Vacation - Day Two (Vienna)

Monday, August 7. (Happy Birthday, Michelle)

Well, one thing is clear. The average Viennese speaks German much better than I do. Also, they speak English about as well.

But there are exceptions. When trying to find our way last night to Theatre am Wien, I asked the proverbial man on the street. First, I asked if he spoke English. I did this because the German side of my brain was 'sehr mude (with an umlaut)'. He told me he did a little.

I asked him how to get to the theater. He said, looking down the street: 'duh, duh, duh und duh.' Wanting to make sure I understood correctly, I said: 'We go duh, duh, duh and then we go duh'? He said 'ja'.

We went duh, duh and duh, and then saw a couple who looked like they were going to the theater in front of us. Believe it or not, at the next corner they went duh, we followed and arrived right on time.

What did we see? Well, for one thing, not the Count of Luxemburg by Franz Lehar with Placido Domingo, which we had tickets for but instead decided to spend time at the zurich airport. This time, we saw the Giora Feidman trio (look him up), and it was a very enjoyable feel good evening.

Food yesterday? We are still playing it low key. Breakfast at the hotel (Edie and one other woman being the only unscarfed ones in the room, other than the wait staff). The Arab male hotel guests all dress like they are about to go off for their day jobs as auto mechanics, but many of there wives are dressed to the T's,in beautiful, all covering garb. There was one youngish woman (with auto mechanic and a young son), dressed in beautiful and varied shades of brown, with everything completely covered but her eyes. My instinct, when she was getting her food at the buffet, was to say: 'Haven't we met before? You look familiar.' But, I didn't want Edie to get jealous.

It was very cold yesterday;I doubt it got to 60, but they operate in centigrade here of course which, after years of traveling, I finally realized is simply not translatable into fahrenheit. (And, fahrenheit is, after all, a Germanic word, so why don't they use it?) I had a short sleeve shirt on while most people were dressed in leather jackets. Crazy American.

Middle eastern style lunch at the pleasant restaurant/cafe of the Leopold Museum, and supper at a Greek restaurant (clearly modeled after the Greek restaurants in Detroit's Greek Town), which was just a duh, duh, duh, duh way from the theater.

We went walking around the Ringstrasse, and spent most of the day at the Museum Quarter, at the Leopold and the MAMUK (the museum of modern art). Klimt, Schiele et al, some decent twentieth century art, and a lot of what I would call experimental art (photos or drawings of writhing naked people doing things that you would not want any of your relatives to do). There seems to be a raw (if that is the right word) current through Austrian erotic art. We recently saw the prize winning movie, The Pianist, and it was there too, written by Austrian nobel literature prize winner Elena (?) Jellinek. I didn't realize how closely it followed from the Secession artists of 100+ years ago; I think it was present in the Weimar republic too, so it must run through up time Germania somehow.

Any, das is genug for now. We will see what heute brings.