Dancing in Vienna

 We’re going to the ballet! “So what?” you ask. “You go to the ballet all the time.” Here’s so what—this time we’re going to the ballet in Vienna, Austria. A few hours ago I purchased tickets to the Vienna State Ballet for Michael and me on October 27. I am over the moon.

 I haven’t mentioned the trip to Vienna since last October, when we booked it, but now it’s less than six months away and it is becoming more real than fantasy. The trip is one of many offered by The Good Life Abroad (TGLA). They provide comfortable apartments in European cities to cohorts of participants for one month stays. Each city has a coordinator who arranges a few activities each week, but people are mostly on their own.

 The reason for this astonishing trip is our upcoming 50^th wedding anniversary. We toyed with many ideas about how to celebrate. Some of them included our kids and grandkids—reunion at a resort, cruise, destination vacation—but we ultimately decided that what we truly wanted was a world class experience for ourselves. Sorry kids!

 We wanted to go to Prague—a beautiful city with an acclaimed ballet. (Our celebration had to be ballet-centric because that’s who we are.) Even though it was a whole year away, we discovered that October 2026 had already sold out. Suddenly it felt imperative to book our trip without delay. Vienna was our second choice, and we jumped on it immediately. Michael and I grinned at each other as I clicked to confirm. And yes—we still have side trips to ballet hotspots Prague and Stuttgart firmly in our sights.

 We couldn’t actually buy tickets at any of these venues at the time, though. None of them would release their fall offerings until spring. Research had told me that tickets sold out early and I had no idea how one bought a ticket to a performance on another continent in another language and another currency anyway. I’ve been stay-up-at-night worried about the ballet tickets since last October.

 I did alleviate a little anxiety by putting Copilot to work monitoring the season announcements for all three companies. Last week, it alerted me that Vienna would open fall ticket sales today. How, I asked, do I buy these tickets? It told me I could buy tickets online if I opened an account on the Vienna State Opera website. Oh, and here’s a tip: select English language and the whole process translates automatically.

 The whole process turned out to be so easy that I’m embarrassed by my months of fretting. Chalk one up for modern technology. Prague and Stuttgart still haven’t announced their fall performances, so we got our Vienna tickets for a weeknight to keep weekends open. We hope to see dancers in the other cities, too. Copilot is monitoring announcements for me.

 There’s more to our trip than ballet, of course. Vienna is so rich in history, architecture, music, and literature that I think we’ll risk exhaustion if we aren’t careful with our time. And TGLA provides enrichment through their city coordinator program.

 Every Tuesday, there will be a group lunch. Believe it or not, we’ve been promised schnitzel in a Michelin-starred restaurant! Every Wednesday, there will be a group excursion. Every Thursday, there will be a group happy hour. All of these events are included in our trip fees. We can skip things, of course, but it’s hard to imagine why we would want to.

 The rest of the time, we fend for ourselves and, I’ll admit, this is a little bit daunting. I’ve been playing around on Duolingo, but I definitely don’t speak German. This worries me, although our German friend Bruno tells us that English is widely spoken in Europe—it’s a school requirement from a young age—so we probably won’t starve or get too lost. I hope.

 Planning this trip reminds me how rarely we let our imaginations go wild. And how much joy there is in it. What is your dream destination? Who would you go with? How long would you stay? Remember, it’s a dream, so no limits!!

Ciao