Vienna Day 1
I’m not sure why, perhaps its their geographic proximity, and perhaps because historically they were part of the same empire, but I was expecting Vienna to be very similar to Budapest, which over the course of 5 days I had started to become very comfortable in and around. In some respects, I can see the similarities. The architecture of St. Stephen’s Cathedral and of the Hungarian Parliament and Fishermans Bastion are very similar, and the grandeur of Schoenbrunn Palace is on par with Buda Castle, however, from a modern day perspective, they are vastly different. One of the things that was initially very intimidating, but became central to its charm, was that Budapest (at least in the Castle and Parliament districts where I spent most of my time) was dominated by little cafe’s and secluded shops with very little overt signage. Vienna, from the jump, became obvious to me that it was much more familiar to my western mindset in that there are big advertisements, and familiar names posted everywhere. The best example of this is the scaffolding that was up on St. Stephen’s Cathedral for restoration had a massive Breitling banner ad with Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron and Adam Driver looking down on the masses of tourists.
Vienna is spectacular, in the sense of the word that it is a spectacle. Everything here is extremely ornate, so much so that it is hard to tell what buildings are historical, and what buildings are modern renditions of the traditional style. The square surrounding St. Stephen’s Cathedral, which opened nearly 900 years ago, is a hip and modern shopping center with shops like Zara, Gucci, Rolex, Hugo Boss, and a number of other extremely fancy brands that I’m not cool enough to recognize. Most everything is very up to date, clean and technologically advanced - especially the transit lines. You can tell there is a lot of money here, not just by the cars, shops and state of public transport, but by how expensive everything is. I learned my lesson the hard way on the first night after a long day of travel, I ventured out to a bar near my hotel for a night cap, and choked when I got the bill. Especially compared to Budapest, where your Forint went quite a long way as long as you weren’t going too far into the tourist areas.
In the morning, scared about how much it would cost for breakfast at the hotel, I headed straight to the transit station, where I saw a small stand with some delicious looking pastries for 3 Euro, so I decided to give it a try. The man running the stand was extremely gracious as I helplessly pointed at what I wanted, and even though he did not speak English, was able to relay that what I was asking for was called “Börek”. It was delicious, and for 3 euro, I was a happy camper. I looked it up later, Börek is a traditional Turkish recipe, but common in Eastern Europe, and is essentially a flakey dough, meat and cheese. Yes, please!
As I got to St. Stephen’s Square (Stephanplatz), I was overwhelmed by the crowds of tourists. To be fair, it was a Sunday, but was pretty amazing to see that many people in one place. I headed into St. Stephen’s Cathedral, which was breathtaking, but uncomfortably, was actively having a Sunday Mass as throngs of tourists (including myself) filtered in behind the barrier to take pictures and wander about. In the pictures below, you can see some of the priests at the altar. Both St. Stephen’s Cathedral and St. Stephen’s Church were amazingly ornate and overwhelmingly intricate in both their architecture, and the artwork inside. I would have loved to get a better view of the inside of the Cathedral, but with the services taking place, it would not be possible.
There was a cute Christmas market outside the cathedral in which, instead of the varieties of mulled wine offered at the Budapest markets, were offering different flavors of ‘Punsch”, which is essentially hot punch, but with an alcoholic option. They were good, but I’d rather have a mulled wine. I took the opportunity to have my late afternoon lunch at the market with a nice Bratwurst and headed back to my hotel as the sun was setting - I was pretty beat, and some R&R and Broncos football sounded pretty great. I grabbed a 6 pack of an Austrian beer, and headed to the hotel for the night.
