Barb and I traveled to Vienna and Salzburg in Austria to finally visit Frances Marshall. Barb and Frances went to UVA together and Frances has been great at keeping in touch over the years. She is one of Barb’s “smart friends”, a nuclear engineer, spending many years at a facility in Idaho Falls where Barb visited but I never did; a mistake, in retrospect. Frances took a job with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna about four years ago and she’s been inviting us to visit ever since. We finally made it. As a bonus, we decided to use a bunch of United Mileage Plus points to go Business Class, and it turned out we’re very glad we did.
Austria Part 2 | Austria Part 3
Day 1 Thursday 5/10/18 – Fly to Vienna?
United Lounge at Dulles. Drinks, please!
Let’s see how much of this I can remember. We left home around 1:15pm to get to our friend Mary’s in Reston. She very kindly drove us to Dulles for our 5:35pm departure. We zipped thru Business Class check in and TSA pre check — already miles ahead of the usual cattle call experience. We found the United lounge and got in with nearly 3 hours to kill, since our plane was already delayed for about 30 minute for undisclosed ground operations reasons. So we ate nuts and cheese and salami and I had a couple of gin and tonics.
Ahhh, Business Class!
Eventually we got on the plane and settled into our seats. It took about 10 minutes to scout out all the goodies and where to put things. We were happy and ready to go. Then we had to wait an extra 30 minutes or so. Seems they were waiting on a part to airlift to another 767 plane in Geneva. We started to finally push back when we heard a “pop” — not something you want to hear on an airplane. Evidently the tow bar broke on the little tow vehicle. They had to find another one. Once they did, the second one also broke. So eventually they found a third one and that finally worked. Now that we were on the runway, learned that we were 15th in line for takeoff and things were going slow because of storms in the area — though not in the immediate area, just somewhere. The wait stretched out for another 30 minutes or so until eventually they parked us on a side area so the plane could shut down its engines. Meanwhile, more drinks and nuts were served. After about two hours total it was our turn to go when the pilot announced a problem with an indicator in the cockpit. After another 30 minutes they decided we needed to return to the gate. Once there, we had to wait while they tried to figure out if it was something they could fix or if we would need to change planes.
We figured at this point we would probably miss our connection in Geneva but we couldn’t do much about it until we actually got off the ground. It was about 9pm and I’d just about finished watching the movie Downsizing when they told us we had to deplane (but then we waited about 15 more minutes until passengers from two other planes cleared out of the customs passageways). They wanted to try the Star Trek reboot, powering down the entire plane to see if that would clear the warning indicator, but we had to be off the plane for them to do that.
We deplaned and found the United lounge again. As we deplaned, they gave us some vouchers ($10 each) to get food in the terminal. We procured sandwiches and chips from a vendor down the concourse and ate them in the lounge until it closed at 10pm. Back at the gate we saw the crew deplane and announce this plane was going nowhere other than the hangar. The reboot didn’t work. We were told to go to the Customer Service counter to rebook our flights for tomorrow; nothing else was leaving Dulles that night. We got to the counter to find a huge line with an estimated wait time of four hours but Barb heard there was another United lounge in the neighboring concourse. I headed there and started the rebooking process with the concierge.
After a while I got a notice that United automatically rebooked us in coach seats thru London the next afternoon but the concierges took extra effort to find us Business Class seats on another flight. It took more than an hour and several handoffs before they finally got us rebooked on a Lufthansa flight the next day thru Frankfurt. They also arranged hotel and food vouchers for us for the night. It was about 11:30 by the time we retrieved our luggage and got to the curbside hotel shuttle area. We couldn’t imagine what other passengers went through to get rebooked either at counter or online, and were very thankful for the patient Business Class lounge concierges.
We waited about 15 minutes for the Dulles Hilton shuttle but when it came the driver very brusquely told us they were not accepting vouchers anymore and we needed to go back inside to get a different hotel from United. We called the hotel directly and the front desk person slightly more politely said they were indeed overbooked and sold out. So we went back to the United ticket counter and see one other forlorn passenger who had been the only other guy working with the concierges with us in the United lounge. He got the same hotel story. After another half hour (now well past midnight) we got hotel and taxi vouchers for the Fairfax Marriott at Fair Oaks. We had to take a longish cab ride and finally collapsed in the room around 1:15am. So went the first day of our vacation. Barb wants you to know, and it’s entirely fair to point out, that she was remarkably calm through this entire process and is now thoroughly hooked on business class for international travel.
Day 2 Friday 5/11/18 – Fly to Vienna!
With a day of leisure and a 1pm check out time, we went down to breakfast only to find that our food vouchers were not acceptable at the hotel as we’d been told. No luck arguing at front desk but they did give us free Wi-Fi thanks to my Marriott Rewards membership. We decide to head across the parking lot to the Fair Oaks Mall to see what was available. After a casual walk all through the mall we decided on a breakfast sandwich from Subway rather than waiting for the bigger restaurants to open at 11. We went back to the hotel for a short rest and sucked in some Wi-Fi.
At about 1:20pm, after someone else took the 1pm taxi we had arranged, we caught a Washington Flyer taxi to the airport. Thanks to Barb’s gift of gab, the driver gave us more lessons in taxi driver life. Short fares to Herndon/Reston (like we will do when we return) are a pain for drivers who have to wait for hours in the Dulles pool to get a fare, but drivers need to take it with equanimity. Long fares also happen, sometimes as far as Pennsylvania, Richmond, Norfolk, Baltimore. The new Metro connection to Dulles is not much of a worry for the driver, but Uber and Lyft are real problem/competition.
Check in at Lufthansa was painless. We still had $80 in food vouchers to burn and found the DC Chophouse restaurant at Dulles, the most expensive looking place in the airport. Barb ordered onion soup and a shrimp appetizer. I got a NY strip steak and Bloody Mary. The food was decent, made much better by the fact that we weren’t the ones paying for it. We left with $10 to spare.
We killed a couple of hours in the Lufthansa business class lounge. It was nearly identical to the United lounge but a bit more worn. There was a slightly wider food selection including sandwiches but we were not hungry at that point. The flight finally got underway at 6pm (thanks Lufthansa!) and was blessedly uneventful. Business class seats on the 747 were adequate but older than the United 767 — it wasn’t easy to figure out how to control them and I had a hard time getting really comfortable. We were getting very fussy very quickly.
I watched an interesting documentary, Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars. Sort of an authorized biography with unsparing look at his career and battles with addiction. Lots of excellent footage of his early career up to Layla, then it fast forwarded thru 30 years of pedestrian records until the loss of his son (who I forgot was only 4) and Eric’s recovery through Crossroads. Given that Clapton seems to have participated in this retrospective it’s interesting how much it dwells on the years 1966-71 and his relationship with George and Patti Harrison. The Beatles and those crucial years are the gas-giant stars around which so much of our cultural/political lives still seem to revolve. And much of the music stands the test of time, more than what followed.
Food on the flight was decent but not special. I got a duck appetizer and a steak entree. Cheese for dessert was nice. I only slept a couple of hours. I spent the rest of the time with music on my phone, dozing, and watching the plane’s progress on the map display.
Day 3 Saturday 5/12/18 – Frankfurt to Vienna
We arrived in Frankfurt the next morning at about 6:30am, slightly ahead of schedule (thanks Lufthansa!). The Frankfurt airport was huge and disorienting. We walked a long way toward what we thought was our next gate only to learn we needed to go back through customs to a different part of the airport. After another long hike and a short wait in the customs line, we were in low gear by the time we got to the gate for our Vienna flight. I had a window seat but there was not a lot to see. Even though the sky was pretty clear there was a low haze most of the way over largely undifferentiated farmland and green spaces of southern Germany and western Austria.
Finally in Vienna, only slightly worse for wear
We finally landed at Vienna at 11:30am. Frances came to airport to meet us and rode back in car, chatting with Barb the whole way. It was good to have them get a chance to talk. We unpacked a little in Frances’s apartment, took showers, then started exploring for the afternoon. We headed around the corner from the apartment to Karlskirche (Karl’s Church) and the Vienna Museum for an overview of town history. There was a long line at the church so we saved that for later and headed to the museum. Our first stop was a large scale model of the city from 1900. Frances oriented us and pointed out many of the landmark buildings we will visit in the Old Town. She is a good tour guide, especially for Barb, patient with many questions.
With Frances at Otto Wagner’s metro entrance
The museum featured an exhibit on architect Otto Wagner who was instrumental in Vienna’s look and feel. I honestly didn’t know about him, but he’s a big deal in the city and the world of modern architecture. He developed a comprehensive city plan in the 1890s that was never fully realized but his vision is still manifest in a number of buildings and large projects. He founded the Vienna Secession movement in art and design, along with Gustav Klimt and others. His modern designs with art nouveau flourishes are still evident throughout Vienna, and represent a high point that the city still seems to harken and aspire to. As we left the museum, we stop by one of the cutest examples of Wagner’s work, an original entrance to the Karlsplatz U-bahn (metro) stop.
Third Man Hole
From the museum, we walked about a half-mile toward the Naschmarkt, stopping briefly by one of the distinctive entrances to the Vienna sewers used in the film, The Third Man (here’s another good article about the movie). This English spy thriller, written by Graham Greene, features Orson Welles and was filmed on location in Vienna in 1948-49 among the rubble of WWII as the Cold War began. It remains a notable part of Vienna’s cultural history and tourist industry. The influential film still screens weekly in town and there are multiple tours dedicated to visiting its sites. We didn’t do the tours, but I did enjoy watching the film at Frances’ recommendation just before we came — and greatly enjoyed the DVD extras and documentaries about it as well.
The Naschmarkt is about five long blocks full of food, restaurants and tourist stands, capped with a flea market on Saturdays. It sounds like it’s named for a Night Market but it’s really closer to a “Nosh Market”. It was busy and vibrant, and a good introduction to the city’s food highlights, even if it’s not necessarily the best place to get top quality meals. We went all through the place including the flea market, with Frances scouting for dishes, Barb looking for souvenirs and me watching for likely snacks. We found some souvenirs for Barb and olives for me. I had a free sample of falafel and should have got more, both because it was tasty and because I think I sort of broke protocol with the shopkeeper when I tried it but moved on. But Barb and Frances were moving down the row quickly and I needed to catch up. We encountered and subsequently tried to avoid a cluster of a few dozen folks from a Viking River Cruise tour group. They reminded me why I don’t like being in tour groups, feeling herded along from designated shop to shop.
We circled back to Frances’ apartment about 4pm to drop off stuff. I was dragging at this point but Barb and Frances were still ready to go. So back out we plunged into Old Town toward the Opera House and St. Stephan’s cathedral. We got a little better oriented then tracked back to Frances’s neighborhood for dinner at Sudlander Cafe-Bistro. I shared pimientos de padron with Frances and tried cevapcici, a kofta-like ground beef sausage. And a couple of nice big cold steins of beer. It’s one of Frances’s favorite places, very near her apartment, and made for a pleasant, low-key meal.
We got back to apartment at all of 7pm, exhausted. We tried to stay up for Eurovision Song Contest but barely made it to 8pm. I don’t think we missed much, but still wish this goofy cultural phenomenon was easier to find in the States. Everyone was in bed by 9. I slept until around 5am.
Some initial impressions of Vienna: There’s definitely an Old World feel to the Old Town, almost the definition of Old Europe. There are height restrictions on buildings and a number of pedestrian-only streets, lanes and alleys. It’s walkable but with a good transportation infrastructure, much of it underground for the cold winters. It’s hard to say that the city is beautiful, but Vienna’s core is functional and grand, with lots of Hapsburg palaces, churches and public buildings. There are way more palaces and museums than we can absorb. And churches.
The city harkens back to Austro-Hungarian greatness at turn of 20th century, and seems like it would just as soon forget rest of century. A lot of city life and beauty appears to be indoors or underground, probably due to long cold winters. Springtime is a nice time of year and a lot of sidewalk cafes and parks are full but still some level of joy seems missing. It’s hard to put a finger on; things seem businesslike but short on exuberance — not necessarily a bad thing, but restrained. Maybe it’s the difference between appreciation for 19th century classical music, opera and ballet more than more modern jazz, rock and hip hop.
Day 4 Sunday 5/13/18 – Vienna
A long, full day with Frances. We start with quick sandwich bites at the Karlsplatz subway station: Frances and I got a tasty bread with cheese and speck, Barb a ham sandwich. We walked through town to the Spanish Riding School show at 11. Frances led the way and was Barb’s dedicated tour guide. This show is the one Vienna event we planned several months ahead, reserving tickets to get good seats. The show features the famous Lipizanner stallions doing a series of intricate steps and maneuvers. Here’s a good photo essay.
The show itself is precise and stately, and surprisingly quiet. The sand or whatever they put on the floor almost completely muffles the horses’ steps, and Viennese waltzes and other music fill the air. It’s an intriguing tradition and spectacle. Ballet for horses, it’s often called. I’m glad we saw it; don’t think I need to see it again.
Frances orienting Barb at the Hofberg Palace 
Ready for the Lipizzaner show
After the show we decided to have a quick bite before plunging into a museum. Frances recommended the Bitzinger wurst stand near the Opera so we head over, then had some confusion over which wurst to get. The bratwurst is not quite what we expect: two thin sausages stuffed into a roll. The grillwurst is better and I help Frances finish hers. There were lots of other choices and I wish I had the time and appetite to try a few more. And there were no frites, which is what Barb really wanted, even though they were listed on the menu. But now it’s museum time so we head back to the Hofburg Palace complex.
Frances led us to the Imperial Treasury Museum which includes more crown jewels, vestment robes and reliquaries than can be imagined. Very impressive collection and the good audio guide helps sort out the items and gives some much needed background on the progression from Holy Roman Empire (Charlemagne, Hapsburgs, Maria Therese) to Austrian Empire (Maria Therese) to Austro-Hungarian Empire (Franz Joseph). For a moment I felt like I was starting to get a bit of a handle on the history, but even a few weeks later it seems hopelessly convoluted. Someday I’d like to better understand the HRE, span of the Hapsburgs, the split with the Spanish branch in the 1500’s and the intermarriages and loyalties that sustained the dynasty into the 18th Century.
This little bit of research gave me an opportunity to look up the aphorism about the Holy Roman Empire being none of the above and was surprised to learn it derives from Voltaire. We also learned a little about the Order of the Golden Fleece which is still an operating chivalric organization of knights. They have a long and complicated history which seems ready-made for conspiracy theories like the Knights Templar, but seems to be benign…or so they’d have us believe.
After several hours we were museumed out. We walked around Hofburg palaces and grounds, Frances guiding all the way. Then we wound back through town toward Stephensplatz, passing many highlights like the Austrian Parliament, Vienna Town Hall, Beethoven’s home, and much more. Lovely city, lovely day. Streets are clean, active but usually not crowded. Lots of public art.
We stopped briefly in the Jesuit Church where Frances points out the ceiling fresco painted with a forced perspective dome. It’s quite impressive and a clever visual trick for having been done in 1703. Congratulations to Brother Andrea Pozzo, a Jesuit who was busy all through Italy and Vienna becoming a master in this technique called quadratura. There, we learned something.
Dome? What Dome?
Our tour went on, winding all through town until we hit the ring road on the other side by Stadtpark. Eventually we got a tram because Frances really wanted us to see the Hundertwasser House. I didn’t know what it was and didn’t know what to expect. We hopped off the tram on a regular Vienna street just out of the Old Town to find this organic-looking oddball building with trees growing out of all sorts of spaces. It looked like a Gaudi structure being reclaimed by nature. The building was designed in the 1980’s by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an eclectic Austrian designer/artist/architect who eventually transplanted to New Zealand and died in 2000. I can’t say that I’d ever heard of him, but the building has become a landmark in Vienna and there’s a nearby museum dedicated to Hundertwasser that we didn’t visit. Now, having researched a bit more after the fact, I wish we did take more time to learn about this character.
We took the tram back into Old Town where I treated the ladies to a Mother’s Day dinner. Barb wanted wienerschnitzel so Frances made reservations at her top spot, the Plachutta Wollzeile. Barb and Frances both ordered the wienerschnitzel, I tried pepper steak. Very tasty all around. Subsequently Barb and Frances decided that the wienerschnitzel here was the best they sampled on the trip, complemented by an excellent vinegary potato salad.
We took the tram home and watched scary BBC mysteries into the late evening. Frances gets many dozens of cable channels but evidently there’s a German language content rule so there are only a handful of English channels, most of them news. BBC Entertainment is pretty much the only non-news one, which is fine except the content repeats a lot from day to day, we discovered.
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