When Jason read about this ‘Beer Park’ in Zalec, Slovenia, a little town in the middle of nowhere, we knew we had to make the pilgrimage. Traffic jams on the highway and torrential rains foiled our beer plans yesterday, but don’t you worry, we are persistent and tenacious people. We found the solution by pretending, for a couple of hours at least, that we were on a vacation, not on a ‘trip’. Breakfast beer for the win.

This was such a neat experience. You buy your little beer mug, walk to the fountains lined up in a wall and have at ‘er. There are 6 beers of which you are poured about 1/6 of a pint each. There are descriptions of each beer and a history of beer making in the region. Apparently hop picking is quite the event here. Believe me when I say, the wheels are turning about how we can make something like this happen back home. Hmmmm…

As much as we’d love to stay in Zalec, in fact in Slovenia in general, we have to hit the road. We have a show to catch! A four hour drive in the rain awaits us. Luckily, the traffic jams were few and we made it to Vienna easily. Navigating the busy streets of these old European cities is getting easier and easier – mostly. I was a little bit concerned when I did have to park on the sidewalk in front of our hotel. Dodging all the tourists carrying their umbrellas felt all kinds of wrong as I imagined them trying to figure out if they were on the road or if I was on the sidewalk.

Our room is worth mentioning – we have two reading windows, complete with reading lights, cushions and books. If reading isn’t our jam, you can play some LP’s on your very own record player. You best believe we blasted Queen’s greatest hits while getting ready for our spectacular evening out!

We are steps away from the Vienna Opera House where we have tickets to see Tannhauser. We got changed into our (packable, space-saving, multi-purpose) finest and walked on over. The Opera House is stunning. It is everything you imagine it to be. The people are a good mix of tourists like us, dressed in ‘regular’ clothes and then the serious opera goers, dressed to the nines in fancy jackets, beautiful gowns and tuxes. The room is ornate and detailed, without being ostentatious. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. Even standing room had bannisters you could lean on for some comfort.

Imagine our surprise when we discovered that this opera experience is going to be four hours long. LOL. My word, I hope we enjoy it. We were lucky for two reasons: we read up on what it was about just before arriving so we did have a gist of what was happening, and we had personal screens offering subtitles. That was a game changer, although, sometimes figuring out the flowery language in English was just as tricky as figuring out the German. We are so cultured.

In the end, it was an experience we will never forget. While we may not have appreciated the nuances of the production as much as some of the people around us, we did walk out of there enlightened and a little bit more knowledgeable about the world of art. I call that a very successful evening.

Today was certainly a day of contrasts – starting with breakfast beers and finishing with a fancy shmancy opera. Well, if I am to be completely honest, it actually ended with dinner at McDonald’s. What can we say, we like to keep it real.