Daily Archives: July 25, 2024

Jul25

Exploring Vienna

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Saturday, 29-June-2024, through Thursday, 04-July-2024



Vienna.

Ancient seat of the Hapsburg Empire.

A city of high ceilings, soaring architecture, and gilded palaces. Sweeping gardens, soaring domes, and expansive museums were everywhere – A golden history alive and well in the current day.

There were also other reminders. Two imposing flak towers, left standing when they proved too challenging to demolish. Indirect references to the cities previous Jewish population. Veiled references to the historic traumas that the city, or more accurately its peoples, had experienced.


I found that I loved Vienna at first, though after learning some of its deeper and more divisive history I found that love turning a little black. Vienna still holds a place as one of my favorite cities on this adventure, at least so far, though there’s a bitter taste that was left after learning of the levels of inequity, lost promise, and antisemitism that checker the city’s past.



Let’s actually flip the script a bit here, and talk about food first.

First and foremost – I adore Austrian cuisine, I’ve learned. Schnitzel is amazing, delicate-yet-hearty breakfasts are glorious, and good coffee over slow meals is critically underappreciated in the United States. Seriously – I ate Schnitzel four times, I think, and three of those meals were from the same place. I don’t know why… but something about the crispy crunch and savory chicken is just… so good.

  • Schnitzel Konig – I adored this place. Simple, easy, and delicious. Great price, and excellent both eating in and taking away. Turns out – I adore schnitzel. Who knew?
  • La Bes – A lovely small-ish bakery near where I was staying. Great coffee, excellent breads and pastries. Couldn’t ask for more.
  • The Legends – A good spot for breakfast, again right near where I was staying. Not anything particularly special, but a solid start to a solid day.
  • Kunsthistorisches Museum cafe – A cafe in the art museum, what more could I ask for when I got hungry while visiting the art museum? Honestly, it was really good, and not that overly expensive, so… would recommend as part of the museum, so you can have some downtime between exhibits.
  • That’s Amore – Solid Italian spot right near where I was staying. It wasn’t bad, but was exceptionally slow… possibly because of the World Cup which was monopolizing everyone’s attention. Still – I’m trying to slow down a bit and enjoy myself, so this was a good excuse to be relaxed.
  • Schachtelwirt – I stopped in here for a quite bite of lunch, and wasn’t disappointed. Good Weinerschnitzel, solid sides, quick and simple.
  • Cafe Scalina – Simple and solid breakfast near where I was staying… fried eggs, latte, some pastries… nothing too exciting, but good fuel for the day.
  • Tomochan Ramen – This was a neat stop. I noticed them while exploring the nearby Belvedere Palace, and figured that I could go with a nice bowl of ramen. What I didn’t expect was that it was also a Halal restaurant… and so the Ramen didn’t include pork. I got beef instead, and it was surprisingly excellent!
  • Cafe Central – Now this was a special place. A very old cafe, from 1876, this cafe has hosted illustrious thinkers such as Freud, Trotsky, and many others. More importantly to me, it very likely hosted my Grandfather back when he was a young boy living in Vienna. The ambiance was amazing, the food excellent, and the sense of history and “why yes, I am exceptionally fancy, thank you” was incredible. I didn’t include any pictures here, since they’re going to be getting their own entire post!






With our bellies fed with excellent food pictures, where do we go from here?

Vienna wasn’t a small city, and I found myself using Electric Scooters for most of my excursions into the city… at least to get to the general area of my destination, before finishing up on foot. The scooters were pretty tightly controlled, in regard to where one could park them, but at this point that’s been pretty common from what I’ve seen.

People follow traffic laws, as one would expect, and navigating around the city was frankly a breeze. Many people spoke English, though I did get to flex what little bits of German I do know without any condemnation of rudeness.

Simply put, the city was staggering. Everything was ornamented, everything seemed to exude the opulence and royalty of Vienna’s past, and people seemed to simply live that life. I didn’t see too much modern infrastructure, but then again I didn’t venture particularly far outside of the old-town area. I’m sure that I’d be able to find hip areas of urban art and modern stylings, if I had felt the desire to look… but as it was, I simply enjoyed the history and historic opulence of the older portion of the city.

Jul25

The things I didn’t have backups for

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Throughout the trip, but specifically in Prague on Thursday, 27-June


To date, I’ve only had two issues come up where I didn’t have a backup plan in hand.


The first was in Greenland – Data transfer for my Drone. I’d assumed that I could just connect my drone to my Laptop via the USB-C to USB-C cable… but unfortunately that didn’t work out. I spent an hour or so trying to troubleshoot it, finally finding out that (as weird as this is) my cable was too high quality.

Yep – the drone was designed for simple power-only cables, and got overwhelmed when I connected a high-speed power-and-date cable. In the end, I had to buy a new adaptor for the laptop so I could connect the physical memory card. It worked, but cost me a few bucks.

The second was a bit more impactful, and quite a bit more anxiety-inducing. My cell phone. Now, keep in mind that I have backups for the phone. If it died, I brought my old phone along for the ride… and if that died, I’ve got my laptop available. No, this was for something less physical… I hadn’t planned contingencies for my cell provider dying.

Granted – I did have some backups for this. I had wifi, and I still had both the backup phone and laptop available. All of which got used to troubleshoot, and isolate that it was in fact my provider that was borked, and not the phone itself… Especially since I’d tried calling their tech support line, and they did everything in their power to avoid admitting that this was a network-wide issue.

Thankfully, I was able to set up a backup system on the fly. I found out (thanks to Reddit, mainly) that most US Cell providers were having a major outage throughout the world, specifically due to a “third party vendor”, and not “an attempt to reduce overhead immediate before the end of the quarter”. I hopped online, and got some insight from some of my European friends, and was able to install an e-SIM into my phone – thankfully, my primary phone was new enough that it could support an embedded SIM card.

That didn’t get me voice or text, of course, but it was enough to get data – and data was enough for me to stay safely connected and navigate through the city.

This one was a much bigger impact (and danger) than the drone, if that wasn’t super clear. I lost connectivity while out and about, but thankfully had been around the city for a few days at that point and was able to navigate my way back to the apartment (and wifi) by memory. My phone did have location tracking still available, but when the network first went down it lost the ability to navigate… so if I hadn’t remembered to bookmark the apartment, I could have been in a world of trouble.


In the end, lessons learned. Safely, to boot, which I’m endlessly thankful for. I’m writing this from an apartment up in Switzerland, lessons taken to heart, though definitely curious what other challenges still await me…

Jul25

The train from Prague to Vienna

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Saturday, 29-June-2024


I arrived at the train station in Prague a bit early – enough time to do a little bit of sightseeing of the outside of the glorious baroque train station that I found myself in. I look photos, oogled the detail and gilding of the exterior, then made my way inside to appreciate the air conditioning and people watching that the gallery / mall / station offered.

It’s been really neat, seeing so many Liminal Spaces – those places and areas that aren’t really a destination on their own, but are instead an interstitial place, an area to be between areas. Which feels strange, in context of train stations like this, since they’re so absolutely beautiful! They don’t fit that 2019-era “hotel hallway” aesthetic of a liminal space… but are still a location that isn’t really a destination of its own.

I’ve enjoyed my time in these spaces throughout my adventure. I have a great habit of arriving with time to spare – in the case in Prague, I arrived about 90min early… with a full 60min before the train’s platform was even assigned. That gives a sense of calm that I really enjoy – I can’t rush, because I’m simply waiting. I can read, people watch, or simply sip coffee and nibble at a pastry like I did in Prague.



Soon enough, though, I was on the train and being whisked onward to my Maternal Grandfather’s boyhood home. The city that had spurned him, but had welcomed me back with open arms.

Vienna awaited.