After a (much too) looong stay at home, since April, we were traveling again – just in Europe and just for a few days, but it was good to get out again. We took the train to Vienna and stayed there for three days, just for fun!!! Don't do that very often, but we found a good 3-for-2-nights deal in a fancy boutique hotel called „Hotel Daniel“ (with a very comfortable hammock in the room!) and got cheap train tickets.
Unfortunately, it rained most of the time, out of buckets, and our shoes were always soaking wet and the umbrella was leaking. If we wouldn't have met twice with a friend of us, a culinary journalist born and raised in Vienna, who showed us some "secrets", esp. culinary ones, it would have been rather boring. We got to visit only one of the tyical viennese wine bars, called "Heurige", and had to sit inside, but at least we got to know some good wines there, like „Gemischter Satz", a special viennese wine variety. And we ate heavenly „Marillenknoedel“ and "Gulasch". Visited some interesting museums like MAK, the Prater (a ferris wheel, see pic), the Naschmarkt (a huge market area), admired many art-nouveau buildings and, of course, the cathedral (pic).
Vienna is a multi-ethnical city. To me it appeared like the Eastern European influence (slowakian, czech, hungarian...) is dominating, but also turkish, asian and russian languages are often to be heard and the fast-food-scene is dominated by turks and asians. Our friend defined the Viennese population as "a hybrid of Italians and Germans" and there is certainly a grain of truth in it: many open-air bars, cafés and ice saloons like in Italy, a bit of "dolce vita", but also german gravity. In contrast, traditional coffeehouses and "Beisl" (restaurants) are hard to find nowadays. Also, we noticed that people still smoke a lot in Austria, laws for public places like restaurants seem to be less strict. And, Vienna is very expensive, same price level as Munich!
We got to love our fancy, quiet hotel, but had to leave for Salzburg, to do research for a guidebook update. Rain continued and the hotel which was booked for us, was not as nice as the one before, in addition, noisy construction was going on. We checked the things we needed to check, mostly in pouring rain. Especially the new Dom Quartier is worth being seen and our visit to the puppet theater (Mozart's "Magic Flute") was another highlight.
Because of the rain, on the first morning we took the bus to two shopping malls a little outside town (one of them an outlet mall) to check them out for the first time in many visits. We were invited to a new wine bar, where the owner is very enthusiastic about „orange wines“ - "radical" or "natural" wines with its characteristic color. After an extensive tasting with our friend Maria we were convinced that we go with the trend and that we like these much-debated wines. Had good beer as well: in the Augustiner Bräu Mülln, a typical huge beerhall with self-service, which we especially like for people-watching. On our departure day we had a great meal in a restaurant where nobody would expect such good food so inexpensively. The owner is the chef and butcher (butchering and smoking as well as bread baking all done in the basement) in one person ...
On wednesday, our departure day, it eventually stopped raining. Nevertheless, we had a pretty good time and it was a nice distraction. Looking forward now to our next trip to the U.S., to NY in two weeks. Please, stay tuned.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen