Day 40. Sunday 10 May.

A slow start to another fine day. Walked into the city centre, wandering the graceful, classical cobblestone laneways showing a different kind of neighbourhood. Passed St. Stephen’s Cathedral, undergoing a serious polish & overlooking the Mozarthaus, where we have booked a string quartet for this evening. A quiet little coffee-shop away from the throng delivered that ‘hit’.

Continued down to the Opernring and noticed what seemed to be a market in Stadtpark. It was certainly more than just a market: on Mother’s Day weekend the park hosts the Genuss Festival, where more than 180 craft food producers and companies from Austria showcase their high-quality gourmet products and beverages.

 Interestingly, many folk were carrying wine or beer glasses, usually with something in them, and when T checked, yes they were glass, with no breakage issues, perhaps because of the five euro deposit. Very crowded, but very calm. People walked, talked, sat, lounged on benches and on the grass on a perfect sunny Sunday.

Decided to take the Ho/Ho bus on the Yellow route, to find, of course, that rides were suspended until mid-afternoon due the Genuss and Wings for Life, a global charity race, in which athletes from all over the world run any distance between 1k and 100k – just have to be faster than the Catcher Car. 100% of the earnings go directly to the spinal cord research foundation. Proud of our champion team running in the Mother’s Day run for breast cancer in Canberra.

Feeling foot-weary and in need of sustenance ahead of a 1530 bus trip, it was time for a sit down & snack  and, having seen a T-shirt with the message ‘No Kangaroos in Austria’ (took D a while) where better to find something close by than a genuine Aussie pub? It did the job.

The bus stop was at the opera house and hawkers in costume were spruiking last-minute tickets for Donazetti’s Elixir… for Monday night. T looked a likely target & was keen; but when it was a cash-only thing, we retracted.

 The bus took us past Schloss Schönbrunn (heaving!), pointing out the Orangerie Konzerte (which might get a guernsey for Monday), the new main railway station and Oberes Belvedere. We debussed at Belvedere hoping to get in to see Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’, and other displays, but by now visits had stopped (it was after 1700). Walked back to the closest Ho/Ho bus stop at the Opera House hoping to do the Green route to fill in time before the 2000 concert – bus rides had finished too. Another sit down was needed, and T started a conversation with an elderly couple waiting for the opera doors to open (Salome) about opera prices and whether the hawkers in costume were legit or a scam. Jury is still out.  We googled prices for tomorrow night for Donizetti’s L’Elisir D’Amore.  Very few seats available, and those seats were over 250 euro each. That’s a bit over our budget. The hawkers were offering seats up high in a side box (similar to what we’d had in Milan years ago) at 60 euros: the older gentleman confirmed that the operas were usually sold out months in advance, said that hotels bought up batches of seats and if  tourist guests didn’t take them they were passed on to the hawkers to get rid of.  A box seat up high at 60 euros was standard price but the lady was pretty dismissive of the quality of such a viewing position. The summer opera season is clearly huge business. We Antipodians always presume that we can get tickets on the day, as the mood takes us…doesn’t quite work like that in Vienna.

Earlier in the day we had noticed an Italian restaurant – Cantinetta La Norma – that had promise for a ‘meal out’, not far from Mozarthaus so headed there for dinner before the show. The Siciliana pizza was terrific, as was the Montapulciano. And the maître d’ was engaging and generous. Of course we had to share a panacotta, & then a little complementary almond liqueur. He was the perfect salesman and we felt we’d just had a quick trip to Italy. D was amused by a sideshow in an adjacent laneway, as three very young women preened and posed in a store window for about fifteen minutes, using it as their mirror.

The concert was in Vienna’s oldest concert hall: the Sala Terrena where Mozart had  played, and across the courtyard where he had briefly lived. We had bought tickets online. On arrival the young man on the desk apologetically explained that as we’d booked late, our seats were not together – but we could pay for an upgrade. We consulted, declined, upon which he gave us a free upgrade, whatever that really meant apart from sitting together. The performance was delightful, lively and engaging: Mozart plus a bit of Dvorak, Papa Haydn & Bach.

And a slow walk home through a still very active city night life.