The Vienna Opera House

Steffi (from Graz) came to visit me in Vienna this weekend. I had put in some extra hours at work last week and was planning on leaving an hour early on Friday to meet up with her. Well.....as it usually happens, at about 4:02 on Friday afternoon I received a number of assignments that needed to be completed asap. I would complain about this except that I love my job too much to care. So, I called Steffi and told her I'd be late and she was fine with that so I met her a little after 5:00.


We went to my apartment, I changed out of my "professional attire" and we headed to the Opera House to buy tickets. That's right, the same Opera House with bees on the roof. Oh and remember when it rained every day for weeks and weeks? Well, quite recently it decided to stop raining and start being ridiculously, unbearably, disgustingly, wretchedly hot hot hot.



We're talking, like, 100+ degrees Fahrenheit and so, so humid. Yes, as a matter of fact I am from Oklahoma and no, this should not phase me. The reason it phases me, however, is because I forget that I'm no longer living in the Alps, where humidity doesn't exist and where 82 degrees is as hot as it gets. (This is also known as perfection. But I won't get even get into that.)

The heat factor is important to this story because air conditioning does not exist in Austria...or most of Europe, for that matter, and during the opera (which was 3 euro each for the Standing Room Only balcony ticket), I looked down after about, oh, 2 minutes of Madame Butterfly and realized that the sweat was just rolling off of me....and through my shirt.


So, moral of the story: It was hot. The Opera House was beautiful. We lasted about 20 minutes and then I realized, "Oh. I don't actually like operas and I might have a heat stroke and I only paid 3 euro for this ticket so let's just go to McDonald's instead and get a milkshake."  So that's what we did. Great Friday night. Really. It was.