Viennese Ball

So on Saturday I said goodbye to Pavla and family and hopped on a train to head to the Ball in Vienna Austria. Basically since I was accepted to SAIS Bologna last year I have been hearing about how amazing this ball is, so I was excited to see if it would live up to all the hype and anticipation! It did.

At 6:00 pm on Saturday we had our first event of the evening, a reception with the Mayor of Vienna in the City Hall building. There we had wine and caught up with what each other had been doing over break so far. City Hall was a cool place to start the night.

City Hall

Reception with the Mayor

Outside the Palace

Hofburg Palace, location of our Ball

Red Carpet Entrance on the grand staircase of the Hofburg Palace

After our City Hall reception we had some time so we leisurally made our way over the the Hofburg palace for the main event. The opening ceremony began around 9:00 pm and did not disappoint. The Ball was put on by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), but they did recognize that SAIS students were also there during the welcoming comments.

Ceremonies begin with the Flag Presentation

Welcoming by the IAEA

New Attorney General Yukiya Amano walks by us to give some opening remarks and do the first dance with his wife (we joked that since he became Attorney General in December he probably had to spend just as much time learning to Waltz as to deal with Iran)

Some members from the IAEA singing, you have to be brave and good to do that at a Ball in Vienna in front of 4,000 people!

Korean percussion and ribbon group gives a performance



Video of the traditional debutantes dance (sorry my camera ran out of memory so I missed the end of the dance)

After all of the opening performances were over the bands struck up the music and mass dancing ensued. Several of us gave the main dance floor a try right away but we soon found it extremely overcrowded and moved on. The main room and dance floor seemed to alternate between different styles but there were many other smaller rooms that all played different styles of music including Scottish, Classical, Popular, and Latin music rooms. There were many more but I spent the majority of my night alternating between the Latin and main ballroom.

People dancing in the Main Ballroom

The Scottish Room, this was the Official SAIS room

Latin Room

At 11:30 there was a midnight show. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I was so busy dancing away the evening in the Latin room that I missed it. I heard it was good, but not a huge deal if you missed it. I stayed at the Ball till around 3:00 am when I finally called it a night and left, but there were still many more people left at the ball until 5:00 am when it is officially closed down (so the staff can clean up and start preparations for the next ball!).

Leaving the Ball at 3:00 am

In total it was really a once in a lifetime experience. The Hofburg Palace as a location was as cool as any of the dancing and shows in and of itself! This coupled with a very important international organizations, foreign diplomats (and of course future ones!), and all being in Vienna proved to make an amazing experience!

If you would like to see additional pictures from the Ball or my other travels over break check them out on my Facebook photo album.