The Spirit of Christmas

The Christmas Markets opened on Saturday, which means Vienna is officially celebrating the birth of Christ.  I tried to go walk around on Saturday evening before I went to a Bruckner concert at the Musikverein, but I couldn't really do much walking because it was so packed full of people.  Vienna pulls out all the stops for Christmas, and this place was nuts.  There are tons of wooden stands lining the paths in front of the Rathaus.  They are each full of various Christmas magic.  Some have baked magic, others have ornament magic, and the most popular ones have mugs of alcoholic magic.  The trees are also draped in all sorts of light displays.  The best one has blue icicles that lights shoot down, so the tree looks like icicles are dripping off of it.  My favorite display was the two young girls who climbed on top of the roof of a stand and started screaming political protests through a megaphone.  A policeman pushed me out of the way as he ran to stop the very non-threatening but admittedly noisy protesters, but it took them a while to tame those girls.  Two officers climbed up the other side of the roof, and they were dragging the girls away but they kept escaping and running to the edge of the roof.  It was hilarious and probably the first action those officers had ever seen in Vienna.  It was the most passionate and disruptive thing I've seen thus far in the city, and it was just two girls yelling on a roof.  Don't worry Mom and Dad.  Both Christmas and Vienna are safe now that those two troublemakers have been hauled away.  I wanted to start yelling with them but only because I miss yelling in the streets.  People don't do that here.  I'm sure those girls just wanted to help spread the Christmas love.