20 October 2008: Vienna, Austria

Astrid had said she'd be at the flat at 11:00 and that she would make pancakes, but by 11:30 she still hadn't shown up. I figured she would at the hostel, since where else would she be, but she wasn't. The dude working said she was still at classes-- the third place she spent time, although she hadn't mentioned it in the conversation the previous night-- and so I left a note at the desk saying thanks and that I would see her that night. And that, if she did make pancakes, to leave me a couple.

I headed into town and got myself a chickenburger from McDonald's for lunch. The thing about the chickenburger is that it only costs €1 and is, in all honesty, pretty damn good. Not really enough for a meal by itself, but enough to tide you over. And the thing about McDonald's in general-- we're talking the Vienna McDonald's of course-- is that everyone that eats there is attractive and not fat. I'm talking everyone. It's the most bizarre thing in the world. It's almost like Austrian McDonald's is good for you. At the very least, you don't feel like a fat-ass by eating there. Which, if you've ever been to a McDonald's in the deep south, is EXACTLY how you feel.

I basically spent this day riding around on the metro and getting off whenever I felt like going up for fresh air. By this point I just about had the entire metro system memorized-- which lines went where, which direction was north or south or east or west, how to get to the main places I needed. I may have been getting less exercise because of it, but the Austrian metro is famously free-- I had never seen a single person get checked for a ticket, and no one I had spoken to could remember the last time they saw one, either-- so why not? Plus, walking around is a lovely way to see a city, but when you can navigate the metro system in a city like the back of your hand it makes you feel like you live there. Which, since I probably wouldn't be in Vienna for much more than a week, was about the best I could do.

I had met someone in the hostel the previous night who had gone to the opera and loved it. She said I should check it out, so I bought a thing of yogurt and a piece of bread-- a healthy dinner, just in case Viennese McDonald's actually is as bad for you as American McDonald's-- and I walked to the opera house.

The opera house in Vienna is the foremost opera house in all of Vienna, and tickets go as high as €240. But tickets also go as low as €3 if you stand in the back for the entire show. So it's a good thing I've got legs of steel.

Now, I'm not really the opera type, to be honest, but every once in a while I like to remind myself that I spent five years in the best men's collegiate choir in the world. And so, when I'm trying to get my cultural side going, I just think WWDD. And I'm pretty sure that he would have gone to the opera. So I did too.

(And that really is just how cultured I am. So cultured it's silly.)

I got to the opera house at 5:30 for a 7:00 show, and the line was already around the corner. I bought my ticket and was ushered upstairs to the highest balcony, where I found the standing area. Obviously there are no seats and you just stand where you can, so in a sense it's a free-for-all. But to mark the spot where you are standing, the opera-goer will tie a scarf around his portion of the banister in front of him, and then the ushers will politely tell you the spot is taken if you try to stand there. So while it might be considered a free-for-all, it is without a doubt the daintiest free-for-all you could ever be a part of.

Because I was so far back in line I had to stand in the back row, but the back row is actually the best row to be in because the translation screens are right at eye level. Everyone in the two rows ahead of me had to either tilt their head up a bit to see or look way down to see the screen of the person sitting in front of them. Not me. From MY spot I could see the words-- which were in English on the screen I was looking at-- and see the stage without moving my head at all. Thank you very much.

The funniest thing about the opera is that, in the translation, all the sentences end with exclamation points. It doesn't matter what is being said, the only punctuation to end a sentence-- at least that I noticed-- is an exclamation point. Operas are lovely and wonderful, but I think that perfectly captures the grandiose self-perception of opera singers. "Listen to me!"

The other funny thing is the spattering of cheers throughout the performance. After every song you'll hear a muffled "woo!" throughout the audience, but no one ever really cheers. They just clap. It's like they're too dignified to cheer, and when they start to "woo!" they have to catch themselves before they let out their wild side.

At intermission I went to the refreshment stand and looked longingly at the drinks and snacks for about five uninterrupted minutes. Then I decided to walk around, listening for someone speaking English since I figured only an American would buy a glass of wine or a tart for a scrub like me.

Because I was wearing my hoodie, my dino t-shirt, a pair of jeans and sneakers, and nearly everyone else was in a coat and tie or a dress, or at least something nice. I was a classy dude. But what killed me was that, despite everything that I was wearing, it was my sneakers that were the biggest offense. Every so often I would catch someone studying my sneakers in disgust and then slowly raising his or her head, eyeing my jeans and then my hoodie and then finally looking with contempt upon the proletariat so common that he would actually wear SNEAKERS to the OPERA. Disgusting.

As far as the opera, since that is important I suppose, it was "Faust," about a week or so after it premiered in the opera house. I was somewhat familiar with the story before going in, and was able to follow it actually all the way up until the final five minutes or so. But, for a three-hour show, that's pretty good.

And I thought the opera itself was pretty incredible, not that I really have any frame of reference to know if an opera is not incredible. But the opera was lovely, the singing fantastic, the acting superb-- and that's really all I can say about it. Other than that it was, like I've mentioned, the most cultural thing I'll probably do during this entire adventure of mine.

My favorite part of the opera, though, was when they sang "Gloire Immortelle," which I sang during my first year in the best men's collegiate choir in the world. It was very cool to hear it in such an opera house by such a group of performers, knowing that I sang it in a gymnasium in Wales four years earlier. I'm not going to say who sounded better because I like to practice modesty once in a while, but I will say that these guys definitely were missing that "Glee Club charm."

By the way, I guess the sign that you don't look at your music enough is when you fail to notice the "from 'Faust' " at the top of the first page and are stunned and delighted when you hear it during the opera which it is from.

(My second favorite part of the opera was when the devil took Faust to the witches orgy and all the witches were running around in thongs. That looked like fun.)

When I got back to the hostel I found Astrid at the front desk, of course, talking to who I assumed was the manager. I asked Astrid for the key to her flat and the manager gave a weird look and Astrid looked a bit nervous. I went up, took a shower, and figured this was the end.

And I was right. When I came back down Astrid told me that the manager-- I had been correct-- was less than pleased that I was crashing at her place. I asked her why that mattered if Astrid lived there, and she said that she didn't own the flat. No kidding, but you ARE paying rent, right? She didn't get it, though, and said that this was probably going to be my last night.

When I turned away from Astrid, I had my first real Michigan sighting in Europe-- the first fake one had been a dude wearing a Michigan shirt who didn't respond when I said "Go blue" and who said a friend of his had gotten it for him when the friend was in Michigan a year ago. The Michigan sighting, however, was not just any Michigan sighting. It was none other than my friend Shannon, with whom I had about four classes during my last two years.

Of all the people, for some reason this just felt like it would have happened. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because I had unsuccessfully tried to convince Shannon and another mutual friend to come to Mardi Gras with me in the spring. Whatever the reason, it almost seemed natural that she was there in the same hostel that I was not really staying in.

Shannon and her friend-- who I didn't know-- were in the middle of a two-month European adventure, traveling around and spending a few days in each place and staying at hostels. The way I would have done it five years ago. We went to a bar down the street and exchanged stories from our respective adventures, and they too were particularly fond of the Hobo Brawl.

We had gone to this bar to get a drink and something to eat, but getting a drink didn't exactly seem imperative at this point. And, although I was starving, I realized at this point that I had hit a new low in regards to money-consciousness. When looking at the menu, I actually considered the merit of eating something versus just waiting it out until the morning. I mean, I actually thought to myself "is spending €2.50 right now really going to help me out in the grand scheme of hunger?" And I decided it wouldn't, so I didn't get anything.

(Although luckily Shannon couldn't finish what she ordered so I had a little bit of left-over.)

Astrid had told me to be back at 12:00 again, and although it seemed to me like she could be able to make an exception once in a while she was rather grumpy when I left and figured it was best to just go back. I looked around for Marion, who had said she would meet me but wasn't in the bar earlier, and she was still nowhere to be found. Which sadly meant no more free drinks. But she had bought a ticket to the same production of "Faust" that evening for about €25 because she didn't know about the €3 deal and so maybe she just didn't want to hear about how great the standing room was. Who knows.

Either way, this was clearly to be my last night staying with Astrid. And I was fine with that, because I had had enough "hostel" to tide me over for a while.