Slow Down, You Crazy Child...

Good advice from Billy Joel. But Billy Joel is a rich bastard who can make it to Europe whenever the heck he feels like it, and do it in a helicopter made out of gold. I cannot. And so I do not slow down, even if Vienna waits for me.

Vienna. Vienna is more than disgusting little nuclear-bomb resistant sausages and Hapsburgs. But really, the Hapsburgs are a big part of it. I didn't see any sausages. Vienna is, as those of you who have not been living under a rock since the reign of Gilgamesh will know, about Music. With a capital M. Mozart, Haydn, Joel... they're all part of the music scene here. Empress Maria Theresa was once quoted as saying that the further one gets from Vienna, the deafer one becomes for want of beautiful sounds. Well, the traffic noises are as annoying here as anywhere else I've been, but in one sense, she was right.

I did a lot of walking in Vienna, of course, and saw some beautiful things. But I'm always writing about the beautiful things I come upon while walking, and it probably gets really old if you're reading this. In Vienna I also did something different; something that I literally have never done before in my whole life, and which I'm glad I saved for the Music Capital of the World.

I went to the Opera.

Yeah, you heard me right. The Opera. That thing with the viking hats and the very large people in very large costumes... and also the stuff that's going on onstage.

What in the heck were you doing at the Opera, Maggie? You may ask. A legitimate question, considering that my current wardrobe consists of spandex, two increasingly threadbare pairs of jeans and Patagonia thermals... I'm not really fancy enough to be going to the Opera, right?

Actually, it seems that the city so renowned for its music has a rather large tourist industry having to do with... music. And so I wasn't the only sweaty, muddy tourist who decided to make a night of it at the grand ol' opera. But the opera is something like a lesson in class warfare. It's the only venue which I can immediately think of (although I'm sure there are plenty of others) in which social stratification is not only acceptable, it is implicitly part of the experience.

There's a concept you might have heard of called standing room only. In the States, we use this little bit o' jargon to connote an immensely popular happening, at which people literally have to stand in the back because there just aren't enough seats. In the Vienna Opera House, it's a different story.

Here's the tale of my standing room saga: I inquired of a man in a cape standing outside the Opera House where I might find the standing room tickets. He instructed me to go around to the back of the House (see the class warfare in action) and I would see a door that said STANDING. This I did, and I went inside, to find a pen full of cattle waiting to be led to their last final bit of culture before heading off to that big George Foreman in the sky. Or at least that's what this line felt like. We waited for about forty minutes in line, and then were herded up to the counter, where we expressed our preference of ground floor, mezzanine or balcony. The first option was going for four euros, the other two for three. Given the advice of the woman at my hostel, I splurged.

We, the citizens of the ground floor, were then herded through some more corridors, until we came to a door, where we queued for a few minutes before being instructed to remove a piece of clothing (woah! this isn't what I signed up for!) and tie it to the bar to mark our place to stand (oh.). We were then set free for the remaining forty minutes until the Opera began... more like free range chickens now than the cattle we had been. I celebrated my freedom with an correspondingly elegant dinner at Chez le Roi de Burger. I then made my way back to my alloted space of brass bar, where I stood among the other Plebians as the show began.

For those of you who have never experienced the opera, it's something else. The melodrama of the 'acting' itself would give you a nosebleed, but then you've got this chorus of a million people wailing and dancing and booming out music in some largely incomprehensible language... it's a little bit of an overload. Luckily, the plot was one I am familiar with: Othello, by Verdi. I consider Othello to be Shakespeare's most heart-wrenching tragedy, and Iago to be one of literature's most perfect baddies. He's just so despicable in every way that you want to punch him in the jaw and then make him a soprano with a well-aimed kick. Well, you could try that with this Iago, but if he sat on you, you'd basically go the way of Desdemona.

I understand the physicality of opera, and I know that blowing people's faces off with your voice causes your lungs to expand, subsequently broadening your rib cage... but it's still fun to see a fat guy singing opera. Who doesn't love a good cliche?

While I was reasonably comfortable with the plot in it's general sense, one of the best thing about the play is how heart-wrenchingly sad the build-up is, with Iago's elegantly worded speeches and Cassio and Desdemona's accidental escalation of Othello's anger... it's all just really beautifully written.

And so you can imagine how pumped I was when I noticed the little screens running across the bottom bar, translating the Italian back into English... it loses something in the translation to the operatic format, I guess. Iago's soliloquies are more trite... they talk about the devil a good deal more, and he feels the need to point out ("See, he is drunk as a lord!") what the other characters are doing. At all times. He becomes less a quintessential example of the depths humans will sink to for revenge, and more that girl in your sixth grade class who had to exclaim "EW! Johnny's picking his nose!" in the middle of a movie about the Holocaust. He's almost evil in how annoying he is. So, I stopped reading the subtitles and let the music do the talking.

I'm sorry to those of you who love the medium, but the music wasn't really any more moving than the stupid words for me. When I read Othello as Will wrote it, it gives me a pit in my stomach, like Desdemona and Othello were real people, and my friends. Or at least the Brad n' Jen kind of celebrities that you love to live vicariously through. I feel for them. I hate Iago. I feel so sorry for poor, oblivious Cassio. I laugh at Rodrigo for being a complete tool. They are people, and I care about what happens to them. In the opera, I was so distracted by the odd quality of their voices (me being used not to operatic theatre, but musical theater... which is not even in the same gene pool) that I totally forgot to be sad. And I got the church giggles when Desdemona temporarily awakes from death (I do this in the play, too, but this was funnier) and sings her final epitaph. It's funny, because she's just been strangled. Like, died from lack of oxygen. And then she sings this really freakin' high note. It just doesn't compute.

And so, I admit it. I am a Phillistine. I just didn't get the appeal. I'm not going to lie, I went into the thing kinda expecting, given my romantic disposition, to have one of the Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman moments where my life changed completely... but while she was in a gorgeous red dress and sitting next to the beautiful Richard Gere, who kept whispering in her ear, I was in muddy jeans and damp shoes and standing next to a rather large German lady with impressive BO. So, I guess it's not exactly the same thing. Maybe when a stupidly rich, very attractive man flies me somewhere on his private jet and borrows me jewels from Harry Winston, I'll like the opera better. Still, the experience is something I wouldn't have traded for the world.

That was the highlight of my time in Vienna, which also included visits to the art museum (duh), the Belvedere and Schonbrun palaces, and creeping around the Spanish Riding School, hoping to see a Lipizanner. Nope. Couldn't do it. But the Opera was certainly the most notable part of the stay. On to Budapest!

Hungary. It's full of Hungarians. Regrettably, I only got to stay there one night before heading on to what ended up being absolutely my favorite part of this adventure thus far (the part where I was not talking to myself all day), and it was definitely not enough. Especially given the less-than-favorable circumstances. The entire country got absolutely dumped on the day that I got there... we're talking like, two feet of the white stuff. I, being the intrepid explorer I am, nevertheless went out and tried to see some of the city via my usual method. But Budapest is one of those inconvenient cities that is not all located in the same ten feet of real estate. Like Rome, for example. And so seeing all the things you're supposed to in Budapest proved a lot harder than it would in other places.

I finally gave up after about two hours of trudging through the (unshoveled) snow, and went to partake in the part of Hungarian tourism that I was most looking forward to: the eating. The Hungarians have literally some of the best food on the planet, if you're forgive my superlative. It's just really good. And you have to remember that I'd been walking around in the snow, so I could have eaten a cardboard hamburger at that point, but instead I got to eat pork tenderloin with mustard sauce. Mmmm mmmm good.

There was another girl in the restaurant who kept regarding me curiously. As we were both single diners, of course. She came over and introduced herself as Sonja, and asked if she could sit with me. This all being in English, of course, since I haven't learned to speak Magyar yet. It's on my list. Right along with every other language that makes me look like an idiot. Currently Greek. Moving on.

Sonja and I finished our meals together, and then decided to go out for coffee. She's a German student working in the field of renewable energy, which is apparently a huge one in Germany. We talked for a long time about global politics and how hard it is to bake in a country that's not your own... basically everything. It was one of those nice random experiences that makes you remember that friends aren't built in to your life... in order to make any, you have to put yourself out there. It was also an awesome exercise in listening to the world through the point of view of a different culture. I like those exercises.

I headed to Beograd the next day, and then on to Tetovo, Macedonia to spend time with my cousins. This was easily my favorite part of the adventure, and I'll try to do it justice. Stay tuned!