Oh what a glorious day!
The day started with my friend’s Filipino maid coming to clean his apartment. Let me tell you — this lady was so well dressed that she put me to shame.. she also carried a Longchamps bag and was perfectly made-up. I at first thought she made a mistake and arrived at the wrong apartment. She also scared me that it’s raining and going to rain all day long but I decided to risk it and leave the umbrella at home. I was lucky! It never rained and even became sunny in the afternoon. Boo to weather forecasts!
I started with a stroll across the city center, walking past many many tourists. I pretended I am not one of them and gave them scornful looks. It worked really well because non of the hundreds of Mozart-dressed tourist vulture salesmen bothered me the whole day. Putting an evil look on one’s face helps as well. Works like charm to scare away hagglers. Anyways, I first went to the Vienna Musikverein concert hall, where I got tickets to the afternoon rehearsal, directed by the one and only Zubin Mehta (5 Euros!!!! for standing places). Also was featured Daniel Barenboim, who is according to wikipedia, is a very famous conductor and musician and also a critic of Israel, despite being Argentinian Israeli himself. Regardless of his political opinions, his performance on the piano was phenomenal.
After picking up the tickets, I continued to the naschmarket, which is an outdoors fruits and spices market and after passing many cheap asian restaurants sports some really cute brunchy type cafes. I had some excellent coffee and a turkish breakfast (feta with honey: yummy, yummy!) while reading Brothers Karamazov on my Kindle (best purchase ever!). I then continued on to the museum quarter to visit the Leopold Museum who is now on my top 3 museums list after the MOMA and Tate Modern. I saw some excellent Egon Schiele pieces. The Klimt collection was really small unfortunately. Neue Galerie in NYC had a much better collection when I was there a couple of years ago. In any case, the visit was worth it with some interesting photography and european jewelery exhibitions.
After the museum, I hurried through a bunch of palaces turned museums back to the Musikverein to make it to the concert but ended up waiting for 1.5 hours before the concert actually started and later on realized I am an idiot because I didn’t adjust my watch to Vienna’s time and therefore arrived an hour earlier than when I was supposed to. At least I wasn’t late for a change..
The later afternoon was then spent in the beautiful Burggarten park (next to yet another palace), feasting on a chocolate bar, among bong smoking teenagers and some druggy lady that kept asking everyone for something (I don’t understand German but I assume she wasn’t asking for directions..). Brother Karamazov continued to keep me company.
On my way home I encountered an amazing sight: Police motorcycles accompanying a huge group of cyclists to the sounds of blasting music. Many of them were dressed in costumes, some of them were completely naked (yes, I saw EVERYTHING). There was one couple on a double bicycle with the rainbow flag. There was a guy on a super tall bike with a skeleton mask. There was a guy dressed in a bear costume. There was a naked girl with her body painted green and on her naked back written “Dyke on a Bike”. There were also kids on bicycles in their underwear, and sheets attached to their neck (supermen style). It was hugely entertaining and also super crazy!
Afterwards, I headed for dinner on the banks of the Danube river. Passing by saw many bars, where the owners brought sand and turned them into beach bars. The highlight of that was Tel Aviv beach bar which really felt like it was transported directly from Israeli (except for the attendants who did not resemble any Israelis..).
I ended up going to a Mexican place for enchiladas and a glass of sangria. Globalization is amazing: Eating enchiladas de pollo in Vienna, served by a middle eastern looking guy (I am guessing turkish) accompanied by a drink made by an African bartender, while reading a Russian novel in English. LOL. This would be unthinkable of not so many years ago..
Grobetrotter 