I think each Saturday I shall play the Old Salt and regale you with a yarn from my past. I've always described myself as a collector of colorful characters and human oddities, but in truth I'm a magnet. These people have always been drawn to me, but perhaps mine is a simple case of like attracts like. Today, I want to tell you about something that happened during my first visit to Vienna in 1994. This will of course have something to do with copious amounts of wine, which should come as no surprise to you who are regular readers...
I'd wanted to go to Austria's capitol for about ten years when I finally achieved the ways and means to do so. I left on St. Patrick's Day and stayed for nearly a month. The only other foreign country I'd visited was England, and I spoke no German whatsoever, so I anticipated a culture shock; I didn't expect the familiarity I discovered instead.
My father's Austrian heritage had everything to do with that. There were so many things that reminded me of him and my grandparents, from the food I ate to the Austrian Gemütlicheit I encountered. The people were very familiar to me and the Viennese paradox of simultaneous affability and grumpiness was what I'd grown up with. Hell, it's one of my personality bumps as well.
On my second night in the city I found a restaurant in the Postgasse called Thomaskeller. Located underground in an old Benedictine wine cellar, the barrel-vaulted ceiling was hung with regional banners and there were long trestle tables and benches upon which were placed swatches of sheepskin for the comfort of your hinderparts. The walls were decorated with the heads of game, paintings of old Vienna, and torchlights. In one area near the door a young man sat playing music on a hammer dulcimer. All-in-all quite Austrian.I ordered my meal from a waitress who spoke as little English and I did German and I enjoyed a marvelous traditional meal. As I finished up my dessert the waitress came to me and asked if I'd like to join her, the owner of the restaurant, and the other employees at their table. Never one to turn down the hospitality of congenial people, I accepted her invitation with gratitude. Being alone in Vienna is fine in the day time, but at night it can be downright lonely.
We ended up spending the rest of the evening eating and drinking, laughing and talking. The more we drank, the less the language barrier mattered. It was a wonderful evening that didn't end until nearly dawn. Before I left, Evelyn (the waitress) asked if I'd be interested in going to a couple of Heurigen with her and her boyfriend, Gunther, on the following Saturday night. I explained that a friend of mine (Paul) was arriving in Vienna, and she told me he was invited too. No one had warned me about Viennese wine -- that one of their glasses is as powerful as about three of ours -- and I bowled back to my hotel singing and whistling, not knowing exactly where I was, but making my way through the streets as if I'd lived there my entire life.
The night we spent together at the Heuriger a few days later is one of my fondest memories. I felt reunited with my culture and I realized that I was raised in a very Austrian manner and that an opera soprano friend of mine in Denver, who'd studied voice in Vienna, was right when she once observed, "You're so Viennese. You're going to feel right at home."
I read a lot about Americans' problems with the Viennese's reserve and adherence to rules, but what they don't understand is that when the Viennese are at work they work, and when they are at play they play. And they play as hard as they work (so that's where I get that...). No American party animal can hold a candle to a Viennese on a night off! Unfortunately, Thomaskeller is no longer with us and I did not stay in contact with Evelyn and Gunther. I wish I'd gotten Sylvia's address as well.
Sylvia was a woman we all met at the Heuriger. She was about the age I am now and a lover of great literature and literary figures. She was a George Sand type herself, probably imagining herself to be a muse and patron to young geniuses. She spoke passable English and smoked a lot of cigarettes. It would be easy to imagine her at a cafe table with Picasso. It was Sylvia who taught me to mix my red wine with water so that I wouldn't wake up dead the next morning like I had after my night at the Thomaskeller. She was especially taken with Paul and they spent much of the evening discussing Goethe and Balzac.On another evening I was invited to a Heuriger with a small group of people, but that's for another Saturday.
