Vienna has a ball season.  I don’t know if there is anywhere else in the world where that is true, but it’s true here.  From January to March, the Hofburg Palace, as well as other sites in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria, host balls — complete with live music, dinner and dancing.  The first weekend of February, Dan & I are going to one, hosted by the IAEA, at the Hofburg Palace.

Yep — I’m going to a ball at the palace.  Really.  I’d better get ready.

In my previous life as a ballroom dancer and instructor, I got to attend fancy events regularly (although not ever one at a palace) so I feel like I have some sense of how to prepare (and I don’t have to worry about the dancing . . . I hope) but I have a strong suspicion that this is really going to be on a whole different scale.

I need a dress.  (There’s an actual dress code, requiring a long dress, so there’s no getting around it.)  I’m not much of a shopper, but I don’t really mind having the assignment of going out to shop for a gown for the ball.  (It actually makes me giggle a little.)  I went out today, looking around, and although I didn’t find “the” dress, I did have a reasonable amount of success collecting data.  As I walked along some of Vienna’s best known shopping streets, peering in the windows, I was strongly reminded of a scene from (my most favorite tv show ever) Firefly, where one of the characters chooses, falls in loves with and purchases a gown for a ball, only to arrive and be chastised because her dress looks like she bought it in a store.  I can’t help but identify with that — I really have no idea how things are done here.  What do I know?  To me, it seems logical that one would go out, shop and purchase a dress.  But, maybe there’s some other secret way things are done, or maybe there are colors that you just don’t wear, or maybe I’ll be 4 years behind the fashion — who knows?  But, since I can’t possibly know, I’m also not going to care.  I’m just going to pick out something that is pretty, and something that seems relatively appropriate for a ball at a palace.

I just went back and read that last sentence again.  I can’t help but giggle.  This is going to be fantastic.