Saturday on the Town

On Saturday we headed downtown just at dark to attend a concert at the Hofburg, the town palace of the Habsburgs. When we strolled from the tram station to the palace, we found a national harvest festival underway on the grounds. There was a tent the size of a soccer field, and booths representing different regions of Austria lined the sides. They were selling beer, wine, and sausages and other food to a mass of people occupying picnic tables that filled the center of the tent. At one end of this canvas hall was a stage on which three men in lederhosen and funny Alpine hats sang out rollicking tunes, accompanying themselves with an accordion and guitars, with the amplifiers cranked up. In front of the stage a man and three small children circled rapidly, a combination Vienna waltz with ring-around-the-rosie. We hated to leave, but the concert hall doors were about to open.

When we finally got into the palace, we expected to see an ornate Neoclassical hall; instead, we were seated in a modern room, with huge, orange-splashed canvases with nonrepresentational, modern designs covering the walls as well as the ceiling. That was a bit of a disappointment. We both had hoped the setting would transport us to the 18th or 19th century so that we could experience the music in that context. (We read later that the original hall had been destroyed fairly recently by a fire and rebuilt in its present fashion.) The program was mostly Mozart and Schubert and included arias from several operas. In Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain remarks on how pleased one of his fellow travelers was when, after much shopping and haggling over paintings, he finally bought one with lots of people in it. He was mightily pleased with his purchase, considering it a bargain because he got "a great many figures for the money." At the concert, we got a great many soloists for the money.

I'll forgo a music review but mention another piece of the entertainment, which began the second we took our seats. The man directly in front of me kept my charming companion shaking with giggles for the 20 minutes before the performance began, and at one point she had to take the program out of my hands to hide her face. The man, looking 50ish, was nicely dressed in a dark suit and tie and wearing black running shoes. He sat with the posture of a French horn, his head turned around toward me, and under to the point that he might almost have tucked it upside down into his armpit. He stared at my program, which at first I held in my hands on my lap; he was straining mightily to read it. During this effort he continually poked two fingers against his widely gapped front teeth and gums or into his bristly, unkempt mustache, or sank his thumb up to the first knuckle in his neck wattle, as if he were fingering stops for a waltz playing in his head. Sometimes rolling his eyes as if trying to turn the program print--his music?--for easier reading, he did not turn around until the orchestra began to play. This strange fellow must be a regular: two of the soloists as well as the conductor stopped briefly to greet him as they exited after the final bows at the end of the performance.

Unrelated Filler

-- This morning I was at a medical lab to have blood drawn for a routine test. There were perhaps 20 people in the waiting room. At various times, as a person completed the procedure and was about to leave the building, he our she loudly said "Auf Wiedersehen" to the entire room, and many of the individuals still waiting loudly spoke the farewell back to the person.

-- When I got to the Embassy for my fitness-center workout after the lab visit, I stopped at the health unit--which had arranged my lab appointment--and mentioned that I had been short-changed 10 euros, judging from the receipt I was given for a lesser amount than I had paid. They called the lab and were told that I had left the money on the counter, and that I should stop by sometime and they would return it to me. And I did, and they did.

-- A couple of Sundays ago we stopped in a wine shop as we were about to leave downtown on the tram, and Linda bought a bottle of wine. We left and boarded our tram. Two stops later she realized that she had left behind a bag with an umbrella, a city map, and her camera. We got off and caught the next tram back to the terminal and walked to the wine shop. We entered and a smiling clerk handed her the bag, all contents intact.