Dancing the night away. Literally.

Well. Here I go. This is the story of the time I went to a ball. Spoiler alert: It was awesome.

As I mentioned in my last post, Vienna’s Ball Season lasts from Christmas to Ash Wednesday, and there are literally hundreds of balls that go on throughout the city (and really the whole country) during this time. The balls are sponsored by various groups, but they’re generally open to the public. As long as you can afford a ticket, you can go. Technically, I could go to the Opera Ball where all the celebrities go (this is the ball they show on TV and everyone analyzes the fashion and who is there with who, etc). However, in order to do that I would need 250 Euros just for a basic entry ticket. After doing some research, we learned that the ball put on by the Technisches Universität is the best for people our age to go to because it’s cheaper but still traditional. Once learning that this ball takes place in the Hofburg, I was sold.

A bunch of us ladies got together at my friend Tschuna’s apartment before the ball to cook dinner and get ready together. It was so fun seeing everyone get dolled up with fun hairdos and make up and of course floor-length ball gowns! The dress code for these balls is very strict. Our ticket specifically said floor-length gowns are required (that or traditional Austrian tracht—lederhosen and dirnls, which sadly I do not own). Many people had brought their old prom dresses with them from home, but I was lucky enough to find a relatively cheap gown at a little shop on one of the major shopping streets just a few weeks back. I don’t think I’ve worn such a fancy dress since I was on Homecoming court over 5 years ago, so it was really fun to have an excuse to get all dressed up again!

Since Tschuna’s apartment is only 1 stop on the U-Bahn away from the Hofburg, we decided to ride the underground in our fancy clothes rather than take a taxi. And if 15 Americans wearing gowns and tuxes riding the train in the middle of the night wasn’t already obnoxious enough, we made sure to take a million pictures during our less than 5 minute commute to the ball. 

John and his red-coated Princesses

Just hanging on the underground platform in formal wear.

What a good-looking bunch!

Now I already mentioned that this ball took place in the Hofburg Palace, but let me re-iterate for you what this means. Faithful readers of this blog will remember that I visited said palace a few months ago, and shared that this Baroque masterpiece was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and then the entire Austrian Empire for hundreds of years. It was inhabited by all the Habsburg greats, inclulding my favorite Empress Maria Theresa, and Austria’s not-so-favorite-but-still-awesome-because-there-are-great-movies-about-them-and-thus-good-for-tourism Franz Josef and Sissi. Needless to say, the Hofburg Palace isn’t like Yarmouth Castle where it’s a castle in name or but in reality super lame. The Hofburg is in name and practice a full-on palace. If the Habsburgs did one thing right (other than ruling Europe for centuries) it was build palaces. This place is stunning and the second you walk inside, you feel like you’ve been transported to another time and place. The chandeliers, high, ornate ceilings, marble statues and columns, and grand staircases actually made me feel like a princess. There was even a red carpet on the stairs. Not real life. Every time I entered a new room, my jaw dropped once again. I would keep thinking that things couldn’t get more beautiful, and then they did. This whole atmosphere was accentuated by all the beautiful women in stunningly gorgeous gowns and handsome men looking super dapper in their tuxedos. The whole place was the perfect picture of elegance—any description I give cannot do it justice. 

looking up the stairs from the entry way

ceiling of the mail dance hall

Of course. There would be a bust of FJ in the entrance hall

There were gorgeous flower displays everywhere,
and at the end of the night everyone who was
still there took home flowers!

At the opening of any ball is the “presentation of the debutants.” While I don’t know who these debutants are, or why the Technical University’s ball has debutants at all, this was a kind of cool ceremony, where all the ladies in white dresses, accompanied by men in white tie, did a series of beautiful dances in the main dance hall. It was really difficult to see what was going on at this point in the evening, because everyone was crowded around the room, and we got there a little too late to get a good spot, unfortunately. You can’t see the dancing in the video below, but you can hear some Beethoven and get a nice view of the room we were in! This was the main ball room, where a small orchestra played very traditional music, switching off with a band playing Big Band music! 

You can kind of see the line of white dresses in the
middle of the room, but mostly you can see the
ceiling and chandeliers and general grandeur!

 Once the official Balleröffnung was finished, everyone else was allowed to start dancing! Now even though this ball was sponsored by the Technical University and as Mama Yads wittily pointed out, it sounded like we might be dancing alongside the cast of the Big Bang Theory, the actual clientele of the ball ranged from students our age or younger to middle-aged couples to absolutely adorable old folk! In fact, when I saw some quite “time-worn” people still dancing at 4 AM I was super impressed. Here’s hoping I’m that with it when I’m in my 70s!

Look how elegant everyone looks!

Let me attempt to describe to you the lay of the land: There was of course the main ball room, where the music switched between waltz, tango, polka, and other more traditional ballroom dances (aka the dreaded styles in So You Think You Can Dance). Around this room were tables that various people had reserved. Luckily the Fulbright Committee had reserved a few tables so we had a home-base for the evening. As we wandered throughout various halls (each more beautiful than the last), we continued to stumble upon other rooms with different kinds of music. There was a Jazz Piano Bar that was quite small and pretty chill, a Salsa/Latin Room that had about 8 disco balls hanging from the ceiling (it was in this room that we almost forgot we were in a Viennese palace), a Swing Room (one of my favorites of course), and the “Wienerwaldsaal” with traditional Austrian Folk dancing (another favorite)! We had a blast switching back and forth between the various rooms, sampling every kind of dancing the place had to offer. Throughout the course of the evening we waltzed, tangoed, polkaed, folk danced, freestyled, swang (swung? swinged?), and even did the Macarena! Although I didn’t know how to do most of these dances before the ball, some of the people in our group had taken some basic lessons, and we all kind of figured it out as we went along! There was a lot of observing what others were doing and attempting to mimic it. Shockingly, the results were not as awful as they could have been! I was actually quite impressed with our collective ability to pick up on dances and not look like total idiots! In fact, I would say the Americans really rocked the folk-dancing room. We owned those polkas.

the floor in the folk room--so beautiful!

Piano Bar at the end of this room

Swing Room (at the end of the night--only the strong survive)

Folk Band packing up at the end of the night

The front of the Main Hall

Throughout the night were various “special events.” At midnight there was a Quadrille, where everyone gathers in the main hall for a joint folk dance where basically no one knows what’s going on but everyone just runs into each other and tries to follow the person next to them usually failing and then at the end there’s this huge procession around the room kind of like the tunnel at the end of a soccer game. But you kind of gallop through it with your partner and then you get to the end you join the tunnel, so it keeps cycling around the room. It was AWESOME. Then right after, the orchestra played The Blue Danube Waltz by Strauss, Vienna’s favorite piece of music. The fact that I was waltzing, to “An der schönen blauen Donau,” at midnight, IN VIENNA (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) was literally too much to handle. At one point in the night my friend Kate actually pinched me and said “this is real.” We all kept reminding each other of that all night long. 

The video below shows some of the waltzing (but the people who are actually good at it). I wish I had taken more video of the dancing because it was so beautiful, but this will have to do for now!

We were all having so much fun that we didn’t even notice the hours flying by, and all of a sudden it was 4 AM and we were in the Swing Room rocking it to Johnny B Goode, with a very sparse crowd around us. That band took a break, and our feet were suddenly dying, so we decided to sit on the stairs in the Main Hall and watch the fancy dancing for a while. I am so jealous of how good some of these people are at dancing! I asked this Austrian guy I was talking to about when and how they learn to dance, and he said it’s something they learn when they’re younger—each school has a ball every year, so they learn to dance before the ball. They learn basics when they’re young and then get better and more complicated as they get older. I SO wish I had learned this kind of dancing and that this kind of dancing actually happened in America! Watching these Austrian couples spin circles around the rest of us on the dance floor was actually awe-inspiring. They looked so perfect and graceful! Even though I got the steps down for the waltz, I did not feel like I looked like I was just flying across the floor in one smooth motion like the others did. In fact, I felt the very opposite of graceful. However, I’m pretty sure these Viennese would be horrible at any and all of the classic Shiri Yadlin dance movies, so I guess we each have our own special talents. Anyway, 4:30 rolled around and the Big Band played their last song, then 4:50 came and the last Waltz was played, and before we knew it we were getting our coats and heading back out into the fresh Vienna morning!

And we closed the ball. Winning.

I love these girls!

We caught the U-Bahn just as it was starting to run again, and then I had to head straight back to Purkersdorf one one of the first trains out of the city, and ended up getting home right around the time I usually wake up for school. I brushed my teeth, changed my clothes, attempted to control my very out of control hair, and went to school; fueled by a huge cup of coffee and lingering adrenaline from the most awesome night ever. Luckily, I only had to teach two classes Friday morning, but unluckily the first one involved a discussion on child labor and trafficking on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast. And the teacher went over homework for the first 20 minutes leaving me to just sit and wait in the front of the classroom, and it was of course during those 20 minutes that a huge tidal wave of tiredness came and slapped me in the face, so I was literally hitting myself to make sure I didn't fall asleep in the front of the classroom. My second class of the day was 3A who alway have an insane amount of energy so they kept me going with weird questions about fast food in California and I successfully made it through my teaching, despite the fact that I had been basically non-stop dancing for the previous 9 hours.

All in all, this was absolutely a night to remember. The experience was worth every single penny, blister, sore muscle, and logistical hassle. If you are in Vienna during this time of year and don’t go to a ball, you are making a huge mistake. I am beyond thrilled that I made the decision to go, and am simply delighted that I could one and for all confirm the fact that I was, in fact, meant to be a princess.