A necessary stop on my trip to Vienna was the opera. I didn't make reservations, thinking I could just stop by the venue the day before and pick up some last-minute tickets. This was easier said than done.
We first went to the State Opera because I was told that it is the better venue, but it was sold out for the January 1 performance of Die Fledermaus, a traditional opera that is performed every New Year—at both venues. Apparently everyone recognizes the Staatsoper as the superior opera.
The next day we went to the Volksoper to try to reserve tickets. However, the box office had only been open for 3 hours that day (as it was New Year's Eve), and we missed it. The handsome gentleman in the lobby suggested coming tomorrow between 9am and noon for tickets—and good luck, he said, because he figured it would be hard to do at this late date.
I was nervous, especially when we opted to sleep straight through the box office hours after celebrating a Happy New Year the night before. I was nervous, but I was determined. You can't visit Vienna without seeing an opera, can you? My brother thought you could, but I doubted it.
I had heard about the super-cheap (1,50 euro) standing room tickets, so we hurried to the Volksoper around 4:30 that afternoon to score some for ourselves. The woman told us the box office won't open again until 5pm.
Perfect. Time to get something to eat. I fretted most of the time that the line would be too long and we would miss our chance. The boys reassured me. In retrospect, I think it was because they were hoping the line would be too long and we would miss our chance...
We were back just before 5:00. The line was not so long at all. We waited a few minutes—long enough to decide that standing for 3 hours wasn't our cup of tea, and we decided to try for the cheapest actual seats.
"Three hours!" my brother exclaimed, who until that point had been a pretty good sport about the whole opera thing.
It turned out that the cheapest actual seats were €6,00 if we wanted to sit apart, and €19,00 if we wanted to sit together. However, if we waited until 5:30pm to buy our tickets, we could get the student price—best available seats for €8,00! So that's what we did.
We ended up in seats that normally cost €50,00, sitting next to a well-dressed man who fell asleep before the opera even began.
And my brother? He managed to stay awake for the entire performance of Die Fledermaus.