Vienna (Wien) Recap + Power Ranking!

I put Wien in the title because it's the German translation of Vienna and it's hilarious if you're a 5 year old. I laughed every time.

After getting over the initial shock that we made it at all (see: The Sprint for Vienna – The Unorthodox Route), we immediately hit some ice cold showers to wipe off inches of sweat and grime from the grind of a travel day. I was delirious enough to immediately wander into the girl’s shower and just go ahead and use it unknowingly, wondering through the entirety why I would ever want a shower with a hose but without the part that held it in the air. Too much manual labor for a shower. Went out to eat at a place called Centimeter and when we saw you could order “Brote” by the meter we all started salivating like obnoxious Americans should. Could not WAIT to stuff our faces with a half meter of Austrian Bratwurst covered in peppers, cheese and onions. Andddd then “Brote” turned out to mean bread. So each of us were stuck with about a half meter of bread and cheese. Huge plot twist!

Eventually we satiated Will’s unbelievably large (almost sexual) desire for Austrian sausage with a street vendor’s product, hung in a park and went to the Prater Dome, which was shortly thereafter dubbed the Thunderdome. This is basically a slew of messy European bars/clubs under one roof. Woke up dead, which is pretty par for the course, and proceeded on to Schonbrunn Palace. Tom and I estimated this would be around the same price for rent as The Lakehouse at BC our Junior year.

Impeccable exterior lumination.

Pretty comparable. Both are yellow. Schonbrun very likely had to kill 36 mice and one "Frog Mouse" per year as well.

Hostel – 9

Europe is having a heat wave right now. This does not present the most ideal travel conditions when you have 40 pounds on your back, and, in Goose’s case, excess Murse weight. This makes the shower and your hostel situation more crucial than ever. This one was nice and clean and had two showers, which was extremely necessary based on the fact that 30 minutes after settling in our room it smelled like a combination between Will’s awful feet and dead cattle. Very clean and had a sweet location for our one night in Vienna. Only knock was waking up in the morning and having to peel myself off the rubber sheets because of the lack of AC.

Best Site - Schonbrun – 8.5

Becca has committed to living here, pending conversations with the landlord from the 1560s and the Austrian Historical Society. We’ll see how those go. We only had about 45 minutes of “smashmouth tourism” to see the place which would take normal fat tourists about 6 hours. Despite the lack of time, we managed to see most of the main sites around it, and were pretty amazed with all of it. 

Sites – 9

One night and a morning in Vienna just isn’t enough. The downtown was pretty epic and full of Opera houses that were all large, absurd, elegant, and largely absurdly elegant. The train ride in was definitely from the uncut version of Sound of Music but I didn’t see any kids running around in clothes made from drapes so don’t quote me on that.

Food – 6.5*

*denotes “we don’t speak German and our dinner suffered as a result.”
Food rating was definitely hurt by the fact that we were trying to polish half-meters of bread and cheese, which is an excessive amount even in the States. Brote is bread not Brat – got it. Would have been a much higher food rating with some idea of…any German.

Nightlife – 8.5

Hung out with Chuck Treinen who is busy dominating life and watching brain surgeries in Austria. Prater Dome was not as packed as we expected which was unfortunate, but also provided us more room to relentlessly shred the dance floor. One of the better moments was probably when “Call Me Maybe” came on, which was essentially just a “Let’s see who’s American in here” moment from the DJ. Our true colors came out, to say the least, as German and Austrian onlookers watched in astonishment, fascination, and confusion. 

 41.5 for Vienna – a revisit is mandatory.

1) Rome - 46
2) Madrid - 44
3) Barca - 43.5
4) Vienna - 41.5
4) Venice - 41.5
5) Nice - 41
6) Genoa - 39.5
7) Florence - 39.25
8) Marseille - 38
9) Narbonne - 36