Day 2, Vienna

Today was another beautiful day in Vienna. After our breakfast at the hotel, Gramma and I hopped on one of those city sightseeing buses--the kind Butch used to give live tours on in Philadelphia, although in this case his job has been made obsolete; each seat comes with headphones and multiple channels from which to choose the appropriate language of the voice speaking directly into your ear. Anyway, this seemed like a smart thing to do, just to get an overview of the city. Personally, I think I might be developing a general dislike of sightseeing buses. I can add that to my general dislike of guided tours. But I must say, I like the way Gramma takes it all in without paying the tiniest bit of attention to the tour guide (or the recorded voice, as the case may be). She's just off in her own world, letting her eyes wander in every direction, drinking it all in at her own pace.
The tour started and stopped at the opera house, so afterwards we went inside and joined the guided tour of the opera house. I found it interesting that only 30% of such a grand old-looking place is original. The rest had to be rebuilt between 1945 and 1955. The old and new are very distinct once you're inside, but from the outside, it really just looks like a majestic European opera house. One interesting thing we saw inside was a bust of Gustav Mahler, purported to be an original Rodin piece. But I know how folklore can nestle its way into tourguide texts, so who knows...
After all that looking, we headed back to the hotel. We met my hackbrett friend, Christoph, for dinner (that's European dinner, starts sometime after 8) at a restaurant nearby where we ate traditional Viennese cuisine and listened to gypsies play schmaltzy restaurant music on piano and violin. The violinist came over to our table and played "Blue Danube" for Gramma. That made her cry a little, so we tipped him with a few euro. Then Christoph struck up some conversation with him in German, and found out that he too plays the cimbalom. So suddenly I could see my world and Gramma's world sliding closer together, like tectonic plates or something. This handsome man in a suit and tie playing the most emotive classical hits on the violin and making the old ladies cry could potentially be found in some Hungarian gypsy band, going nuts on a cimbalom, just like my people do. You know, my people. Whatever that means. This violinist sat with us for a while and drew diagrams of dulcimers and compared tuning schemes with Christoph. I actually have amazing comprehension of the German language, as long as the conversation is about dulcimers. He clued us in on another nearby cafe where we'd be able to go hear a live cimbalom player, and that's where mine and Gramma's worlds really did collide. This guy was playing tunes from Tosca and the Merry Widow and so forth on the giant "whack-a-mole" (as Adam would call it) and Gramma thought it was so beautiful! The cimbalom is just a bigger, deeper cousin of my instrument--so it was very satisfying to see Gramma enjoying this music so much, coming from an instrument I care very much about!