The Third Man & Volksoper

So, a friend told me about some movie that I had never heard of that was filmed in 1948 here in Vienna called The Third Man, or Der Dritte Mann in German.  

When I left my hotel that morning for the day, I happened to find this cap.

This is from an iconic scene from the movie.  My friend had asked me to go and recreate this scene...the plan was to do it tomorrow.  Just check out tomorrow...

I became curious about the movie and upon doing some research, I found that there is a Third Man Museum which is considered to be the largest museum on a single subject.  Unfortunately, when I arrived there, I found that it is only open for 4 hours on Saturdays.  Oh well. 

Since the museum was closed, I decided to head back into town.  This is the nachtmarkt (night market) that I passed by which doesn't look like much during the day.

More Third Man stuff.   Some kind of a tour.  Not sure.

I wandered around the Ringstrasse to some of the Christmas markets.

A bear reading a Christmas story to other forest animals. Ooookay.

The town hall.

There is an historic movie theater called The Burg Kino, which is 102 years old.  It still shows The Third Man a few times a week.  Just my luck, it was showing this afternoon.  I had to see what this post- WWII movie was all about.  After all, it won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949.

The Vienna State Opera  I was going to see The Nutcracker here, but it was sold out.
That night, I had tickets for another show, this time at the Volksoper (People's Opera) which was built in 1897.  Here, they put on plays, operas, operettas, ballets and children's shows.   Tonight was going to be a Christmas show with a mix of classical music, opera, children's choir and ballet.

The entrance to the Volksoper..can you guess which play they put on here?

Selfie of me in my box seat waiting for the show to begin.  Ok...I looked everywhere where it might say that photography or video isn't allowed, but I didn't find it anywhere.  Immediately after the show, a recording over the loud speakers played.  The cast and crew started laughing...I realized it was the recording that was supposed to play before the show welcoming people and telling them that photography and video recordings are prohibited.  oops.

The orchestra warming up.

A duet

 The children's choir

A bit of ballet

Felice Navidad

My interesting gulash dinner that night.