Last-minute travel: Vienna, part 1

I think I'll leave Wednesday to spend a few days in Vienna and Prague.

These are not words that I generally hear, much less say, in everyday life. Yet that's exactly what I did this past week. A week before, we'd heard that my niece's friend, who'd been traveling Europe with Lora for a couple of weeks, might have to go home early. Brian and I quickly decided that if Lora still wanted company for the last two legs of her trip, I was in a good place to do that. 

As it turns out, the friend did go home, and I was able to get a last-minute ticket with airline miles, which sort of shocked me. So on Friday I booked a ticket to Munich for Wednesday, then reserved a seat on a train to Vienna, where she would meet me.

The whole trip there was, as it always seems to be for me, a nail-biter. Two flights ended prematurely with mechanical issues, a third got me to Philadelphia just in time to board my flight to Munich, which was then delayed 3 1/2 hours, so I missed my train. I went to the train info desk and the woman there kindly responded to my barely-contained desperation with the good news that I had unwittingly bought a flexible ticket and handed me a new itinerary, telling me my train would leave in 45 minutes. I cannot tell you my relief. And I will say it again, NEVER check luggage if you don't have to. My suitcase would never have gotten to me.

I've traveled a bit, but my job is usually to plan the trip, and Brian's job is to do the maneuvering and navigating. Turns out I can handle it on my own, so who needs him? I'll probably be taking off on my own all the time now. But not really, because as Lora can now attest, I still need someone to listen to me talk. 

After flying and train-ing all day Wednesday and most of Thursday, I found my way to the hotel in Vienna that I'd booked. Since I was getting there one night before her, I told Lora to cancel the reservation for the 6-person hostel room and I reserved a relatively inexpensive hotel right in the city center on Booking.com. The Hotel am Schubertring was a welcome oasis of quiet rooms, functioning air conditioning (it was over 90), and two comfy twin beds that Lora called our clouds. That may just be how they seemed after a number of hostel beds, but I'd agree with the assessment. The fact that our clouds were basically a king because they were separated by mere inches in that tiny room really didn't matter.

Lora arrived about 8 am the next day, fresh as a daisy after a night train from Venice. An hour later we were touring the city--the tiled roof and gothic steeple of St. Stephan's Cathedral, the beautiful 18th and 19th century architecture, the Habsburg history, the concert halls and their history with Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. We went inside the National Library, which is every reader's fantasy library, never mind that I couldn't understand a word printed in there. We saw St Peter's and the Votive Church, walked to the Opera House, City Hall, the Imperial Gate, and the museum complex. Then it was time for lunch.

There's a benefit to traveling with someone who is not your spouse and who is already well into the travel routine. I had no impulse to whine that we'd been walking for a long time, in fact if anything I wanted to walk more so as not be a drag on the proceedings. I have no qualms about being a drag on Brian's proceedings. Just ask him.

Lunch at the Naschmarkt, where we toured innumerable stalls of every kind of food before settling on a very traditional Viennese meal of falafel and hummus, along with some picked vegetables stuffed with something white and salty, and dates with something white and salty, and baklava. We had enough hummus to feed the whole old Hapsburg clan, which we thought was super generous of the vendor until we realized we were paying by the pound.

After returning to our room to drop off our excess hummus, we started walking the other direction. We went to see the Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment building designed by an Austrian architect who said he did not want to see another ugly building in Vienna. If he considers Viennese architecture to be ugly, I sincerely hope he never drives down 28th St in GR, I think it would be the end of him. Except he might be ended already, I'll have to check. Anyway, he designed a building fit for Dr Seuss, with colors and curves and odd angles. You can't imagine anyone living there could ever be sad.

Next up was the Prater, an enormous park across the river that has a main drag lined with horse chestnut trees. This is one of the places we saw people who seemed like they actually lived here, from the three young people who were practicing a choreographed dance under the trees to the old men chatting on benches. At one end of the park there is a Ferris wheel that has graced Vienna for a long time, and if you've seen the old film noir "The Third Man" you have already seen it. 

Next to that stalwart Ferris wheel is an amusement park of a more modern persuasion. It costs nothing to roam through it, which is how they get you. You think you are just going to take a look, but then you find the tallest tower that has seats attached that take you to the top, slowly spin around the tower for a while so you can see the whole city spread out before you, until a rather menacing voice counts out "Ein, zwei, drei" and you are hurtling toward the earth. It was fabulous and all for only 5 euro each.

Eventually we wandered back to the city center, and we asked the hotel clerk where we could get a traditional Austrian dinner. Lora had never had schnitzel, and my description of it being like a chicken nugget pounded flat was pretty hard to resist. He gave us directions, but when we got there we found everything was around $20 per plate. Lora had looked on TripAdvisor for good restaurants and we walked another mile to Schnitzelwirt. 

This seemed like a neighborhood restaurant, and at some point a waiter went by with a schnitzel the size of a computer keyboard. We asked if we could split one and they agreed, so for 14 Euros we got a huge schnitzel cooked in two separate pieces, a large glass of wine each and a huge bowl of fries each. And it was all good. Until we realized we had to pay with cash, and I didn't have any left. The man noticed I had US dollars, so he willingly took a $20 bill and even offered me 5 Euro change, which we declined out of embarrassment. So yeah, two thumbs up, and always carry cash.

The real moral of the story is that if you are a closing-in-on-50-year-old woman, you should always travel with a young, beautiful blonde. You get better treatment. It's been a good run though, Brian.