The West - Vienna
Trip Start
Apr 02, 2006
1
2
Trip End
Apr 21, 2006
Vienna,
Austria
Sunday, October 8, 2006
"You know I've always wondered what happened to him", I thought I as stared at a cardboard cutout of Mozart hawking his chocolates. "He was big in the 1700s, but then he did a Syd Barrett/J.D. Salinger and disappeared." Apparently, Mozart got burned out on music, took a couple hundred years off and then went into the chocolate business. And he seems to be doing quite well. Mozart chocolates are all over the place in Vienna, and they are quite good - a symphony of chocolate flavor.
As you can see, Mozart is big business in Vienna. Particularly in 2006, which is the 250th anniversary of his birth. Though his memory lives on in music and chocolate, there's not much tangible left from Mozart's time in Vienna. Only one apartment where he once lived still stands, though it looks nothing like an apartment; it has been turned into a small, but pricey, museum. The apartment is just down an alley from St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna's main church and the center of the city. The cathedral has an impressive tiled roof, with intricate designs. Unfortunately, one of the towers was being refurbished, so it had scaffolding around it, thus ruining any attempts at a nice photo. The scaffolding was wrapped by large banners with advertisement. You know things are going bad when even God is selling out for a few bucks.
I was in Vienna for a conference, along with several co-workers and my frequent travel sidekick Todd (also a former co-worker). A bunch of us went out for Viennese cutlets, better known by the German name: Wiener schnitzel.
"New Town" of Bratislava
Oliver, who grew up near Vienna, made the arrangements at the famous Figlmüller restaurant for "Wiener schnitzels as big as your head". They don't actually describe their schnitzel that way, but they certainly could. They are huge round cutlets that literally hung over the edge of the plate. And they were delicious. In fact, the food in general was excellent in Vienna, from schnitzel to bratwurst to German potato salad to frankfurters to good German beer to...scrambled eggs.Scrambled eggs? Yes, scrambled eggs. I don't particularly like scrambled eggs and very rarely eat them, but the morning after I arrived I realized that I had hardly eaten anything in over 24 hours and was starving. The hotel had a free breakfast buffet and desperately needing some protein I grabbed some eggs. They are by far the best scrambled eggs I've ever had. At first I assumed they only tasted so good because I was ravenously hungry. However, they were just as good the rest of the week. I don't know what they did to make them taste so good, but they were amazing - I ate more eggs in Vienna than I've had in years.
One day during the conference, I met Todd and another Boulder friend Bjorn to go out to lunch. The conference was on the east end of town and the recommended restaurants were downtown, to the west, easily accessible by the (of course) convenient subways. However, Bjorn suggested taking the train the other way, to the eastern end of the line and see what we find - maybe some out of the way, local, non-touristy little authentic Viennese restaurant.
A buffalo!
Sounded like a good plan. So off we went to the end of line to find...a Hooters. After the conference ended, Todd and I had an afternoon on our hands before Todd had to catch his flight home, so we decided to go visit the Schönbrunn Palace, the famous home of Hapsburgs, one of Europe's great dynasties. First though was lunch, along with a beer or two of course. I was surprised to find that the restaurant was serving "Schneider" beer - owned by some fairly distant relatives on my grandmother's side of the family. So, it was nice to help the old family business. Todd was particularly generous. But after 3 liters of beer (each beer glass was conveniently marked with a 0.5 liter line), he wasn't in great shape to tour the palace. So, we just wandered around the gardens for a while before he went to catch his flight.
I on the other hand, had a couple more days to spend in and around Vienna. One thing that I had forgotten is that Austria borders Eastern Europe and Vienna is only an hour from the former Iron Curtain. In fact, Vienna, like Berlin, was partitioned after World War II, and for a time there was the possibility of at least part of Austria becoming part of the communist bloc. So, I decided I need to take a side trip to eastern Europe for a visit. I hopped a train one evening to Bratislava, Slovakia. Normally, the train stations are near the center of the city and I figured that I could just get off the train and walk around the center of Bratislava for a bit. As it turns out, Bratislava's station is in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of town and after getting off the train I was in the middle of nowhere.
Bring out yer dead!
I checked my Lonely Planet guide book and it confirmed that the station is not walking distance from downtown (I really should read the guidebook before embarking on an adventure); it also mentioned that one could take Tram No. 1 to get to the city center. Sounded easy enough. Except that there was no indication anywhere of a Tram No. 1. Apparently, Bratislava has renumbered their tram lines since the guidebook was printed. Of course, the native language is Slovakian and relatively few people speak English. And I spoke zero Slovakian. But with a little investigation I figured out what tram to get on. Taking the tram also meant that I needed money and had to exchange my euros for Slovakian korunas (I had not planned to spend any cash in Slovakia). I had no idea what the exchange rate was, but I handed the teller a 10 euro note and got back a handful of bills and coins that added up to about 500 korunas. The tram ride cost 20 koruna - about 40 U.S. cents. So, now I had a bunch of extra korunas I was was going to have to try to spend. The tram took me to downtown Bratislava, which lies on the Danube River (fyi: the Danube is not at all blue - thanks for the misinformation Herr Strauss). On one side of the river is a classic old-style European downtown, with cobblestone streets, little alleys, church spires, all overlooked by a castle up on a cliff. A very nice little town. On the other side of the river is mile after mile of identical gloomy 10-story gray cement block apartment buildings, obviously built during the Soviet era.
Castle at Bratislava
Sometimes I wonder if communism would not have fallen if only they had built aesthetically pleasing buildings. Unfortunately, I arrived too late and the castle was closed. Reading my Lonely Planet, I discovered that the castle, in addition to having the usual castle things, also housed the Slovakian Hockey Hall of Fame, which would've been kind of cool to see. Hockey is actually very big in Slovakia and, like in Canada, is the national sport. When you put the hall of fame in an ancient castle, you know the sport is pretty important.After walking around a bit, I headed back to the train station to go back to Vienna. Of course, I had all my korunas to try to spend. After buying some postcards and trinkets, I still had 200 koruna left. At the train station, I decided to buy something to drink and a sandwich. The sandwich, was well, something one would stereotypically expect to get in a former communist country. In short, it was pretty awful. So, after a couple bites I tossed the sandwich in the trash and hopped on the train. I spent about three hours in Slovakia, thus carrying on a tradition I have of spending three hours or less in European countries that begin with the letter 'S': Switzerland, Sweden, and now Slovakia. I'm hoping to find a spare six hours sometime so I can visit Spain and Slovenia.
Back in Vienna the next day, I hopped off the subway at the wrong stop and promptly got lost. I was planning to go to the natural history and/or art museum, but after a long walk, I ended up at the entrance to the Belvedere, a former palace that's been turned into a modern art museum.
Mozart Chocolates
Tired of walking, I figured, "hey it's a museum, might as well have a visit." As I was about to go in, I encountered what must be the most enthusiastically unsuccessful restaurant owner I've ever met. Yelling in broken English with a Greek accent, the short olive-skinned owner caught my attention from across the street. He then ran over to me and said that I must come into his restaurant. "You buy Coca-Cola", he earnestly told me. It was about lunch time and I was hungry after the walk, so I thought that I might as well eat lunch before going into the museum. And this place was as good as anywhere. Plus, it felt good to give such a motivated entrepeneur some busines. I entered his establishment and he immediately served me a Coke. Then he promptly left and went back outside to chat with a friend and accost other tourists. I sat there drinking my Coke and waiting to get a menu. And waiting. And waiting. Other people were in the restaurant eating, so I knew they were serving food. I finished my diet Coke and waited some more. Finally, I decided that I really didn't want to spend my little remaining time in Vienna sitting in this guy's restaurant, as friendly as he was. So I left - or I tried to. As I mentioned, he was standing just outside the door. As I tried to exit, he grabbed me before I could get away. Did he shove a menu in my face and tell me to order some lunch? No. He dragged me next door to his souvenir shop. Which wasn't open at the moment. But he opened it for me and encouraged me to buy something.
Mozart Lived Here
Now, I really wasn't interested in souvenir shopping at the moment (I was of course, looking for some food). However, I didn't want to be rude. So I looked around and politely feigned interest in the kitsch. Finally, after an appropriately polite amount of time, I told him that I needed to leave. But I couldn't get away before he gave me a Mozart postcard and before he made me promise to return (a promise that I must admit I broke). So, I finally got away, walked down a couple blocks and got lunch. The poor guy, enthusiastic as he was, had not yet learned that if you want to make a sale, give the customer what he wants.Since I didn't get a chance to see the Schönbrunn Palace with Todd, I decided to head back the next morning. Fortunately, I went fairly early in the morning and missed the throngs of crowds that built shortly after I arrived. The palace is reminiscent of Versailles outside of Paris. In fact, I would suggest that you could take in just one or the other and not really miss anything. The Versailles palace is a bit larger and Versailles also has a larger gardens, but Schönbrunn's are also quite nice and I walked around them after the tour of the palace. One thing that Schönbrunn has, that Versailles does not, is a zoo ("tiergarten" = literally "animal garden" in German). Normally, I wouldn't waste time in a zoo, especially in such a cultural city as Vienna. However, the Vienna zoo is not just any zoo. It's the world's oldest zoo! And it's quite a nice zoo - it even has an impressive polar exhibit with polar bears and penguins.
Schneider Bier
But thing that really caught my attention was the exotic bison exhibit. Yes, a bison, American buffalo. Where, in Colorado, would I ever get a chance to see a buffalo? Well, other than twice during every University of Colorado home football game.My final night, I decided I had to end with Mozart - the composer, not the chocolateer. While I had listened to some Mozart on my MP3 player (hey it's the 21st century) as I strolled around the city or rode the subway, I decided to try the real thing. There are Mozart concerts virtually every night and in fact, there are folks peddling tickets to tourists on the streets all over town - it felt a bit like "Mozart in Vegas". I decided to try something a little less touristy and found a concert in the Votiv Church. This ended up costing me about $50, which seemed a bit much for a guy who has been dead for over 200 years, but what the heck. Plus it was the "Requiem", which ended up seeming appropriate. When the orchestra walked out, they were all wearing rather heavy coats, which seemed odd at first. This was April, so the weather was cool, but not terribly uncomfortable. But after the sun went down, the church seemed to immediately lose all its heat. So, while the music was great, it was a little hard to appreciate as I shivered in the church pew having only a lightweight jacket to protect me from the freezing cold. Someone should really write a piece of music about such as coldness of death.
Well, that was the end of the west. Now it was time to leave Europe, the occident, and head to the Orient...
