Andrea shall finally be able to ride a bike today! She has been yearning to ever since she used Fabians back in Erlangen. Vienna has a well developed bike share program all around the city, just like Vancouver has Car2go. So we made our way over to the closest bike station near the Danube-Auen National Park. We read online that we could register to rent a bike for only one euro and that the first hour with the bikes was free! Yet, when we tried to register at that station it wasted to charge us twenty euros each just to registers. We couldn’t figure out why and assume it could be because we have international credit cards. I just saw it as a sign that we shouldn’t shouldn’t go biking and Andrea didn’t seem so impressed with my theory ;)
We then made our way back to the city centre and went on a tour of the Vienna State Opera. Now our tour guide was completely disinterested and clearly didn’t like his job, but I was able to prod and find out some super interesting things. First of all the building is jaw dropping! The detailed ceilings covered with gold and statues all along the sides were throughout the whole building. The Opera also had different waiting rooms for each intermission and also private reception rooms that people could purchase along with their ticket. For if course a small fortune, but this was where the nobles and royalty watched the Operas. Also the only performances that are permitted to this day are only ballets and operas. What also makes the Vienna State Opera unique from any other opera house in the world is that they have a different opera every night! So yes that means that all the performers must know a set of operas and be able to rotate between them flawlessly. It also means that the stage crew has to take down and set up the sets every single day for the different performances. There are three different stage crew shifts that operate 24 hours per day. Now I find this a waste of time and resources, but they Opera has always functioned this way and seems that it will only continue to in the future.
Afterwards we walked the Vienna Ring Road a five kilometre walk in the city where most of the tourist attractions are. We then walked to the Museumsquartier and walked around the beautiful buildings where the the majority if the city’s museums are. We peaked inside the Naturhistorisches Museum and the inside looked like a palace rather than a museum! We then made our way back to Charlottes to have some dinner and meet up before we went to the ballet.
With Andrea, Charlotte, Christina, Joanna and I in tow we went over to the Volksopera to watch Carmina Burana. We were able to get standing spots for just three euros each! I was able to see the whole stage and every the whole orchestra too! Now if I was to life in Vienna you would bet that I would be at a different show every night. I suppose that what makes Vienna a city of performing arts and culture! Now the performance started off as as interpretive dancing worked its way to modern and contemporary ballet for the first act. Now the second act is where things turned around there was some classical ballet but then it turned into an opera and modern stage! Since there was no program available none of us knew what was happening at least plot wise but it was so captivating! For just going to one show here in Vienna I am glad it was this one because it literally had every variation of the performing arts! At the end if the show assumed that it was a performing arts school years recital but after the show I looked online and found out that the Volksopera is that it is all compromised of aspiring performers from the ages of 12-18. As a sort of an upper level community program, despite this they were amazing and was defiantly a show I will never forget!