Once again I am distorting the timeline, and pretending it is Tuesday, October 23rd - time can be fluid, right?
I had a horrible night last night; no sleep at all until about 5:00 this morning and then just a couple of hours of restless tossing and turning. Around 7:30 I woke up, but with a miserable headache. The ship docked in Vienna about 9:00, but there was no way I was ready to go on an excursion without some recovery time. I had planned to go an included tour called Panoramic Vienna, but my friends and I had also made the conscious decision not to book any excursions tomorrow during the day (our second day in Vienna) so I knew that I would have the opportunity to see some of the city. So I just stayed in my cabin, sat out on the veranda for a while watching boats go by, caught up on some reading, and just generally relaxed.
By noon my headache was mostly gone. The three of us had lunch and then headed out to our optional excursion: Viennese Waltz & Mozart. This tour started with a trip to the extremely prestigious Elmayer Dance School. After getting off the bus, we walked by St. Stephen's Cathedral and I took a few pictures. For some reason I kind of forgot about taking pictures on this excursion (maybe lingering effects of the headache) but at least I have these!
The Elmayer Dance School was founded over 103 years ago, by an Austro-Hungarian Army officer named Willy Elmayer von Vestenbrugg. and is currently headed by his grandson, Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer. It is considered one of the most prominent dance schools in the world and its "Elmayer Kränzchen" hosts the record for largest ball opening in the world. I will talk about balls in a minute, but one thing we heard was that all military have to take dance classes and be proficient in dancing, and that Elmayer is where they have been doing that since its founding in 1897.
About the balls: there are literally hundreds of them every year, really part of the Viennese carnival season, starting on November 11th and peaking in January & February. Many of the balls are put on by professional guilds. There's the Opera ball, the Confectioners' ball, the Philharmonic ball, the Coffee-Makers ball, the Physicians' ball ... and so on and so on and so on. The most famous dance is, of course, the Viennese waltz. Our visit to Elmayer included an hour-long lesson in the waltz.
After Elmayer, we moved into horse-drawn carriages to travel a little way across the city to the are where Mozart spent his final years. We visited the apartment, which has little in the way of furniture (when he died his widow sold most of it to support herself and their children) but there were several exhibits of interest. It's really most like a small museum. And a gift shop of course!
Back on the ship we had dinner, and there was a lecture called "The Danube - A Cultural History" before music and dancing from the onboard musician.
Tomorrow is a second day in Vienna, so check out the next post!
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