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Writer's pictureZanna White

A day in Vienna

15 January 1977 - Saturday

Vienna. We had breakfast brought to the room at 8:00. I then set out for the ticket office and, after about 30 minutes in line got two tickets to the open tonight (Die Valkyrie) for s100 apiece ($6.00). I then returned to the Hofburg and found Alice & Susanna trying to find where to buy tickets for the Boys Choir. We found out they can only be bought tomorrow morning. When we returned, we made arrangements to get a baby-sitter, for s35.- per hour.

I think the top picture is probably more what Dad was going for, but his annoyed look is delightful.

After a while, we set out for another walk. We got to St. Stephan’s Cathedral and saw the inside, took the elevator up to the big bell (in the North tower), and were uncomfortable in the wet snow which had been falling since early this morning. After that, we walked down Kännter Strasse.


One thing I forgot to mention: somewhere between the train and our arrival at the Pension. I lost my hat. This was the bon-voyage hat the English Department had given me last spring. It is probably in the back seat of the Chevrolet Bel Aire Taxi we came from the station in. Thus, we stopped in a hat shop (men’s stores don’t sell hats) and bought a similar cap (s185.-). In wet snow, some covering really helps.


Also, before we got to the Cathedral, we stopped at the Capri Travel agency and reserved couchettes on the overnight train from Vienna to Venice. This apparently means we’ve decided to head south.


Statue of Goethe near the Staatsoper.

When we got to the end of the mall after buying the hat, a car came by and splashed slush all over Alice’s coat, face, and hat. A little got on me and Susanna, including my new hat.


We found a restaurant[1] and got a fairly light meal. It was a Hungarian place, with Austrian and Hungarian food. It apparently is operated by the Hungarian government. We heard this from a young man whose father lives in Hungary and who had with him two little girls (2½ and 1) and who said he lived in a commune with a group called Children of God.


We joined a tour group to see the Staatsoper house. We got backstage and into various other places. The young woman giving the tour spoke first German and then English. The other English speakers seemed to have been Australians. (There are many of them traveling now; we saw two others on the train to Vienna.) And two of these on the tour showed up in this pension.


We had a very light supper at a coffee shop near the pension. The waiter wore a Tuxedo, though. The baby-sitter, whose name was Güsty (an approximate spelling) showed up at 5:30 or so. She seemed quite experienced, knew the pension well, and spoke pretty good English. We headed for the opera at about 5:35 or 5:40 and got to our seats just in time for the house lights to go down. Getting to our seats required a climb to the upper reaches of the opera house, but we could see quite well and could hear very well.


The performance of Die Valkyrie was long and unbroken by any really imaginative acting or staging. Most of the time the singers simply stood around and sang or waited for the other singer to finish. Even in the ride of the Valkyries the Valks walked on stage. The ring of fire around Brünnhilde at the end was staged by a gust of steam lit by a red light and then flickering lights in the background.


At the first intermission we adjourned to the refreshment room. I fought my way to the counter to get two glasses of white wine for 18 schillings each and the woman had to write 76 schillings so that I would come up with enough money. Alice cleared up the mystery when she tasted hers and realized we had champagne rather than wine. So we toasted the opera. I had a similar experience trying to buy (first, though, trying to get what I thought was a free program). I thought he said one schilling, so he haughtily kept his hand out and said, in English, “TWELVE schillings.” After all, one schilling is only about 6¢.


We walked home and paid our expensive babysitter 260 schillings nearly $15.

Our impressions of Vienna were tempered by the very poor weather. Vienna doesn’t get much snow, we heard, but what they got this time was a slushy mess. Fortunately, there was an improvement ahead.

[1] Mathias Keller.


 

15 January 2022 - Saturday


I was unexpectedly busy yesterday, so I'm running a little behind, but I definitely wanted to take some time with this entry. The one thing that I wanted to explore a little more in depth here is Dad's encounter with the young man and two children who were denizens of a Children of God commune.
"Children of God" sounded very familiar to me, and a quick search verified that this was the (loosely) Christian based cult that River and Joaquin Phoenix and their family belonged to in the 1970s. Children of God (CoG) had 10,000 active members in the 1970s, and had colonies (or communes. CoG called them colonies,) in more than 70 countries.

I spoke to Dad about this the other day and he remembers (though he didn't document it in the journals - he felt this was more for facts and not emotions) that the young man was somewhat aggressive with his pitch for the teachings of CoG. I'm pretty grateful that my folks didn't catch the CoG fever.

CoG which billed itself as a free-love ministry of Christ, is notoriously a sex cult with countless allegations of pedophilia and forced prostitution. By the mid-1970s, CoG leader David Berg had instituted a policy of "Flirty Fishing." He interpreted Matthew 4:19
And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
as "women should fish for men sexually and spread the word of God."

More than 220,000 men were "fished" between 1978 and 1988 when the practice was discontinued due to the spread of AIDS. 13,000 children, referred to by the cult as "Jesus Babies" were born out of these contacts as CoG did follow the more conservative view of birth control.

It fascinates me how the Journals allow an entry point into the history of the time. I hope you have enjoyed this too!
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