Living La Vie Boheme
I reached civilization (Sydney) at about 5 pm on Tuesday. I shared a flight with two girls from the tour: Sabine, a girl from Holland, and Tomb Raider (her real name is Iveta and she is from the Czech Republic but we called her Tomb Raider…not to her face…because everyday of the trip she wore a tube top, short shorts, and a pack around her waist that looked like it could hold guns instead of water bottles. Additionally, she was always climbing a rock or endangering her life to get a better picture or view. Several times she jumped over people so that she could get a better shot. Tomb Raider spoke English with that Eastern European toughness. She was fun though. Besides, I didn’t want to cross her–she had bigger muscles that I have). I knew that Sabine was going to have to rush out of the airport as soon as we arrived because she had bought tickets to see an opera at the Sydney Opera House. The show started at 7:30 so she grabbed her stuff off the luggage belt and ran to catch the train with me. I told her that I might see her because I was going to try to get rush tickets an hour before the show.
I got to my hostel a little later than I expected because I got off at the wrong train stop and I couldn’t get a good map of the Wooloomooloo precinct. I found it and ran to check in. I was all sweaty and didn’t bother to change (I know, ew). I was pretty sure that even if I got to the opera house on time I would not be allowed in because I was a) definitely not in dress code, b) I smelled and looked like I had been rolled down a red dirt hill and had landed in a foul-smelling, stagnant pond, or c) the show was sold out because, well, it is the Sydney Opera. Add all this on top of the fact that I had the incorrect time on my cell phone due to Daylight Savings and you have the perfect way to NOT get into the opera.
I ran up the many, many steps of the opera house, two at a time and made my way to the box office after bumping into several tuxedoed men and fancy ladies. I got to the window and saw the real time on the clock and it was 7:25. I had five minutes. The woman at the counter motioned for me to bypass the will-call ticket line and she asked if I wanted a student rush ticket. She must have guessed by my outfit that I wasn’t exactly looking for the champagne bar. She said, “I have an awesome ticket for you but I need your credit card RIGHT. NOW.” I whipped it out, she swiped it, and in the blink of an eye and the flash of an unseen $33 I had a ticket to see La Boheme.
I slithered past all the older, better dressed folk to find my seat, thinking that I would have to go way up into the nosebleed section, climb over several immobile elderly ladies, and then plop down next to a large man whose personage would extend over my arm rest. I gave the ticket to the usher to analyze and she said “oh, you’re just over there,” pointing somewhere in the middle of the floor section. Turns out, I had a seat eight rows from the stage, right in the center of the auditorium. As I sat down I felt as if I had cheated the system because a ticket to sit where I was must have cost over 200 dollars. Sabine paid $106 for hers and she was in the back row of the second level. I felt conscious of my stinky, hobo state as we applauded the conductor. I kept my elbows in and tried not to stir up too much air with my clapping.
The show was superb and the sets and singing and everything was really well done. Although the opera is a work of Puccini, they brought it into the modern age but still kept that timeless feel at the same time. I thought it quite humorous that I was watching an opera about grungy people who can’t pay their rent as I looked like I could have easily blended into the chorus of people in the background who were rumaging through trash and trying to warm themselves by garbage can fires. At the end of the show I found Sabine and told her the good news of how much I paid for my ticket and where I got to sit. She wanted to slap me.
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