Vienna

Gillian

HOLY FUCK IT’S HAWWWWT! (hot)

Man, the humidity nearly killed us the first day or so. Gillian and I walked around sightseeing in the morning, went to see the Spanish Riding School do their horse-riding exercises (she taught me the difference between a “canter” and a “trot”), then had lunch, and then went back to the hostel cuz we were fuckin’ dying from the heat. And I was still feeling a little blecch, so it was good. Good to do. And then we did the whole lying in the backyard reading and listening to Ella (the classic jazz singer, not the “vocal echo” from the Rihanna song). To tell the truth, we didn’t do much sight-seeing or touristy stuff in Vienna and, upon reflection, I’m cool with that.

When in Prague, Gillian made the comment that she didn’t want to spend the whole vacation in museums and on tours. And I think that’s an important point to bring up - specific museums can be interesting and tours can be fascinating and informative, but after a while it just becomes the same old shit. I am very happy that we’ve only gone to see one art museum so far - the Van Gogh. Wandering around art museums, I feel like I’m paying to see bigger versions of pictures I can find with a quick Google Images search. So in Vienna, we didn’t do any tours or see any museums. There are some that piqued my interest, but I was much more concerned with surviving the heat, saving my last bit of money, and just enjoying “being there” in a beautiful city. We had a beautiful view from our hostel on the outskirts of town, so that allowed me to marvel at the majestic interweaving of forest and city whenever I felt like it.

That, I must say, is pretty fuckin’ cool. We saw the same thing in Hamburg and Luneburg and I never get bored of it. Toronto and New York, which are two cool North American cities, are just a scattering of buildings when viewed from on high. In Vienna, the trees and buildings weave in and out of each other like interlocking fingers, as if the two were holding hands. I once saw this hippie-ish architect on The Colbert Report talk about his organisation’s idea of urban planning, which included Nerf cars, blimp buses that floated around town with chairs hanging down you could just hop on and off of, and trees that would be used as houses (sort of like Bag End). Looking over Vienna, I felt like this must be the next best thing. And that’s pretty fuckin’ cool.

Another awesome thing - on one of the canals, in the summer, there is a wonderful boat called Badeschiff (or something like that). It’s a boat that stays anchored at a dock and has a pool, a sun deck with a TV and bar, a restaurant, and a basement club at night. After going delirious from the heat, Gillian and I searched the canals for the ever-elusive pool-boat. When we found it, we bought a day-pass and quickly rushed home to put on our swimsuits and then rushed back to bath in the refreshingly cold water. We then hung out on the sun deck, read, watched some soccer, I went back into the pool, and had dinner in the restaurant below.

The next ever-elusive thing we searched for was apple strudel. There were places that had it, but this was akin to getting store-bought strudel and we wanted real, properly-prepared, fancy apple strudel. We finally found a place and sat down to enjoy our apple strudels with whipped cream (we took pictures!), only to be interrupted by a crazy-ass windstorm that blew dirt in our faces and desserts. I quickly gobbled mine up, flecks of dirt and all, which Gillian said was absolutely disgusting and which I completely agree with. But I paid 5 euros for that delicious goddamn strudel!

One disappointment was that, on my tour of European friends, I didn’t get to meet up with my Austrian friend Veronika, who I had met in Cordoba and done a weekend trip with to Mendoza (along with two of my friends from Holland and some others). Veronika was very excited to meet up, and we tried to make plans, but things never worked out. It would’ve been nice, but I guess “sigh, c’est la vie.” Sorry, Vero. Hopefully things will work out better next time.

The Vienna trip, all in all, was pretty damn awesome. The first night we got to hang out with some Northern Irish friends we made in Prague, we got to spend a day in a swimming pool, and we got to explore a beautiful town. And also, we saw The Third Man in a cinema, which was a really great classic film. And I got to get a feel of Vienna’s musical culture (in the restaurants and bars we went to the first night), it’s horse-riding culture (The Spanish Riding Club), and it’s beautiful nature (the view from the hostel). Definitely a place I’d like to return to.

Tell ya what: I really enjoyed just “being” in the city.