Marty outside the Burgtheater in Vienna

Ow! Those brass guys sure do bite hard!

We visited such great museums in Vienna. We saw a Lichtenstein exhibit, an exhibit on Modernism from Klimt to Klee (at the Albertina), the Jugendstil collection at the Belvedere (Klimt, Schiele, et. al.), and the incredible Kunsthistorisches Museum. We also toured the Hofburg (the city palace of the Habsburgs) and the Staatsoper (opera house). So... much... culture... *gasp*

Not only did we tour the opera house, but we also attended the first act of La Boheme. I know that must sound strange, but as well as the normal tickets (which can be as expensive as €175 and are almost always sold out), they also sell 567 Stehplätze (standing places) for every performance. The standing places cost only €2 - 3.50, depending on how close to the ground floor you end up. We bought our €2 tickets and went up, up, up to the rafters, where there were two rows of velvet-covered barriers set up behind the seats. We stood there for the first 45 minutes or so of the opera, and it was amazing. The acoustics in that hall are astounding, and it sounded better than many recordings I've heard of the same music.

That actually wasn't my first time in the Vienna cheap seats. Doug and I attended Lucia di Lammermoor there back in 1988 when we were staying in Vienna. That time, it was opening weekend for the opera, and Vienna was dressed to the nines. Doug and I were backpacking around Europe that summer, but we did our best. Nobody was looking at us, anyway, with Lucia shrieking away in her mad scene on the stage. Lovely as it was.

This time, Marty and I could have stayed for the whole opera, of course, but we had just seen La Boheme in March 2003, when Katynka was visiting us in Munich, so we didn't stay for the whole thing. After all, the tickets were only €2.

(The opera was sung in Italian this time, thankfully.)