A Countess in Vienna – Part Zwei (or How I Came Home From My Austrian Holiday With Mozart’s Balls)
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Mitzi Szereto in a rainy Vienna
Welcome to part 2 of Mitzi and Teddy‘s excellent holiday adventures in Vienna (we’re not worthy, we’re not worthy!).
After my near-death experience with the heat (described in my previous post), the gods took pity on me and decided to change the weather. It wasn’t nearly as hot. In fact, it was pissing down with rain, and a chill wind was kicking up to near hurricane proportions. So what better activity to partake of than to go sightseeing!
We’d hardly been out and about before some old fellow on the tram started to make a big fuss about my friend Sylvia‘s foot being in the aisle. I thought, oh great, here we go again – another local nutter. I seem to attract them whenever I travel. I mean, there was plenty of room for him to pass, so what was the problem? As I readied myself for a fight (perhaps I’ve lived in Blighty too long – “oi! you talking about me?”), I found out that the man had merely been scolding Sylvia for not wearing proper shoes for the inclement weather. She had on sandals. And, indeed, he would not be the only the colourful local we encountered that day.
Mitzi Szereto with Ted's Austrian relative Arnold Schwartzenbearer
From the sublime of my romantic encounter outside Shakespeare & Company Booksellers (where I’d given a reading the evening before) to the completely ridiculous… I got to meet the nastiest man in all of Vienna – and he’s got the perfect job for his sparkling personality and charm: he runs a souvenir shop for tourists. It’s under the Opera passage, just so you know. (He’s obviously not read the self-help career book What Color is Your Parachute.) Inspired by my Australian Austrian visit, I just had to score one of those t-shirts that say “No Kangaroos in Austria”. Also considering the fact that I was literally freezing to death in the wind and rain, I needed to add another layer of clothing – and I needed to do it quick before I ended up being a guest of the Austrian healthcare system.
Anyway, there I was perusing some t-shirts, which generally necessitates picking them up and seeing how they look and trying to figure out if they might be a good fit, when along came Mr. Personality, who appeared to be most unhappy that I’d disturbed his neatly folded treasures. I shudder to think what he’d have done had I requested to try something on. He began gesticulating with his index finger (I didn’t like the look of that finger one bit either) at some other t-shirts I had no interest in, grumbling something about their being the only ones that would fit me – when the one I held in my hands seemed promising.
The nasty souvenir shop man
To say the fellow was rude would be understating an understatement. I know customer service in Britain isn’t always top notch, but this character really took the biscuit! He won’t be inspiring me to write any erotic tales, that’s for damned sure. When my friend Sylvia pointed out to him that he was not a good salesman, he began to rant and rave that he didn’t need customers and would just close his shop (it had only gone lunchtime!). I bet retailers around the world would love to find out that they’ve been doing it wrong all these years. Don’t sell to customers, and close your shop six hours early – now that’s the key to wealth and success!
The tale of the t-shirt has a happy ending, however. As we re-emerged above ground, we came face to face with a little kiosk-type souvenir shop that sold t-shirts. Not only did they have the one I wanted – and in a perfect size and colour – but it was different from all the others I’d seen. We ducked into the tiny interior to get out of the storm, whereupon I sussed that the proprietor was someone I could actually do business with – it turned out he was Egyptian. I felt right at home and began haggling, knocking a euro off the price!
We’d made plans that evening to go to a chamber music concert at Mozart’s former digs and were supposed to nip back to the house to change and pick up Teddy. I’d promised him that he would go to the concert, and he was really looking forward to it too. But there was no time. Somewhere in between pigging out at Demel on cake (or rather I’d been pigging out) and enjoying a fancy coffee laced with Baileys and topped with whipped cream (Ted doesn’t even know about the Baileys – that’s his favourite drink!), and laughing hysterically at a table of American tourists, one of whom had a voice like a foghorn and another a posterior so wide her chair couldn’t contain it (no doubt from all that cake – when we’d left she was already well into her second piece!), the afternoon had vanished. We had little over an hour remaining before the concert. Even if we’d recruited Formula 1 race car driver Tiff Needell (whom I interviewed for Mitzi TV), it would’ve been impossible to make it home and back in time for the concert.
Mitzi Szereto playing air violin at Mozarthaus
Having spent the day being rained on, blown away, and chewed out by psychotic souvenir sellers, we finally relaxed in our chairs at Mozarthaus Sala Terrena (the oldest concert hall in Vienna where Wolfie lived and loved and worked in 1781). We were treated to an hour of Mozart, Bach, and Mendelssohn performed courtesy of The Mozart Ensemble. I should add that this traditional Viennese quartet had not one Austrian in sight. Okay, so at least the performers weren’t Australian, but come on – three Russians and a Japanese! But they were brilliant, and the love and enthusiasm they had for the music they were playing lit up their faces. Thank god something of culture remains in this world.
Maybe I should go back to Vienna and find my nice Jewish lad and live happily ever after and eat lots of cakes. Besides, Ted never did get a chance to see the pandas at Tiergarten Schönbrunn!
Oh well, if nothing else, at least I came home with Mozart’s balls…
