Dreaming of a White Christmas

Dreaming of a White Christmas - Day 4

December 05, 2023

If it's Monday this must be Vienna

Someone pinch me, I don’t believe I am in Austria, sitting on a river cruise floating past snow-covered countryside. Despite all the English language and dietary issues we have been experiencing on this supposedly bilingual cruise line, this is still a very special experience.

We cruised overnight, through many locks (I tended to wake when the sound of the ship changed and it was evident, we were entering a lock) so I spent frequent intervals throughout the night watching our porthole sink down to a great depth before the gates opened to let us continue our journey down river to Vienna.

The morning was a relaxing one watching the world go by. We again sat through a very long and detailed expose on Vienna and how best to spend the afternoon and evening there, all delivered in German. However, after Wallsy had put on his best grumpy face and visited the reception desk, we were taken to the day lounge, with the four other English-speakers on board and given a private briefing by Oliver the ‘excursion expert’ . We were grateful for this, as it provided us with important information such as where to find the underground, which ticket to buy, which stop to get off at to visit the largest Viennese Christmas market, and so on. I can’t believe we have to fight to get this information provided in a language we can understand.

After lunch and my capsicum-free ham and cheese toastie, we docked in Vienna and set off, following Oliver’s directions, to find the underground station on the U1 line where we wanted to travel to Karlsplatz and then walk through the old area of the city to the Rathaus building, the seat of local government in Vienna. We navigated both the underground and the sometimes-icy streets successfully and reached the market in good time.

We had a wonderful, if very cold, experience checking out all the stalls full of interesting decorations and unique and tempting foods on the Rathausplatz, before deciding we had had enough of the arctic temperatures and walked (quickly) back to the underground, and from there back to the ship. A hot shower was the order of the day after spending a few hours in the cold, and then dinner.

After dinner, Lyn, Wallsy and I were off again on an outing to a concert in the Kursalon, a Viennese music hall which hosts Strauss and Mozart concerts, and which apparently housed Strauss himself in the day. This was much more than the classical music concert I was expecting as it included opera singers and dancers, providing both impressive talent and levity to the experience. The concert master who was also the first violinist, almost danced as he played even though he was seated – his feet changing position continually – quite entertaining in itself. Having been forced to cloak our coats, we had to face the melee at the end to retrieve them before we ventured out into the cold in search of a taxi which would convey us back to our ship before it departed at 2330.

We walked across to the Intercontinental Hotel nearby, where the taxi driver who had delivered us, had said there would be plenty of taxis after the concert. There was not a taxi in sight however, so Wallsy asked the friendly doorman if he could call a taxi for us. This simply involved him standing in the hotel driveway waving his arms in the air every time a taxi came past (we could have done that!). After a few failed attempts, he eventually succeeded, and we were conveyed back to the ship in plenty of time for a nightcap in the lounge-bar as the ship powered up and lefts its berth.