This Isn't Like Any Yoga I've Ever Seen...

I have blogged it before, and it's true, I love free things. Especially when it comes to sniffing out free cultural or fitness activities, I have my nose to ground and I am usually really good at finding good deals. However, I am beginning to rethink this openness considering that my lack of German means I may not always know exactly what I am signing up for.

Let me start from the beginning. Today was perfect. I started at the Naschmarket (Ken's suggestion!) It's a huge outdoor market and the salesmen are so eager to grab your business from the identical stalls, all women receive an ego boost alongside their produce. I was plied with free samples and arrived home a happy woman, peppers and a mango in tow. Next was an afternoon spent laying out soaking up the sun. Perfect.

I thought the only way my day could get any better would be to partake in this free yoga class I had read about on the Virtual Vienna website. I knew it would be in German, but I know my poses fairly well, so I didn't think that would be too much of a problem (after all, those are in sanksrit! No problem at all....) I did think it was a little weird that the class was scheduled for three hours, but whatever, that's just more value for the money I'm not paying!

Imagine my surprise when in place of mats on the yoga studio floor, I entered a room spread with pillows in a circle and approximately thirty earnest, middle aged Austrians sitting crosslegged around a bouquet of roses and burning incense. All I could think was these instruments were sure to obstruct our downward facing dogs.

Marcus, the apparent master of ceremonies, an overweight, fiftyish man with a mustache that perfectly matched his eyebrows, opened the "yoga" with an animated interview, televised by an Austrian TV company. The television crew, clad in leather pants and slicked back hair panned our mild-looking crowd in between bits of Marcus gesturing loudly and extolling (I'm pretty sure) on how great this yoga session was going to be.

So I'm pretty open minded and optimistic, and I am sure, certain really, that the poses are just around the corner. Except, oh wait, we have to do an ice breaker. Bad sign. I gathered that when a giant bouncy ball was tossed to you, you were supposed to catch it, say your name, and I guessed say something about yoga. I waited until the very end, then turned on a smile, and said, "Hey everyone! I don't speak German! I am from the United States!" I don't know why I suddenly became a valley girl. A man started translating for me, and asked why I was there and why I loved yoga, "Well," I said, "I thought I was here for actual yoga poses. I am a bit confused. But I really like yoga because of the positive energy it creates, and I am so glad to share that with all of you!" Even when it's not my language, my desire to fit in, caused me to make an appeal to these aging Austrian hippies.

I was still optimistic we would be doing some yoga, but things were not looking good. Marcus was talking on and on, I caught the phrase, "stress chemical, cortisol" and I am pretty sure I heard the phrase "sex party" at which point I started to get really nervous. But looking around me, I just didn't think it could possibly get that weird, these were fairly bland looking, nice middleaged people, right? So finally the "yoga" begins, we're all handed hand held massage pieces with animal faces and instructed to rub the backs of our neighbors. I am thinking "Be openminded. This is a cultural experience. You are learning." My translator has eerily arrived at my side, volunteering to be my partner. I am like, "You speak English, right? When do we do yoga?" He's like "Oh, that was last session. But this is yoga too!"

I bolted. (I wonder if the television crew caught that on camera?) I am just too midwestern and not relaxed enough for this type of yoga. I don't know what happened next in the class, but I definitely jogged out of the room, waving good bye and giggling like a fourth grader. In fact, I was laughing so hard, I fell off my bicycle on the way home. Bad karma, anyone?