Day 21: September 22, 2015 –
It was 8am, when we arrived at the Vienna station (Wien Hauptbahnhof) after our overnight train voyage. We found an internet connection at the train station. So I was able to get in contact with Hendrik (the host of our apartment rental). I sent him a message letting him know that we had arrived and asked when it would be a good time to come by and drop off our bags. He quickly responded with a message back, that said it would be fine to come by around 1 pm. We basically had about 4 hours to kill, before we needed to start looking for a route to the apartment. So we had plenty of time to wander around nearby the station.
We weren’t going to explore Vienna with our 50lb packs on our backs, so we looked for the lockers. As we took the escalator up to the main level, we noticed that there were a lot of people lined up outside one of the customer service offices. We later learned that, these were the Syrian Refugees, whom we had heard so much about. The rumor that was going around, was that Germany had closed it’s borders to Syrian refugees, and there was a limited number of trains that were letting into the country.
After locking up our bags, we walked out of the train station. As we once again hit the open air, we were confronted with what felt like a wide open space, where everything seemed to be in the distance. It was very similar to our experience in Bruges, where the main train station felt like it was placed out of the center of the town. You have to walk or take a bus to where things are really happening.
We spent a little time looking at the map, but decided that maybe we should just start walking, and see where we ended up. We headed down one of the streets, and happened upon the Belvedere Palace. It felt like the Vienna Palace of Versailles, complete with gardens and fountains. The Palace contained priceless works of art, which were available for viewing, but it was still closed when we arrived. We considered coming back and paying the $25 per person to enter, but we had seen a lot of art already on our trip, and we were running out of money. We decided to just continue walking through the beautiful gardens.
There were lots of people jogging through the grounds and if I lived in Vienna, I am sure that would take on a similar practice of jogging through the Belvedere park. We spotted lots of overweight crows in the park. So while Vienna is often ranked the most livable city in the world for humans, it was clearly a crow’s paradise as well. We reached the ends of the gardens and walked past a second palace down the hill. We walked through an archway and on the other side was the rest of the world.
Across the street from the palace was a museum shop, and nothing tempts us more, than famous paintings on clothing, stationery, and other office supplies. The store seemed to contain mostly items with Gustav Klimt’s work (because he worked in Vienna) and Mucha’s work (who is one of Elizabeth’s favorite artists). All the items in the shop were out of our budget, so we resisted the temptation to purchase any keepsakes, and started circling back towards the train station.
As I mentioned before, all of the travel books rank Vienna as one of the most comfortable cities in the world. In every street corner that I crossed and every bus that I rode, I looked for evidence of this. I think that one of the many characteristics, which stood out in great cities, is ease of transportation. Everywhere we looked, there were bike lanes, city bike rental stations, and cable cars that stopped every few minutes. The city bikes in Vienna were €1 for registration, and then free for the first hour, €1 for the second hour, and so on until you reached €20 for the day. Of course, if you never bring the bike back, they charge your credit card something like $600, but the perk is that it’s free as long as you ride it to one of the many stations throughout the city within 30 minutes.
We came across a second hand shop and I decided to go inside. I loved going into second hand stores and seeing what sort of items were for sale, even if I’m not going to buy anything. I also wanted to see what the people in Vienna were selling to see how different their fashion was from that of the United States. The shop had lots of high quality clothes in the men’s section. There were lots of sport coats, some leather jackets, and the great find, a Bavarian hat with lots of little pins on it from different years and different places, that the person had visited. It was € 30, but that hat had history. I thought that I might be able to find a newer hat for less, with less history, so I put it back.
While we continued circling around in route to the train station to get our packs, we saw some beautiful statues, a fountain spraying water into the air, and architecture which looked very similar to that Paris. We ended up walking through the Vienna Technical University’s campus and the courtyard of the St. Charles Cathedral.
Through out Europe, as well as in Vienna, we saw pretty much four different types of bars/restaurants. There was the cafe, that sold mostly espresso, wine/beer, and maybe a few pastries. The bar, which only sold beer, wine, and liquor and rarely food. The bakery, that sold loaves of bread, croissants, desserts, sandwiches, and sometimes coffee. And finally, Turkish food shops, which would sell falafel, kebabs, döner, pizza, and a variety of other items depending on the shop.
There were also pubs and fancy restaurants around here and there. However, most of the time the food being served at those establishments was so expensive, that you had to really be in a point in your life, where money is no object, in order to afford to eat at one everyday on such a trip. After 2 weeks of bread and cheese, it became harder and harder for Elizabeth and I to walk into a bakery, and find something different to eat.
After walking around Vienna for 30-40 minutes, we gave in and went into the Turkish restaurant across from the train station. Elizabeth ordered a falafel sandwich and I ordered a döner plate. I remembered the last time that we ordered food, we didn’t have any cash, so before he made the sandwich, I asked, “Do you take Visa?” Everyone in the place looked at me like I was crazy, for not knowing that this was a front for some illegal smuggling ring (just kidding). “Cash only”, said the gentleman nearest to the cash register. I apologized, and then we walked out. In America, you can use your card almost anywhere, at a McDonald’s, a farmer’s market, but in Europe, most places to buy food are cash only. The idea that you can just bring your credit card with you to Europe, and pay for everything, was just not possible from our experience, unless you are eating at exclusively high end restaurants and stores. I guess then you can afford the 5%-10% foreign transaction fees.
Time was ticking down for us to meet with Hendrik. We decided that we would walk back to the train station, and see if any of their food court, fast food places accepted credit cards. There were a handful of different options, Nordsee, Burger King, Chinese Food, a croissant sandwich place, and a pizza place. I thought about ordering a slice of pizza, but the pizza place didn’t accept cards. I looked across the food court, and I saw the little credit card icons on the Burger King sign. I hopped in that line, while Elizabeth went next door to the Chinese place. I paid for my order, and then gave Elizabeth my card, and she waited through the long line.
“Try to find a table!” She said. So I walked around the busy food court with my double cheeseburger and fries, looking for two seats. It was at this moment that we truly realized the impact of the Syrian crisis first hand. ISIS with the help of the Russia, paired with a civil war in Syria, had driven thousands of people from their homes, to the Wien Hauptbahnhof food court. Every booth and table was packed, and the people weren’t going anywhere. Some people had food on their tables and were eating, but the mostly families were just sitting there waiting until they found a way to get to their next destination.
When Elizabeth was finished eating, we went down the escalator to the luggage lockers. We retrieved our bags, then looked at a metro map to confirm our transfers to get to the rental apartment. We were to take the metro one stop to Karlsplatz, then one stop to Volkstheater, then we were practically there. We took the escalator down to the metro level, and the train was starting to leave. I sped up my steps, then hopped on the train, and the door closed behind me. I turned to looked around and Elizabeth was still standing on the other side of the door. I frantically pressed the button to open the door. But it was too late, the button was disabled. Our eyes met and in slow motion, the train pulled away.
I got off at the next stop and hoped that Elizabeth had gotten on the next train. I waited on the platform for her to arrive. A few minutes later, when the next train pulled up, I didn’t see her. Had she remembered the stop? Had she missed the train again? For a moment, I lost my breath. I heard her call to me, then I saw her and exhaled.
She had stepped out of the train from a different car, then called out to me and when she saw me. “It’s lucky, we both know where we’re going,” she said. Which was definitely true.
We got on the next metro at the Volkstheater stop, and after some turn around when arriving at the street level, we were headed in the right direction. We walked up the hill and took a street to the left, down to Hendrik’s apartment building. It was a white building, with multiple stories, and a set of tall back doors. Next door to the apartment building, there was a small park, and you could hear children playing. Later that night however, we would see a young couple smoking pot on one of the benches, so that takes place there as well.
There wasn’t a name or number on the door, but thanks to the phone, I sent Hendrik a message. I let him know, that we were standing outside, and he came down to let us in. Hendrik was a little taller than me and very skinny. He had a really long beard, that was rounded off at the end, like Dumbledore. His dirty blonde hair was styled in a ponytail on the top of his head. He was wearing a dress shirt and tie, with tight black cuffed jeans. I’m not sure what this look was called, but he was owning it and wore it well.
He brought us down to the room, where we were to stay, which was in the basement of their two story flat. We went passed a small kitchen that looked like a facade, and then entered the doorway of a large bedroom. The room was big and spacious with white walls, that towered up to the high ceilings. The decor had a repurposed looked to it, with pallets for the box spring, and aged copper pipes for a coat rack. There was a computer table that was probably from IKEA, with 4 beers in the front and center. The wall to the left of us had two windows looking out to the sidewalk above. Between the windows was a gold painted plaster cast of Hendrik’s girlfriend’s butt hanging inside a gold frame.
Hendrik seem very cool. He was originally from Germany, but had lived in Vienna for a few years. He spent some time living in Australia and when he spoke English, you could hear in his accent. His twinge of Aussie inflection, mixed with the sass of German, with the long beard and bushy ponytail on top, gave him a unique character that completed the package. He worked for a beer company that distributed and produced it’s own beer and he offered us some samples, which were placed on the desk.
He talked with us a little bit about the beer. Then Hendrik sat with us for a bit, while he tried to figured out the WiFi password. It ended up being something like “BitchgetinthereandcleanthefuckingkitchenX)”, but he couldn’t remember exactly how it was phrased or which punctuation, he was supposed to use. While he tried to figure it out, we asked him where he liked to hang out. We were practically begging him to let us hang out with him, but he was going to be busy all night working.
We showed him our list of things to see and he said, “These places are nice, but you don’t just want to see churches, do you?” Oddly enough, that was pretty much all we had been doing on our whole trip. I didn’t mention it, but we had stopped into a random church earlier, just to see what it looked like inside.
He said that he was working that night until 10pm, but the neighborhood is very trendy, so we could probably walk around any block, to find a cool place to eat and drink. After he got the WiFi situated, he had to get back to work, so he left us to our own devices. For Elizabeth, that meant taking a long nap in the mountainous, white comforter, which topped one of the most comfortable mattress of our trip.
I checked my email and saw a message from Julian. He had invited us to a concert that he was attending with his mother that evening. He said that the tickets were € 50 per person, so I had to decline because it was slightly out of our budget. I checked online for the prices of operas, plays and other things that we “had” to see in Vienna. Everything seemed like it was either sold out or too expensive for what was being offered. We had run into some people earlier in the day, whom were people dressed in 17th century garb. They had been handing out flyers and selling tickets to a Mozart themed show, which appeared to be a play or a concert. Lots of them approached us, and would show us a flyer, then try to hustle us into spending € 50. By this time in our trip we were digging into our emergency fund, so anything over about 25 was our high price mark.
Once Elizabeth woke up, we left the apartment and walked down towards the metro station, then sort of just kept walking. We arrived at a cable car stop at the bottom of the hill, and there were people lined up on the streets performing. It appeared to be some kind of “sit in”, protesting cars and traffic. There were hundreds of bikes lining the median of the road and there were people in folding chairs sitting around.
There was a huge crowd gathered around a young man on a oversized unicycle. He was doing tricks and telling jokes. A few feet from the crowd, there were 4 people dressed up as Native Americans, and playing one of the theme songs from the movie Kill Bill. They had a nice little set up with microphones, amps, and a suitcase full of CD’s. Across the street, we spotted some rental city bikes and thought it might be fun to go for a bit of a ride. We wanted to cycle through the central area and see what the Vienna tourist district was all about.
We filled out the bike registration, which seemed ridiculously long, and checked out the first bike. Then with a different credit card, we registered and checked out the second bike. We started to ride, but Elizabeth was having trouble going anywhere. She told me to try to ride it, and of course, we found out that the only purple bike (Elizabeth’s favorite color) was the faulty one. We were able to exchange it though, for the common, yellow bike. People were lining up behind us to rent their bikes as well, so it looked as though the pro bike protest was working.
We checked the GPS and started riding towards the St. Stephen’s Cathedral. We were biking too fast, then stopping to wait for the GPS to keep up, but it was just taking too much time. We decided, we were probably better off just winging it. We’d ended up riding past a palace, the parliament building and a few other beautiful buildings.
We biked passed the roundabout with the horses and carriages. Then after a few lefts and rights, we arrived in the pedestrian zone, near St Stephen’s Church. For a block or two, we broke the rules and biked down the road, but when we didn’t see anyone else biking, we got off our bikes and walked until we got to a street that we could bike down again. As we got nearer to the church, we found the rental bike return rack, and turned in our bikes. 
After our run in with the cash only proprietors, who ran the kabob shop, we knew, that if we were going to eat, we would have to stop at an ATM. Lucky for us, there were a bunch of banks in the area. Across from the church, I found a lederhosen and dirndl shop. I popped my head in, but the shopkeeper said, they were closing soon.
This taste of Oktoberfest got me excited to go to Munich. I tried on a Bavarian style hat, which was $40. Earlier in the day, I saw a similar hat in the second hand shop and after trying on this hat, I regretted not picking it up the second hand hat.
We found that virtually every city has that street or area of town that caters exclusively to rich luxury shoppers. You start seeing the same old stores and learn that you aren’t going to avoid them. We rented two more bikes and rode back through the palaces. Finally, we found a Vienna sausage stand. It wasn’t a tiny canned sausage, but a full sized sausage of deliciousness. This sausage stand had multiple varieties of sausages and sauces, to cater to the palettes of all sausage eaters. They didn’t serve vegetarian sausages, so Elizabeth didn’t partake, but I feel like she might have been missing out.
We rode our bikes back around to the museum square. Then turned in our bikes, near the pro-bike protest and decided to look for a place for Elizabeth to eat. We walked back towards the trendy area, where we were staying, because we knew that there were a lot of restaurants there. We ended up passing a bunch of cool shops, which we wanted to check out the next day. Then we happened upon this cool, hole in the wall bar, with a dark atmosphere and cool lighting. There were beer signs and old ads on the walls. There was a back room with tables beyond the bar, so went back there to sit down.
I ordered a beer and a “toast”, which turned out to be a grilled cheese with pesto. Elizabeth went with her signature white wine and ordered a veggie wrap. There was a young man sitting in the back corner table, who looked like he was studying. He sat quietly reading, but then later was joined by another young man, and they started drinking.
Sometime later a third young man sat at the table in front of them, with his back to them. After a few minutes, however he leaned back in this chair, turned his head, and started talking to the other two, as if to make a proposal of some sort. They were talking in German, so I didn’t understand what they were saying, but all of a sudden, they all started laughing. Then the two young men invited him over to their table and they all shook hands. I guess, this is how you make friends in Vienna. At first, I thought he might be selling them something, but then a few minutes later, a woman came up to him and gave him a hug. She sat down with the boys, and the four of them were there talking and laughing until the end of the night.
After a few beers, a sandwich, and a wrap, Elizabeth and I started messing with the camera, trying to divert the flash and see what sort of effects we could get, when in the dark space. After awhile, we had sort of exhausted our time at that spot, and decided to head back to the apartment and chill before bed. We talked a little about our day and what we wanted to do tomorrow, while drinking a few of the beers that Hendrik left us. I felt like one of the beers was sort of a smooth lager, while the other one was a bit sweet and sour, like a lemon shandy.
There had been a bit of a mix up with Hendrik and our reservation on the website for a second night. While we were able to stay at his place for our first night in Vienna, we had to find a different place to stay the second night. I had contacted a few people prior to leaving for Copenhagen and there were a few people that responded back to me. I contacted them again, and luckily one of them had an extra room for us to stay at the next night. We had scheduled to meet our new host, the next morning before noon. So in the morning, we planned to get some breakfast and check out a few local shops before heading to the next apartment.
Day 22: Sept. 23, 2015
In the morning, we took showers, then started walking around the neighborhood looking for some places to get breakfast. I went into this really cool record store across the street. There was a giant flea spray painted under the large store front window, and signage that just called out to me. The store had just opened a few moments earlier and I was their first customer of the day. As far as record stores go, this shop was incredible. Any record that I ever wanted was in this shop, but all of these records came at a price.
I guess that, if you couldn’t live without a certain vintage record, then $20 for a good copy was worth it. Just to flip through and see records that I had never seen before in person was incredible. Every Beatles record, every Rolling Stones, every Pink Floyd record. I even found a copy of Lou Reed’s Transformer, which I had never see a vintage copy of in a record store, and had been one for my list. They had their fair share of high priced rarities, but I wasn’t in any position to buy anything, because there was no room in my overstuffed back pack for anything vintage and breakable.
Elizabeth came into the shop and had to drag me out of there. Once she did, we headed off to get some breakfast. We noticed that lots of these shops were only open about 4 hours a day, and we couldn’t believe that they were able to stay open with so few customers. Eventually, we came up to a grocery store and just picked up a few food items that would tide us over for breakfast. Then we walked back to the apartment to eat. Once we were satisfied and packed, we headed to our next destination. Once again, this other apartment was only a few stops away, on two different trains.
When we arrived, Lida (our new host) buzzed us in. We then went up a spiral staircase, which circled around a caged elevator that was no longer in service. The apartment was two stories up, then through a big black door, there stood Lida. She had brown hair, was in her early 20’s, and had been living in this huge apartment with her sister for only a few months. She played the violin and her sister played the piano and they were both studying music in Vienna. She said that she was from Monrovia, but enjoyed living in Vienna. She showed us our room, which was almost bigger than our whole apartment at home. The room was painted sky blue and had 3 beds, even though we would only be using one. After seeing the size of this place, I couldn’t believe that young people could afford to live in such a huge apartment in Vienna. How were they able to pay the rent or even put a deposit on the place, without help, before even having an opportunity to make money off it on Airbnb?
Lida was a very nice host and took out a few minutes to talk to us about the apartment. She was a vegan, and it was important that meat not enter the apartment. Unlike some of our previous hosts, Lida was on top of everything. She had a laminated sheet with the house rules, phone numbers, and the WiFi password on a table in the room, so even if she wasn’t there to be kind and a good host, we still had the sheet.
Lida was running late for work (probably because we showed up a bit later than we anticipated), so she took off shortly after showing us the room. We had the internet once again, so I took the time to map out a few destinations in Vienna that we could visit that day.
I decided that beyond just being in a city that sounded like a cool place to go, I need to see some landmarks of two of the most famous musicians to come out of Vienna. Mozart and Falco. While Mozart gets all the fame and accolades, Falco had his time and place, and was a huge icon in the German speaking world. Tim from the ukulele meetup said that we needed to see the the Falco staircase and I independently wanted to see Mozart’s final resting place.
The Falco staircase was actually really close to where we were staying, but we couldn’t really find it right away. I thought about asking some people on the street and Elizabeth would say, “Don’t ask that kid, he doesn’t look like he knows who Falco is.” Eventually, we asked an old lady with a dog. Elizabeth said, “If you see an old lady walking her dog, you know that she knows the area, because no one walks their dog too far away from their own neighborhood.” That’s a good tip for traveling! Ask old ladies for directions.
The old lady pointed us in the right direction and I was sure that it was going to be a huge tourist destination. When we arrived, however, we only saw a big historic sign for it, not a plaque or even a real “staircase”. It was basically a sign outside of a subway stop that read “Falcostiege” and something like, “He wrote the hit song, Rock Me Amadeus”.
A little disappointed with the Falco monument, I was sure that the Mozart grave was going to be more impressive. Before our voyage to the edges of Vienna, we took a detour through a street market. This market was how I would imagine a middle eastern marketplace. Vendors getting out for some hardcore hustling and being pushy salesmen. As we walked through, one of the venders heard us speaking English and could tell that we were from America. He immediately said, “You are from America! I love America! I love Obama!” We sort of laughed about it, but I am pretty fond of Obama, myself.
We got our fill of the market pretty quickly and didn’t find much that we were interested in buying, so walked back to the metro station. The cable car, that we wanted to take was near the Karlsplatz metro stop, which was an area that we had become acquainted with the prior day. However, the more that we looked around, we found, that there were lots of cable cars in that area, and the one that we needed to take was a few blocks away.
We arrived at the stop, hopped on the appropriate cable car, and rode it for close to a half hour. When Mozart was reburied, they decided to place him in a cemetery, which you had to work to go see him. We finally we arrived at our destined stop, in an industrial area of the city. There was a massive T-Mobile building, a car company, and some car dealerships; definitely not a peaceful place to reflect on the greatest composer of all time. We headed down the road in the direction that seemed correct, then we appeared to be walking towards a highway.
There was an oddly placed food stand, a school, and some apartments, but nothing that looked like a cemetery. We continued walking, until finally, we saw the brick, arched entrance to the cemetery. Inside the entrance, there was a map of the cemetery, which listed who was buried there, and where their graves were located. The only name that stood out was Mozart’s.
We headed down the main path and admired the tombstones, some of which were up to 300 years old. Mozart received a special plot, with a little bench, so that you could sit, reflect, and remember the impact he had on culture, yet he died so young. When you are 35, and you hear that Mozart died at 35, it really makes you think about how much of a genius he was, and how much he accomplished, only to die young and penniless. We sat quietly for awhile and could hear the highway nearby, and wondered if the drivers zooming passed, knew that Mozart was below.
We slowly walked back towards the entrance, and picked up some buckeyes, to remember our time in that space. As we walked out to the road, instantly, a tour bus of the elderly tourists arrived. We sighed in relief, that we were able to have some peace with Mozart, before this noisy crowd arrived. We had been proud that we went off the beaten path, but felt a little defeated at the site of the tourists, because we thought that we discovered a secret. However, the fact that the tour bus was coming out meant, that at least old Wolfgang was getting a little love, so many years after his passing.
We walked back to the cable car stop, but stopped at the little food stand on the way. I seemed like it catered to a very small clientele, given it’s location. However, there was the huge T-Mobile building, which probably had a cafeteria, so someone would have to really want to mix it up, to eat at this stand. We ordered some pizza and Fanta (which is way better than the Fanta in the US). Then, we rode the cable car back to the city center.
We took some more photos and walked around the touristy area again. We stopped for some dinner, in what felt like a German themed restaurant. There was one waiter, who spoke some English, but the waiter that we were assigned, only knew German. I pointed out a dish on the menu, that was beef and dumplings, and ordered a beer. Elizabeth asked the young, German waiter all of these questions about the food. He looked terrified. He went over to the bar to fetch his co-worker, who spoke English, and brought him to our table. He explained to Elizabeth that the vegetable soup had vegetables in it, but in the end, she didn’t end up ordering it.
The food was very appetizing, and I was glad that we found this place. There were so few other options, that we were running into, where both of us could be happy. We wanted to have another drink, and check out some more of the shops in the trendy area. So we hopped on the metro and headed back to that neighborhood.
We stopped into a really, cool, comic book and graphic novel shop, where we saw a bunch of books, that we wanted to buy, but couldn’t possibly fit into our packs. There was another shop, that we walked into that looked like you were walking back in time, into the 60’s. All the clothes were vintage and period specific. Even the shopkeeper had a mop top hairstyle, like the early Beatles.
We walked into another shop that printed original t-shirt designs. Some of the design examples were, Beethoven crossed with a clockwork orange logo, a shirt where Mozart had an afro, and a shirt where Arnold Schwarzenegger had an afro, and the shirt said, “I’ll be black!”. I tried on one of the shirts, but it fit really weird on me, so I decided not to get it.
We thought about stopping into the bar, where we went the night before, but then opted to just get some alcohol at a grocery store, and drink cheaply, at the apartment. As per usual, our ignorance about Europe was kicking in, and we forgot that every store in Europe closes before 8pm. Whether you want beer, cigarettes, food or medicine, you will have to wait until morning. Even though, we walked down a few different streets to see if there were different stores, while 8:05 became 8:10, then 8:15, no one was serving.
If we were going to get a drink, we were going to have to travel back to the other side of town, where all the cool bars were. So instead, we just chilled in the apartment and listed to some music. We were traveling by train, to Prague in the morning at 8:00 am. We needed our beauty sleep, if we were going to wake up early enough to make it to the Haupbahnhof and get some breakfast.
Places We Bought Food and Drinks
Bitzinger (sausage)
Albrechtsbrunnen (Danubiusbrunnen), Albertinaplatz, 1010 Wien, Austria
Located near the Vienna Palace, this stationary sausage cart gives the name Vienna sausage a whole new meaning. While there are plenty of fancy restaurants or Turkish falafal shops around Vienna, this sausage stand stands alone for quick, affordable, and delicious food. This stand may have your traditional hotdogs, but is also has flavored, pork, beef, and chicken sausages, paired with fruit, cheese, and spices. While a stand in the US may only have ketchup and mustard, this stand makes sauces part of the menu. Whether you are into sweet or spicey, this place will hit the spot.
DAS BIERO Institut für Bierologie und Hektoliteratur
Neubaugasse 57, 1070 Wien, Austria
This dive bar located in Neubau is one of the great hidden gems of Vienna. While they only have a few beers on tap and a limited menu of wraps and grilled cheese sandwiches, this bar isn’t about quantity, but about quality. The low light and old signage gave this bar a timeless feel, that allowed you to imagine people planning revolutions or writing operas at it’s backroom tables. This bar proved that a cool name and a simple concept can lead to having one of the coolest bars in the most liveable city in the world.
Beef and Dumplings Place near St Stephenzplaz
While I didn’t write down the name and couldn’t find it on a map, this restaurant located off the main pedestrian street near St. Stephenzplaz, is a must if you happen upon it. While they sort of have a feel somewhere between Denny’s and Applebee’s, this restaurant has a fine selection of German and Austrian dishes. They only have a few beers to choose from, but their Beef and Dumplings is mouthwatering. We couldn’t be sure, if there was really any vegetarian options, but there is plenty of meat on the menu. Only one person speaks English, so brush up on your German. If you are walking around looking at all the expensive clothing stores and you see a place set back near a small mall, stop in for some goodness.
Map
