Complaints About Vienna

I have several bones to pick with Vienna so I figured I would start this post off by listing them. So here they are:

Vienna you are too beautiful. Your citizens are too kind and welcoming. Your museums are too big. Your public transportation is too convenient. Your streets are too clean. Your food is too tasty. Seriously Vienna, stop showing off. That’s not how you make friends with other cities.

My bus pulled into Vienna a little before midnight and thanks to the easy to follow instructions I received from Emily I was able to quickly get from the bus station to the apartment via two subway lines. Emily let me in and gave me a quick tour of the place before heading off to bed. I then got settled in my room. My room. My very own space. It hadn’t been that long since I last stayed in a room by myself. I was the only person in my dorm room in Sarajevo, but it was a dorm room, so there was always the potential that someone else would be joining me. I hadn’t had a space that I knew was all my own since I left Sofia and not only did I have that now but the room was huge. Plenty of space to sprawl. So nice.

The next day I woke up and went out into the living room/dining room/kitchen where I met Zach who fixed up a nice little breakfast of an egg in a cup with some breads and cheeses and jams, along with some fresh squeezed orange juice. I immediately liked him.

Later that afternoon Roenis, Zach, and Zach’s boyfriend Corey invited me to go out for a run with them. It had been a while since I’d gone for a run and it was a beautiful day, so I agreed, figuring that depending how far we ran there was a good chance I would have to let them go on ahead and start walking. We left the apartment and began our run. At first I was doing good. Then after about three kilometers, right when I was starting to feel it, we ran up a really big hill. I was pretty dead by the time we got to the top, where we paused briefly to admire the wonderful view. We then started to run again. The route they usually take which puts their run at around seven kilometers was blocked off so we had to take a detour. I was running on fumes at this point. The detour added another kilometer or two to the run. At about seven kilometers I got my ninth or tenth wind and was able to ride that one the rest of the way back to the apartment and was even able to sprint for the last 200 meters or so. I was proud of myself for not embarrassing myself too much, but unsure if I would ever be able to walk again.

After arriving back I sat on the couch, unable to move, while Zach and Corey prepared spaghetti carbonara for dinner. After eating and drinking some wine, Roenis took off for a while and I tested out my questions for travelers on Zach and Corey. The conversation we had was terrific and left me feeling pleased with all of the questions that I had come up with. A little while later Roenis returned and the two of us headed out to his favorite bar which was an Irish pub fairly close to the apartment. When we arrived we ran into a few of his friends and sat with them for a while. While we were at the pub the television was displaying the Weiner Opernball (Vienna Opera Ball). The Opernball is a big society event that takes place the Thursday before Ash Wednesday every year in Vienna. From what I gathered it consists of dancing, opera, and hobnobbing among the elite of Austrian society. It was definitely a unique experience to watch on the television of a bar. Back in the states if you want to watch opera on the television at a bar you are going to have to find a very specific kind of bar. No random Irish pub is going to be showing that. Once Roenis’s friends took off I proceeded to ask my questions to him as I drank cider and he drank beer. He got really into the questions and we had to call it a night before we were able to get through them all.

The next day Zach took me into the center and took me around showing me all of the must see items in Vienna. I had found the architectural beauty pretty impressive in outer Vienna where I was staying but it paled in comparison to the architectural beauty that is Vienna’s center.

The tour concluded with us getting wiener schnitzel, which was delicious.

I was invited to a big party that evening with Zach and his fellow med student friends. Zach, Corey, Roenis, a friend of Roenis’s, and I all went over to the apartment of some of Zach’s friends where we did some pre-party drinking. Then we headed off to the club where the real party was. After a couple hours of dancing at the bar I came to the realization that there was a strong possibility that I was the second oldest person in the club. There was one guy who was definitely older than me and I’m not sure if he had actually been invited to the party or if he had snuck in off the street through some back door. After several hours of dancing and one more drink we finally left the club and headed back to the apartment.

The weather was beautiful the next day and Roenis, Zach, Corey, and I ate a delicious breakfast out in the garden with a similar spread to the breakfast from my first morning in town. They played some music and we sat out enjoying the sunshine while we ate. It was lovely.

That afternoon Roenis took me around the city and showed me the parts of town that aren’t covered in your normal guide to Vienna. I got to see some very cool things that I wouldn’t have seen without him taking me there. One such place being the economics university, which kept up the tradition of beautiful architecture in Vienna, but this time with a major modern slant.

I also got to hear a lot of cool personal stories that he had about the places we visited, having lived in Vienna his entire life. While we checked out the city I also finished asking him the list of questions and we added one more to the list.

That evening I went out to a nearby brewery/restaurant for a traditional Austrian dinner. One thing that I had promised myself I would do on this trip is to not only eat local dishes (an easy promise to keep), but to drink local drinks (a bit tougher when in a place where beer is a very big part of the culture). In my life I had tasted dozens if not hundreds of different beers, but I had never drank a full beer before. In Austria I knew that that would be coming to an end. Eating at a brewery I figured this was probably the time to do it, but I was still debating. I couldn’t decide whether to get a beer that night or get a wine and return for dinner again the next night and have my beer then. After being seated the waitress asked me if I would like anything to drink. I told her that I was still looking and that I would need another moment to decide. A minute later she set a beer down in front of me.

Apparently something was lost in translation. Well, that decided that. For dinner I ordered beef goulash with salted potatoes and a side of pickles.

After practically licking my plate clean I ordered a frankfurter with mustard and horseradish. After chocking down the last of my beer and finishing off the frankfurter I debated on dessert. I was definitely still hungry, but this was already the most expensive meal I had eaten in quite a while and I was trying to decide between my wallet and my stomach. Either way, one of them was going to be emptier than I would have preferred. I decided to leave it up to the waitress. I looked at my watch and gave her ten minutes. If she came by before that I would order some dessert. If it took her longer I would just ask for the check. My wallet won to the dismay of my taste buds and my stomach.

The next day Zach gave me his museum pass along with an old credit card to use as identification if they asked, and I headed into the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, which is a museum of art history. They did ask for ID when I entered and fortunately were satisfied with the credit card. After about two hours of going through the museum and really looking at everything I realized that if I didn’t pick up the pace I was going to end up missing the vast majority of this giant museum. I picked up the pace and started speedwalking through the museum, only stopping if something really caught my eye. Even at this pace after another hour and a half at the museum I still didn’t get to see every room.

After leaving the museum I went to the nearby Spar to pick up some groceries. I had done some research the night before because I had been told that the hours for supermarkets in Vienna can be a little frustrating. On weeknights they tend to close around eight, on Saturdays most close at six and on Sundays they are almost all closed, with this being one of the few exceptions. So, obviously the place was packed. I got the items that I needed to cook a tasty dinner for my hosts and returned to the apartment.

Once I arrived back I started to cook. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that there was a cat living in the apartment. I was pretty excited by that.

While I cooked the cat went crazy, first playing in the grocery bag and then trying to get up on the counter and get into the food and knock the knife on the floor. I don’t know if they have the phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’ in Austria, but it’s a phrase this cat might want to become familiar with. Dinner consisted of pasta with garlic, onion, turkey, bell peppers, and tomatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper, oregano and curry powder with mozzarella as a topper. It was accompanied by some cucumber, tomato and cabbage salad, and some garlic mozzarella bread. I also bought a bottle of rosé to make the meal complete. After dinner the apartment got one more occupant as a Swedish guy who we’ll call Roald who had lost his passport and was part of a student organization that Zach was also a part of showed up to stay with Zach until he got his passport situation figured out.

That night I woke up with a terrible Charlie horse and after rubbing it for a while I was finally able to fall back asleep, only to wake in the morning, barely able to walk. I hobbled down to the bathroom and took a bath. Normally one of my favorite leisure activities, this bath was less about relaxation and more about trying to put some life back into my leg so that I could actually walk around and hopefully go check out another museum. After my bath my leg was still in pretty bad condition but I was at least able to walk with only a slight limp. I then headed into the center of town and went to check out the Albertina museum with Zach’s other museum pass. While still quite large the Albertina was at least a manageable size and I was able to check out all of the paintings in the four hours that I spent there.

After returning to the apartment Zach and Corey, who are both actually Germans not Austrians, offered to make me a true German dinner. Of course anytime somebody offers to make me food I am going to take them up on it. Dinner consisted of bratwurst with potatoes and a sour cream and chive type sauce, broccoli, and mushrooms, along with a bottle of red wine. Such a delicious meal.

I said goodbye to Zach and Roald, as they were going to be gone before I got up in the morning and then I went to bed. The next morning I woke up and wrote a thank you letter to my gracious hosts. I then said goodbye to Corey who was heading out and he offered me free accommodation when I make it to Cologne, which is where he lives when he is not visiting Zach. I then went on a couple hour walk, returning to the top of the hill where we had gone running to take some pictures and picking up a quick lunch before returning to the apartment and saying goodbye to Roenis, leaving my note on the table and heading off to catch the bus to Bratislava.