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Published: June 19th 2006
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Vienna
Beginning with the pleasant and efficient subway experience from the bus stop to my hostel, I instantly took a liking to Vienna. The city has both a modern feel and a deep sense of history, which you pick up as you walk by the Hofburg palace complex and other buildings in the center of the city.
Living life as a backpacker for three months, I am already beginning to appreciate some of the basic things that I was used to from even budget hotels like the Hampton Inn. Several things stood out at my hostel, Ruthensteiner, one of the nicest that I have ever stayed in. My "small" dorm had three bunk beds and was always full of people. We shared our own private bathroom, and the sheets even came nicely packed in a plastic and were waiting on my bed when I got into the room. We each got a key to the room door and a separate key to our individual lockers. This is in contrast to rooms that often do not lock and lockers for which you need to provide your own lock. I still had to come prepared with my own towel, which I
Pub crawl
Some friends from the pub crawl managed to leave behind in Salzburg.
My first night in Vienna, I continued my culinary and wine adventures at Vinissimo, a wine bar which I now consider to be one of my favorites in the world. The place has been open for over eight years, so it must be doing well. However, on that Thursday night, it was fairly quiet. That worked out to my benefit because the owner, Franz, was able to chat and tell me about the wines throughout the evening. Each week, he puts together a selection of flights based on certain themes. This week the theme was lesser known Austrian regions, like Vienna (who knew) and Styria. I am certain that most of the wines I sampled are not widely available, if at all, in the US. There were several pleasant surprises, including an awesome pinot noir. Another surprise was how good the food was. By the end of the night, I had eaten five courses and tasted about 15 different wines. Two weeks into my trip, this has been my best meal yet, including dinner at the top restaurant, Gundels, in Budapest. I ended up at the wine bar for almost four hours, the
Vienna Boys Choir
Spectacular view of the choir (and that wasn't even from my seat; I had to sneak up to take the photo) last of which Franz joined me to eat after he had closed down the place. He gave me tips on things to do in the city, the most important of which was informing me about the VieVinum festival.
Every two years, hundreds of Austrian wine producers and a few international producers pour wines at the VieVinum event in a stunning palace, the Hofburg, right in the center of town. I can say with confidence that I have neven been to a wine tasting in as grand a location. There were rooms and rooms across two floors full of wines. In six hours, I didn´t even taste one fifth of all the wines. Thanks to a recent Wine Spectator tasting report on Austria, I was able to prioritize which tables to visit. Believe it or not, many of the producers listed in the "top wines" section had not even seen the article! I was thrilld to find almost every single producer listed in the full tasting report...and that was limited to only three regions. I was tempted to come back the next day, but I wanted to see a little bit of Salzburg, since I would only be there one night.
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One of my favorite things about traveling alone is that when you are by yourself, it is much more likely that you will meet other people, especially locals. After the opening games of the World Cup, I was cutting across town towards a club when I heard music I liked. The bar was´t very full, but there was a live DJ and it was still relatively early to get to the club, so I popped in for drink. Just minutes after I had my beer, a crew with lanyards and tickets attached rolled into the bar. I asked them what their tickets were for, and they told me that they were on some pub crawl that a radio station had organized. After chatting over a drink, they invited me to join them. As we were going into the next bar, an additional pass materialized and I officially became part of the pub crawl, meaning it entitled me to a free drink at each stop on the way. We met up with a couple more friends at the secod stop and ended in and area littered with bars called the Bermuda Triangle.
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Before I left Chicago for the trip, I bought an international student identification card. It remains to be seen whether I will recover the $25 I spent through discounts received. I received a 10% discount on my bus ticket, although if I were younger than 26, I could have saved 50%. Nonetheless, I still got a discount of some sort. When I visited Schloss Schönbrunn, one of the castles in Viena, I was hit with the disturbing revelation that I truly am not longer part of the "youth" demographic. Ready to get a small student discount, the ticket booth person told me that only students under 26 were eligible. Despite all attempts to prove otherwise with various instances of monkey business throughout my daily life, I suddenly felt "officially" like an adult.
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My final activity in Vienna before I took of for Salzburg was to attend church. Apparently there were a bunch of kids, known as the Vienna Boys Choir, singing at the service . I hear that their band has been doing that gig for a few hundred years now. The singing was incredible and worth getting up just hours after climbing into my bed after a night of clubbing. I paid 14€ for seats with an "unobstructed" view, and I had the pleasure of seeing about two members of the choir perched up in the loft above the seats, while the people that paid 5€ may not have been able to see them directly but did have a video screen with a great view. I would recommond going that route next time. The service was in German and lasted about an hour. I´d say that I took away about as much from the German priest as I typically do when I go to church in the US.
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Cleavon
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WOW
I'm sure the "World Cup" bar scene had to be really insane. I would have paid top dollar to see what antics you concoted in trying to prove to the ticket booth person you were under 26:) Be safe!