants to enjoy his fries outside in the nice weather before we head down to the subway. So we are both standing off to the side, when all of a sudden a unfathomable number of Japanese tourists crowd us. Here we were, in Munich for Oktoberfest, and it was Japanese for as far as our eyes could see (not very far). This non-event has come to be called the Asian invasion. I couldn't let this oddity slip by without a picture. Any other group of tourists would have found it curious to see someone take a picture of another person eating french fries outside the metro station while surrounded by said tourist and all his friends, and perhaps even given me a dirty look for doing so. But being that they were Japanese and love to take ridiculous pictures, they didn't even blink an eye at it. Some even smiled for the camera.

Once we get down to the subway, we quite randomly run into 2 guys Matt knows - one who now works at the LaSalle office in Munich and went to Loyola, and the other his friend. They had also given up on the beer tent idea, and were going back to the city center to buy some leiderhosen and then try a beer garden. It really is true that if you are a guy and not wearing leiderhosen at Oktoberfest, it almost feels like you are missing out on something. With girls it's a bit different, because you just feel bad for these poor women in big, ugly, uncomfortable dresses. But leiderhosen are the perfect beer-drinking attire. Also, the whole costume idea is a funny one. Somehow, dressing up in a silly outfit makes you feel like you are free to behave as stupidly as possible, and yet, still feel ok with yourself the next day. Almost as if the costume excuses you, and just because you weren't dressed like yourself, in reality it wasn't you at all. Like, the costume made you do it, kind of thing.

Saturday night was rather mellow. At around 8pm we head to the real Hofbrauhaus beer hall downtown. This beer hall has some history, since it is where Hitler first began giving his speeches which got him into power. You can still see the swastikas on the ceiling, whose black paint has since been covered up with the blue and white checkers of the Bavarian flag. The beer tents are set up to look like the beer halls, which have rows and rows of picnic tables. To sit down, you just find a free spot to squeeze into. Usually people are very friendly about letting you squeeze in with them. We ended up sitting across from an American couple from California. Also at our table were a German couple, a German father and son and several older guys in atypical costumes. They may have been in some kind of band, but since they didn't speak a word of English, we can't be sure. That didn't stop them from flirting though.

Every 30 minutes or so at a beer hall or beer tent, they play a little dity where everyone at the table has to cheers (''prost!'' is cheers in german). It should be noted that the clinging of 1 liter beer steins is not as dainty as clinging wine glasses. We were a bit worried that at some point we would smash our beers so hard that they would shatter (I would come to find out later that this actually happened to my coworker that weekend). But it really is a great way to meet the people around you.

It didn't take too many liters to get us down Saturday night. Worse yet, by the time Hofbrauhaus closed, there were very little places still serving food. Though we could have gotten food there, we were squeezed into our benches pretty tight, and no one else at our table was eating. So what's the only place open at midnight at every city around the world? Yes, we went to McDonald's. That only added to the general unhealthiness of our trip. Filled with beer and grease, we troll back to the subway and back to our hotel. And to make it all come together, we (or rather, just Matt) became like the ladies on the metro on Thursday night.


Overall, our experience in Bavaria was a fantastic one. Munich is a beautiful city with a great subway system. The beers were tasty. The weather was great. Oktoberfest is definetely an experience that can't be missed. We'll definetely go back . And we recommend any of our friends and family to join us. Prost!