Vienna

The Prague to Vienna train journey was a bit less thrilling, but still, it wasn’t completely normal. I’ve never waited 30 minutes to board a train. When I finally squeezed my way into the nearest car, I saw why. Every seat was full, and all the people who’d just gotten on were squished together in the aisle. “It’s a metro-style train!” a guy behind me said to his friend. They laughed, more than I expected them to, which made me laugh, as well as the people standing in front of me. The positivity we need for a 4.5-hour trip, I thought.

With about an hour to go, quite a few people got off and some floor space opened up, so almost everyone sat down amongst their bags. One woman even pulled out a bottle of red nail polish, which seemed like a risky endeavor. She looked pretty skilled, though.

All was well until we crossed the Austrian border and my SIM, which was supposed to work in all of Europe, apparently didn’t include Austria. Not a big deal with a travel companion, but it felt like a bigger deal on my own. I decided my best course of action was to find a taxi, show the driver the address of my hostel, and hope the driver wasn’t sketchy.

After taking a look at the address, my selected driver made a confused-looking face and said, “I’ve never heard of that place.” The ride consisted of grunts, hmmm’s, and too many turns, but he eventually found it. I dumped my stuff at the hostel and set off in search of a new SIM, which was easier to find than the hostel. All I felt like doing at that point was getting some food, so I stopped by a café where a couple of cute kids were playing with Legos in the middle of the floor. While I ate, they made up a game where they would peek around a corner, wave at me, and run away laughing. The owner of the restaurant apologized, but I said I was enjoying the game too.

I was planning to head back to the hostel and have an early evening in, but on the way, I saw the roof of the Vienna Opera House…and from there a palace…and from there another palace…so I ended up going for a 2-hour wander around the city. Vienna has no shortage of ornate, pastel buildings that look like they should have some level of importance but are actually just shops and apartments with their own angels and gargoyles.

I only had one full day in Vienna, and like every other destination I’d been to on the trip, it wasn’t nearly enough time to see all I wanted to. I decided to skip the palaces, even though they’re one of Vienna’s major draws, and instead focused on downtown. But first, coffee. France’s café crème is good, Italy’s cappuccino is very good, and Spain’s café con leche is exceptionally good. But the Viennese mélange is the clear winner.

I knew I’d be getting another mélange later, so I finished up and set off to see downtown. Vienna also has a Shakespeare & Co, so I had to stop in. Unlike the store in Paris, there was no line, but it was still very book-y with cozy chairs and precarious ladders. I almost bought a book but remembered I would probably rip my backpack if I tried to fit anything else inside. I saw that Mozart’s house was nearby, so I wandered in that direction and ended up walking past it several times before figuring out it was a plain white building with a tiny “Mozart Haus” sign. It was probably Vienna’s most boring building, which, on second thought, wasn’t too surprising since Mozart was one of the unfortunate ones who got a lot more credit after he died.

Through a mix of planning and accidental encounters, I saw St. Stephen’s cathedral, the Volksgarten, the Vienna Opera House, the Parliament building, another less important garden, the downtown shopping district, St. Peter’s blue-domed church, and the Hofburg museum, which I definitely mistook for a palace.

I also stopped by Demel—one of Vienna’s famous pastry shops. It’s apparently a highly popular brunch spot, but I’m not sure where the people eat because most of the interior looked more like a fancy cake museum than a restaurant, complete with chocolate fountains and floral pastries.

After a bit more wandering, my feet wanted a different pair of shoes. On the way back to the hostel, I stopped for a piece of chocolate cake and another coffee. They didn’t have the cake, so I got the recommended backup option, which was also quite yummy.

I swapped out my shoes and headed back out to see the Weiden neighborhood, in which most stores were closed. I ended up at what I thought was the entrance to the Belvedere Palace. An abundance of caution tape and construction equipment kept me from trying to enter. A woman walking a cat on a leash must have seen me looking and rather urgently told me it was closed.

I was actually a little relieved because I had decided against the palaces, and then when I accidentally showed up at one, felt like I would be missing out if I skipped it. But the confirmation from the cat-on-a-leash woman was as reassuring as it was redundant. I continued on to see Karlskirche Cathedral before I got hungry for dinner. Karlskirche almost looked fake from certain angles. The reflection of the dome and spires make it look like a futuristic Cinderella building.

Dinner had to be wiener schnitzel. It definitely exceeded expectations, but my favorite was the side of Austrian potato salad. I was way too full for dessert, but it was early, and I had some time before it got dark. I returned to the park by the national museum, which seemed to be a popular meeting spot for all types of groups: a yoga circle, a group of college students eating pizza, a hula hooping group, and a dog training class. I found a bench by the pond and watched people walk, run, bike, and roller skate by.

When I got back to the hostel, I was surprised to find all three of my roommates in. They were all very pleasant and liked to go to bed and get up early, which has never been my luck in a hostel before (and will likely never be again). We discovered we represented four continents, as they were from Italy, Pakistan, and Brazil.

It had started to rain, and the hostel lobby was the coziest I’d seen, so I found a window seat and journaled a little before bed. I’d been having funky dreams, so I ended up writing about those more than about my trip, but that’s how I do journaling—whatever’s on my mind makes it onto the page, and the other stuff hangs out somewhere in my head. I wondered if the dreams meant I was going crazy from too much time alone. Luckily, I was going to arrive in Budapest the next day to meet up with a friend, so my solo days were almost up. At the same time, it had been incredibly peaceful to walk around cities completely on my own terms—dawdling where I liked and booking it where I liked.

The rain continued the next morning, but the main thing on my agenda was the Austrian National Library, which I had heard closely resembled the Beauty and the Beast library. I could see why—the two-story bookcases, the ladders, and the globes. The ceiling looked like the backdrop for the book version of heaven—or at least a really nice place old books might like to vacation.

By the time I was done admiring the celestial globes and pretending to be Belle (if she wore a raincoat and sweaty Chacos), I had just enough time to buy some Viennese chocolates and gather my things from the hostel before heading to the train station. I was sad to say goodbye to Vienna but was looking forward to some overdue social time. I was also hoping for a blissfully boring train ride, which was finally just what I got.