VIENNA AFTER 10 P.M.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3378, 13 June 1927, Page 8

VIENNA AFTER 10 P.M.

In Vienna the opera and the play begin so early that when they are over you come out not yawning for bedtime, but with the refreshing feeling that the night is young. - To begin with, at this hour, round about ten o’clock, you have not dined. The theatre was full of the sandwiches and almond cakes and drinks that here go hand in hand with music and drama, and you need feel no embarrassment in parading the foyer with a sausage in one hand and a slab of ham in the other.

So you are not really hungry, only, as I suggested, ready for dinner, or nacht mahl (night meal), as it is more appropriately called. You have probably ordered your table at Schoner’s, in the “Street of Seven Stars,” or the Riedhof. These are old-fashioned restaurants, renowned for their cooking and clientele of celebrities.

_ In summer j r ou sit in an old courtyard, open to the sky, with lights, among the small green trees. In winter the indoor rooms are welcoming, with their simple wooden furniture in the old Austrian “bier halle” style. Every one you know, or know about, seems to be there. At the next table a worldfamous librettist beams through, his monocle at a lovely sylph who has j\jst flown over from Paris to discuss her lines in some ncov production. Beyond them Count X is entertaining his charming friend form the ballet. There, morose and alone sits the Baron von Q —, who, they say, has shot' so many lions in Africa, bulls in Spain, and armadilloes in’ Peru. Whom can he he waiting for? Or is there really no rendezvous ?

Having eaten, we consider how to amuse ourselves. In carnival time the cafes, such as the Sacher, opposite the opera, are open most of the night, and as we go along their nights and music beckon us in every street. Down in the more remote side of the town is the Prater, a huge park where a fair runs all the year round, a. mixture of the best of Wembley and Montmartre. If you are energetic about scenic railways' or an enthusiastic shier of coconuts and rider of intensive merry-go-rounds, you can join Tom, Dick, and Harry in seeing life there with both pleasure and profit. Or if you have confidence in the shape of your ankles you might dance in the Kur Salon in the Start Park. There they have no overhead lighting but, borrowing a hint from Nice, an illuminated floor.

Meanwhile, less adventurous, we decide on a cabaret—the Moulin Bouge, the Chapeau Rouge, Holle, or the Chez Leopold and Wiesenthal. They are all more or less the same. You will hear the same jokes and see the same women wherever you go. When all this internationalism has made you homesick let us hurry to dance at. the Bristol, where the band is good and you will hear little but English and American and can forgeu for a while that you are not in London.

It is possible that- you may run right into those dreadful,, So-and So’s whom you have dodged soSieatly during the last month, or that you are cornered by that tiresomely liverish colonel who is on his way home from India. In that case we go on to a bar—to the Pavilion, which has a cabaret as well, or the Carlton bar in the Astoria Hotel. Here is a more cosmopolitan crowd. An Italian, a few Russians, handsome officers from Budapest, South Americans dancing the tango beautifully, Germans, large and newly rich, making a mock of the Charleston. On and on till you are tired. If, as I hope, it is that sort of sentimental tiredness that comes after dancing all night, this is the moment to go and hear the Hungarian gipsies play. Quick! The Renaissance Bar. The room is dim with the- smoke of many cigarettes. The little rose-colored lamp on our table is shaded so discreetly that it seems we are the only people in the world; we and the waiter who brings us salted almonds and sweet Tokay. In a further corner the gipsies are playing ; wild folk-tunes that break from savage slow despair into a hurrying sort of ecstasy, and always with an odd syncopation at the end of a- phrase. There are many Hungarians there, and from time to time one will leap up and call for a song that he loves, and every one joins in and sings. The Primas, the first fiddler, comes to our table and plays what you whistle for him. A dark, handsome type, with fierce eyes and slender hands.

It is morning and the place is shutting up. Let us jump into a car and rush right out of town. In less than twenty minutes' we are on the top of the Coblenz Hill, and can see Vienna far below. There is the sun coming up over the fiat plains, where the Danube winds towards Hungary. And so, we decide sleepily, to bed.