Artsy Traveler

Traveling to Vienna – The Waltz Begins

Last updated on February 21st, 2020 at 05:11 pm

Are you traveling to Vienna? I wrote this post during my solo trip to Vienna while researching A Woman of Note, my novel about a woman composer in 1830s Vienna. This post chronicles Day 1.

Getting To Vienna

Flying Austrian Airlines from Vancouver to Vienna

Viennese waltzes (what else?) play over the sound system as I board my Austrian Airlines flight from Vancouver to Vienna. Cheerful red pillows and black blankets edged in red and white gingham sit demurely on each seat. The attendants wear red literally from top to toe—red neckerchiefs, red dresses, red stockings, red shoes, red fingernails.

Most of the passengers speak German and look like extras from The Sound of Music. OK – cultural stereotyping, but seriously, I have the distinct feeling they are minutes away from breaking into the chorus of Edelweiss. I may join them, Edelweiss being one of my favorites.

A montage of Austrian fun plays on everyone’s screens. Skiers whizzing down snow-covered mountains under achingly blue skies morph into hundreds of dancing couples. Girls in white dresses (where have I heard that line before?) swoon in the arms of men in black tuxes who sturdily waltz them around an enormous Baroque ballroom.

Did you know that the waltz became popular during the 1830s, the time in which I set A Woman of Note? The Viennese bourgeois were hungry for innocent pleasures in a Vienna that was, essentially, a police state. In 1830, you kept your mouth shut, and you waltzed. I’m hopeful that things have changed a bit.

On the screens, blonde, bikini-clad girls play beach volleyball (really? in Austria?), the Danube sparkles in the sun, and more sunny-looking blonde people cavort in front of big white buildings, intercut with generic Austrian flora and fauna.

After two movies, a few TV shows, surprisingly good food, and a short nap, I begin my travels in Vienna.

Arriving in Vienna

Vienna’s sleek airport is small and efficiently laid out. I sail through passport control and board the City Airport Train (CAT) for the sixteen-minute trip into Vienna. If you’re traveling to Vienna, consider the CAT for getting into the city. It’s much faster and cheaper than a taxi.

The train rides smoothly. I can type on my laptop as easily as if I were working at my desk at home. We pass the usual hideous sprawl that infects the outskirts of every European city–huge cylinders, rust-streaked girders, junk yards, railway tracks, electrical pylons.

I hope to not see these suburbs again until I return to the airport. On my first trip to Vienna with the family, I booked a hotel on the outskirts, and things did not go well. You can read about that misadventure in Robbie Bubble, an extract from Pastel & Pen: Travels in Europe that I wrote and Gregg illustrated.

I leave the CAT at the central station and hop onto the U train – Vienna’s efficient subway system. I bought my combo CAT ticket and three-day transit pass online before leaving home, so I won’t need to buy transit tickets for the next three days.

All I have is a printout with the dates that the pass is valid, which doesn’t feel very official. However, the guy on the CAT train scans it with his phone, and all is well.

I emerge from the U station to find a wide and busy street surrounded by large, white buildings that I will see a lot of during the next forty minutes. Armed only with a printout of a Google map and a phone with a dead battery, I turn left. It’s as good a direction as any. After walking for 15 minutes, I turn back and walk the other way for another 15 minutes, only to conclude that no, I was right the first time.

Sighing, I spin my brand new, four-wheeled suitcase (it’s a keeper) full circle and trudge back the way I came, barely registering in my post-flight fog that I’m passing the imposing Kunsthistorisches museum squatting in 19^th-century splendor across from the equally imposing Natural History museum.

Finally, I ask a passing jogger for directions. She speaks English (score!) and tells me that my apartment is just across the street. Phew. I set off with renewed resolve and minutes later meet my HomeAway host.

Tip: When you travel, make sure your phone is always charged so you can use it to navigate. If you still get lost, grab a taxi. Spending the extra money is well worth it to avoid sore feet before you’ve even had a chance to enjoy yourself.

Settling into a Vienna Apartment

If you travel to Vienna and stay in a HomeAway place, you can pretend to be an honorary Viennese and live sort of like the locals do. My host leads me through several thick doors and up old, dark stairs, gives me a lesson in the complicated use of three different keys, then finally ushers me into an apartment that looks like, well, an apartment.

Instead of a tiny hotel room with mini bar and wrapped soaps, I have a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom that look like the kind of place I might actually want to live in. In other words, it’s pretty cool.

I’ve chosen this HomeAway home-away-from-home for my Vienna trip because it’s a 15-minute walk from the old town, the price is outstanding (about $113USD/night), and it has a piano.

I know! A piano! When does that happen? Minutes after arriving and saying goodbye to my host, I sit down to play.

Romantic swooning ensues, despite clunky action and doubtful tuning. I play the Schubert Impromptu mentioned in A Woman of Note and get a bit of a buzz imagining Schubert himself playing the piece only a few blocks and about 185 years away.

I am in Vienna, playing Schubert! Yes!

Exploring Vienna

The apartment overlooks a courtyard containing a little hole-in-the-wall café called the Kandinsky Café. I get a coffee and a bun from the friendly proprietor who knows all about Vancouver.

Ah! Mountains, very beautiful, the Olympics.

An injection of caffeine, a bout of Schubert, and an hour’s rest shake off the worst of the jet lag. I set off for the Wien Museum in the Karlsplatz—two subway stops away.

First Lunch in Vienna

My first requirement is lunch. I’d planned to eat at the museum café, but it’s closed—the café, not the museum. I hike another half mile back across the Ring Road.

Men smoking hookahs fill the first café, so I make a graceful exit and walk next door to join a jolly-looking crowd sitting at tables lining the street. Here’s a transcription of my notes:

I eat my first meal in Vienna outdoors. The choices are mostly hearty, but I resist the lure of wiener schnitzel and opt for a salad and beer. My first taste of Austrian blonde beer – oh yeah. It cuts the dust of the 10,000 mile trip. The salad arrives—it looks good with lots of chicken and avocado pieces. The chicken is flavorful and tender, but the salad dressing has soaked the greens to sogginess. I am defeated with still half a bowl left to eat. At least I’ve lost that awful achy, empty, lightheaded feeling that comes from almost no sleep and widely spaced meals.

After lunch, I finish my beer and again take up my pen to wax lyrical.

The first few hours of a European trip are a strange mix of sensory stimulation. The new noises and smells, the incessant traffic, and voices talking in German accentuate my aloneness. I don’t mind – I love the anonymity of solitary travel. I am here in Vienna to do a job. My hope is that something will jump out at me, will give me the key to A Woman of Note. So far, wide boulevards choked with 21^st-century traffic, prosperous people, and rides on the metro have yielded nothing. The Vienna of today is very far from the Vienna of 1827. I need to get into the old town where, hopefully, something will resonate.

Sidenote: My trip to Vienna did indeed inspire me to finish A Woman of Note, thereby proving, if I needed proof, the wisdom of traveling to the locations where I set my novels.

I pay for lunch and set off for the Wien Museum to view old maps and examples of furniture and paintings from the era of A Woman of Note.

After ten minutes of fast walking, I am again lost. I’m quickly discovering that navigating Vienna is not a waltz in the park. The streets angle all over the place, and a few steps along a street at the wrong angle take me many long blocks from where I thought I was just a few minutes earlier.

Finally, after many long trudges and increasingly hot feet, I emerge into the square containing the museum.

Total fluke.

Wien Museum

The Wien Museum is not as exciting as I’d hoped, but I do enjoy a few scale models of how Vienna looked back in the day. The museum focuses on the “new Vienna” – the post-1850s version following the demolition of the medieval outer wall and the building of the famous Ringstrasse.

In 1827, when A Woman of Note opens, a wall still enclosed Vienna. A population of 290,000 people sounds like a lot, but I was surprised to discover that during the same period, Paris had 860,000 inhabitants and London 1,340,000. Vienna was not a big city, which works well with my plot since a central motivator of at least one character is to go to Paris.

After the museum, I head back over the Ringstrasse into the old town. By this time, I’m starting to get seriously tired! But as a seasoned traveler, I persevere – walking, walking, walking.

Tip: In Vienna, avoid the Ringstrasse (Ring Road) area with its big roads and heavy traffic and spend more time walking in the old town. It’s magical.

Strolling in the Old Town of Vienna

The old town teems with tourists and locals strolling along its many pedestrian streets. I walk to the Stephansplatz where the massive St. Stephen’s cathedral looms whitely. During my trip in 2000, the cathedral was black with soot, so I guess it’s had a bath.

I find a music store (as in, sheet music). The obliging attendant unearths books of piano music by Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, and Maria Theresia von Paradis, a contemporary of Mozart. I discuss both Clara and Fanny in my post Women in the Performing Arts in 19th-century Europe on my Art In Fiction website.

Living Local in Vienna

Buying Groceries

At a grocery store near my apartment, I load up on yogurt, crackers, cheese, and a nice bottle of Austrian rosé. I love European grocery stores. They are inevitably tiny because they’re usually shoehorned into an old building. In the mornings, older people with string bags crowd the aisles, and in the late afternoons, smartly dressed office workers stock up for their evening meals.

I enjoy the challenge of deciphering German labels and searching out things like crackers, which are hard to find in European stores and never the same as the crackers at home. I’m not sure why. The cheese cooler has no Canadian cheddar (funny that!) but instead brims with mild-looking white cheeses.

And the yogurt! The individual yogurts taste spectacular, with flavors like coconut, mango, and coffee. I have a sneaking suspicion they taste so good because they are full-fat. Fortunately, the ingredients are listed in German, so I can’t check.

I arrive back at the apartment and post on Facebook about my burning stump feet while rolling them over a tub of frozen yogurt. One needs to improvise while on vacation.

After a wee sleep and a nice interlude at the piano, I saunter into the balmy night air in search of dinner. I’m looking, of course, for a typical Austrian restaurant.

First Dinner in Vienna

Two of the restaurants I pass are empty (not a good sign), and two others serve Asian food which I can get at home.

The restaurant I finally choose is comfortably full and noisy and Italian, with wiener schnitzel nowhere to be found. Oh well. On many a European sojourn, from Stockholm to Milan, I’ve almost always eaten good meals at Italian restaurants.

I order my favorite, gnocchi in gorgonzola – another indulgence best kept to once every few years. Accompanied by an Austrian white wine, the gnocchi comfortably fills me up.

I also have a ringside seat to drama among the waitstaff. One of the waiters—the one who does not look Italian and I don’t think is—takes the wrong order to the table next to mine. Two other waiters, who both look very Italian and are probably related, chastise the poor fellow roundly and volubly.

For the rest of my meal, the poor guy is relegated to washing and drying wine glasses at the bar. The look of resentment on his face transcends language. Every so often one of the other waiters wanders by and says something to him, which only serves to deepen his scowl. The whole scenario looks like a good start for a Viennese murder mystery. Maybe I should consider switching genres.

By the time I make it back to the apartment via two heavy doors, a keyed elevator, and a staircase that looks like it dates from the 18^th century, I’m too tired to do anything but pass out.

But sleep comes surprisingly slowly, thanks to a noisy group of young people in the courtyard five floors below. Their conversation sounds like they’re in my bedroom. If only I understood German, I could be well entertained. As it is, I just want to know how to yell “shut up” in German. Fortunately, another tenant does, and finally the kids move on.

And so Day 1 of waltzing through Vienna ends.

Read my artsy sightseeing suggestions for Three Great Days in Vienna.