Travel Notes: Zurich, Wien, and the Opera
Author’s Note: This essay is really a combination of a few travel notes I took about a decade ago while traveling to Zurich and Vienna, specifically to go to the opera. There is only minor editing to create better transitions and to strikethrough a paragraph, otherwise these are original from post from my now deleted Facebook account.
Vienna greets you with a busy, hectic and by my own self established standards, a very crappy airport. In some ways it kind of reminded me of JFK Airport in New York, just with a bit of European style and on a much smaller scale. Driving through a ton of industrial sites on the way to the city was very reminiscent of going down the NJ Turnpike - the entire time I had flashbacks to my first day arriving to the United States and after passing immigration and custom, what seemed like an incredibly long drive through factories and oil refineries and silos. It was somewhat dissociative to me in the moment, but let’s not judge the book by it’s cover. After all, I now know that NJ truly is a Garden State.
If you shouldn't judge the book by the cover, I think there's something to be said that you could judge a city by it's airport. Vienna is busy, loud, and hectic. We came to Vienna from Zurich, where any and all customer service ranged somewhere between outstanding and excellent. In Vienna, on that first day, the customer service was subpar. It wasn't bad per se, but it felt that pretty much everyone was just doing just enough and the tourists be damned.
Also, I've been to a lot of airports over the years. Some are nice enough, where you can handle spending a couple of hours waiting for your flight. Some are truly shitholes where you can't wait to either get on the plane or get out and go on with your trip. To a large degree while quality of an airport is incredibly subjective, certain things are the same for all of us: we want it to be clean, comfortable, easy to navigate, etc.
Why do I bring it up? Because the first thing you see when you land somewhere is the airport. In Zurich, when you get off the plane, your expectations suddenly change. Yes, I've heard that it is one of the better airports in the world, yet I was still impressed. It is definitely the best airport I've been to so far and that set or rather reset my expectations as we walked outside and looked for the train to get to the city. The difference in how Zurich and Vienna airports greet you, is drastic.
The first thing I noticed in Vienna was the multitude of languages, which only reinforces the feel of a tourist city. I don't think I've heard as many languages at the same time anywhere else, save for NYC: German was still the most often heard but then there was every flavor of Slavic and Middle Eastern languages; French and Italian; English and many others that I couldn't easily recognize. Yet, not counting German, Russian was the one language that stood out, pretty much everywhere.
It was interesting to see how Vienna mashes together the architectural beauty and the tourist attractions and shopping. Actually, no, it wasn't interesting, it quickly got old. The way the architectural details were obscured by the billboards, the way everything had a huge neon sign somewhere, the enormous advertising boards covering the beauty of cathedrals and buildings... I can easily do without any of that though. In a way it was more of an American city, like New York, than an old European capital.
There's definitely a distinct character to the city but most of it is overshadowed but the droves of tourists. Potentially, this was the wrong time of the year to visit Vienna, as the city is in full Christmas mode and the Christmas markets were one very bright spot that I thoroughly enjoyed. These are everywhere and I could easily spend a couple of days just walking around them, checking out all of the arts and crafts and... food.
OMG!
The food across the half a dozen of market we visited was amazing.
From dozens of varieties of spiced wine to the plethora of handcrafted cheese to all of the meats (yum would be a serious understatement): I can easily see how I can spend a couple of days exploring and gaining 25 lbs with ease.
The Christmas markets seemed to be in a stark contrast to the rest of the city. Not just in terms of appearance but more importantly in terms of the atmosphere and how people acted. Outside of the weird but amazing hotel manager these were the only place where the service was pleasant and friendly. If I am to come back to Vienna, I definitely want to do it the same time of the year.
Deep down inside I'm a dirty punk. Well, okay, maybe not so deep inside. But, at the same time, thanks to my mother, I grew up with a deeply ingrained appreciation for the finer things too. One of these is my love for the opera. Yes, I may have no sense of rhythm and my ears are arguably as bad as anyone you'd ever meet but I always loved opera, even if I am not properly equipped to enjoy it in terms of basic physiology.
So a trip to Vienna Operahause was almost like going to Heaven. Yes, I know that the building is too new to have hosted Beethoven, Mozart, and the seemingly never-ending list of who is who of classical music. Yet, I couldn't help thinking and feeling like this was the place to visit, this was the holy grail if there was one in terms of history and relevance of opera.
From the outside, the building only increased my anticipation and raised my expectations. I impatiently waited for the time we would get dressed and go enjoy the performance.
Little did I know...
Once we got to the Operahause, disappointment became the operative word. Ushers were far and few in between, none of them were too enthused to help you. The crowd was loud and shockingly underdressed: I've seen people in t-shirts and too many of them really didn't behave the way you expect people going to see an Operahause performance. If not for the stark contrast to Zurich Opera, where most everyone was dressed up and entirely too proper, I would have thought that the American Puritanism has impacted me more than I thought.
Similar to the experience exploring the the city itself, there was multitude of languages, but Russian dominated everything except German. Too true to the stereotype, these Russians only spoiled the experience more for me. From the lady who obnoxiously cut in line at the bar during the intermission, to the group of younger women who left after the first act after loudly calling each other across the foyer, to the… you know, I'll just stop here with the Russians.
Until my significantly better half pointed out the immensely impressive staircase and the ceiling celebrating the composers, I was actually shocked at how plain and basic the building is inside. There's really not much to look at, especially when you are seated and waiting for the performance to start. I can honestly say that even with the grand staircase the interior was least favorite opera house I've visited.
The performance itself was pretty good, but it was seriously spoiled by the shifty guy sitting in front of me. I'm far from a person who can sit still. My son definitely takes up after me in this regard. But as much as I usually move and change positions, I was like a frozen statue compared to the guy in front me. At some point I counted, and he shifted 7 times in 30 seconds. Generally I may not have cared but he was a little taller and my eyes are not that good anymore, so every time I'll get comfortable and start enjoying the performance, he'd move, forcing me to move to avoid staring at the back of his head.
But then it's not the fault of the Operahause.
Was I disappointed? Yes. A bit. But I don't regret it either.
I mentioned earlier that before flying into Vienna we spent a few days in Zurich, where one experience that did truly impress me, was the Zurich Operahause. I didn't know much about it prior to our visit, and honestly didn't expect much, especially since we were to go to the historical and as I expected (wrongly so) magnificent Vienna Operahause the next night.
Zurich Operahause is in fairly small but very beautiful building. Both, externally and internally. Once you walked in, hopefully not caring too much for the entirely too modern doors, it was exactly what you expect from an opera venue. Gorgeous staircases, arches, beautiful seating area, with luscious red walls and chairs, and of course a myriad cherubs decorating the perimeter walls.
I quickly fell in love and then the performance itself made me feel even more so. Over the years I've seen a lot of interpretations of classical performances that were modernized. Some worked, some (looking at you NYCO and your version of Carmen) were horrendous. In that end, I prefer to experience the opera the way it was intended, in its original. Yet, the way the Cosi Fon Tutti was dropped into an extremely contemporary setting worked incredibly well. I do wish that my eyes and/or my glasses were better, as I couldn't read the prompter and missed out on a few things, but overall I immensely enjoyed the experience, both the surroundings and the performance.
When I wrote these notes over ten years ago, I’ve also mentioned that I have to say that I'm not sure that this particular interpretation could really be shown in the US. There was entirely too much nudity and innuendo but one choice that they made really and truly would not have worked here: in the last scene, the interpretation of Albanians included a number of white masks that resembled the Klan's white hoods just a little too much. I'm not criticizing the choice, it actually worked well but I'm sure that if someone did that at the Met, well you know.
Considering we have actual Nazis running the government right now?
Yeah.
I could neatly fit the rest of the notes into an essay but there were a couple of nuggets there that I wanted to save, if not for public consumption, then at least for myself. You could skip the rest, unless you are incredibly curious or love my writing so much.
Random Notes:
Zurich in a nutshell: Well organized, well run, seemingly inviting and yet... it seemed like a collection of different cities melted into one. There were times I felt it reminded me of Paris, St. Petersburg, Riga, etc... "Oh, THIS is Zurich."
I have never seen so many optical stores as I did in Zurich. Why on Earth is there an optical store practically on every block of the city??
There are more children in Zurich than probably any city I visited.
There's more smoking in Zurich than any other place I've visited.
Winning hotel lottery is getting the most eclectic hotel manager possible. When you see him, you think you walked into a Tarantino movie set. I can't do justice trying to describe him. I just can't. He spend more time with us than I'd ever expect anyone at a hotel to do, gave us a myriad of awesome recs and while I can't properly judge his German or Hebrew, his English sounded like you are talking to Christopher Waltz and his Russian was better than mine.
A totally drunk Polish guy speaking to his Ethiopian spouse in Swiss German turns to me and asks in English: "Are you Swiss?" When I responded that I'm from the United States, without saying that I am an American, he had to mention that he just came back from Miami and that "you are my best friend from Miami. Cheers!"