Day 4

I know that this is a recurring theme but this holiday is breaking me.

We had to set the alarm for 7 and after finishing last night at gone 1 again I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.

We had breakfast (finally found the tea) and then took the tube to the Spanish Riding School where we had booked an hour to watch the training.

It was very grand.

Just as the horses started to be ridden out the lady to my right got to her phone first and started taking pictures .

Turns out that was a competition worth losing as the steward went mental as it was supposedly obvious that you can’t take pictures  - yeah whatever.

So because of the lack of actual pictures, I will have to paint the scene with words.

Imagine if you will, half a dozen horses ranging from grey to white, being ridden by both men and women wearing brown tailcoats and a Napoleon hat.

Each one doing their own thing, going in their own directions under the beady eye of the instructor who would bark out the occasional instruction - my German is no longer any good but I imagine he was saying “left a bit” or “slow down you idiot” or words to that effect.

To the untrained eye (mine) it looked like 30 minutes of “milling around”.

After those 30 minutes, they left stage left and 6 more horses came in, and performed the same actions.

I’m not saying they weren’t any good, after all no one fell off or bumped into anyone, but it didn’t look very structured to me.

You needed Harry Redknapp barking at them to line up and do some sprints or something else a bit more horsey.

Once finished we piled out and it was pissing down so we decided to go to St Stephen’s Cathedral via some souvenir shops and a cafe, for cake.

My cake was nice but Joss thought hers a little dry.

The cathedral, as always, was very impressive.

We then trooped through the pouring rain to find bookshops for Hattie but alas no HP books published in Austria were to be found.

We actually ended up buying some umbrellas as the weather was just getting worse.

Joss had to do a pit stop at the hotel so I gave her what I thought would be a 15 head start as I went to buy some souvenirs.

As it turned out we arrived back almost at the same time as Joss walked whereas I took the tube.

We then went to lunch at a local Austrian bistro.

Joss had the pork schnitzel and I had beef and onions along with the obligatory beer.

We decided to have Kaiserschmarren for pudding which is basically caramelised, shredded pancake - it was delicious but really one between us would have been plenty so we ended up leaving more than we wanted.

After a quick lie down we got ready to go off to the Opera!!!!

We dolled ourselves up (Joss more successful than me I will admit) and set off on the tube.

The Vienna State Opera building was right opposite a tube station and as we had arrived early - we went for a crafty beer.

Then it was off to the Opera.

The setting, much like the horse arena this morning , was very impressive.

The Opera we were here to see was called Werther, which until I sat down, I had been pronouncing with a German inflection which meant I had missed that it was the same name as a Werthers’ Original sweet - which was apt because we are so old (even though it was the first Opera for both of us).

Just to fill you in on the story, Werther falls in love with Charlotte, but she is betrothed to Albert and so marries him and makes Werther go away until Christmas.

When he comes back Charlotte realises she loves him just as much but can’t be with him.

Werther understands this, and so decides to shoot himself.

Luckily, as the Opera was in French, I had this beauty to translate what was going on as it happened - game changer.

So, a couple of issues I had:

1 I didn’t realise that absolutely everything was sung, in a Vic Reeves pub style - there weren’t actual songs, just sung dialogue.

2 After Werther had shot himself, Charlotte found him half dead and admitted to him that she loved him. At this point he kissed her, then rolled on top of her before standing up and belting out a 2 minute cry for love, before he crashed to the floor and died. Where did he get the energy from????

Ok the acting was laughable but with the translator, I actually enjoyed it.

Once finished we set off to what we call our local bar and it was a different barmaid to yesterday.

Not as good as the other because every 2 mins she’d nip out for a fag seeming to forget that there were thirsty customers.

No tip for her…

And here we are back in the hotel - looking forward to a bit of a lie in although again it’s past 1am so will probably still be all over the place in the morning.