Fun Thing Number Sixteen: took a crazy-man's advice and got $4 back-door tickets to the Viennese Opera to see La Traviata.
We were accosted by said crazy-man as we stood on a windy footpath yesterday evening, grappling with an oversized street map. He was about 60 with a white beard (no moustache) and was decently dressed, if not a little bit scruffy and eccentric-looking: maybe something like a once-famed Viennese bassoon player who had fallen on hard times.
He came up to us, tried on a few languages until realising English was the best fit and then proceeded to berate us in his very thick and bitey Austrian accent. His particular vexation was the fact that we were trying to read a map (?). 'You tourists!' he said. 'You're all the same! You stand there with your big maps flapping about. Look!' he said as he wrenched the map from me and jabbed his finger at the middle. 'This is where you are - the city centre. But don't you see!!??' 'See what (you crazy old bugger)?' I asked. 'There is a square around this part. You must know that when you see a square on a map it means that there will be a magnified version of that part somewhere else. Now look!!!' he exclaimed with great theatrics as he turned the map over. 'Here in the middle of all these terrible adwertisements is a clearer version of that map!'. 'Um thanks' we got out, before he continued his tirade 'I see every day tourists standing around with these big maps. Lost! All of them lost!' 'It must really annoy you, then?' I offered. He thought for a bit. '...Yes. It does'. 'Ok, thanks for the tip' we said and started to leave.
But oh no! We weren't going anywhere just yet. He fixed us with a chubby-cheeked grin. 'Where are you going?'. We weren't going anywhere in particular, we had become a bit disoriented in the maze of grandiose buildings around town, and we just wanted to get our bearings. So we told him so. 'Well there are many wery interesting things to see around here' and so began crazy-man's rambling overview of Vienna's tourist attractions. He was a little hard to follow but anytime that he saw us giving each other a side-ways, let's-get-the-hell-out-of-here glance he'd change the topic to something completely different, in a hope to retain our attention and company for a little bit longer. I felt sorry for him. And deciding he wasn't about to slit our throats and ge-schnitzel our livers, we humoured him for a while. He was telling us about some Russian tsar who had visited Vienna but couldn't find accommodation to his liking, so had bought and renovated a massive building to stay in during his Viennese jaunts. Deciding he liked the neighbourhood, he then bought another enormous hotel across the road. According to crazy-man, both these extremely exclusive hotels are now filled with Russians, up to no good. 'But if you can speak a bit of Russian, you can join them at their tables and drink very good wodka at their invitation'.
He then jumped to a story about St Martin's Day (which we were in trouble for not knowing about). Apparently Martin was a Viennese priest who was posted to the city Tours in France. Martin didn't want to go to Tours so he hid in the church grounds. Or it could have been the palace grounds, I can't remember. Anyway he was rooted out of his hidey hole by a flock of geese, who honked and squawked and alerted his church superiors to his whereabouts. And then he was sainted because of his love for Vienna and hatred for France (?). I can't be sure this is the correct version. Besides, I've been to Tours and it's really not that bad. Anyway, according to crazy-man, now on St Martin's Day - the 11th of November - everyone in Austria eats roasted goose. This then led to a long-winded and very imprecise story about how he had once travelled 40 km south of Vienna just to eat a goose. But when he was there his family drove off and left him behind (I'm not surprised!).
And then, finally, he dropped this gem of wisdom (with no obvious link to the previous tale): 'go to the Opera House just before the show begins, and head around to the back door. You can buy standing-only tickets for the price of a Coca-Cola. Forget the Coke! He cried 'Go to the Opera!' And with that he burst into a puff of smoke and glitter and disappeared.
Or rather we decided we'd had enough, and so smiled and thanked him and scurried off.
We did, however, go to the Opera House and we did get standing-only tickets for the price of a Coke and saw La Traviata. The seats ranged from around $50 - $250 each and were all sold out anyway. It was really truly amazing. If not a bit leg-numbing.
Hooray for crazy-man!
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