Chicken King

Last semester, for someone's birthday, four friends and I decided to go to Vienna, Austria for the weekend. It was technically a disaster, but everything ended up okay at the same time and we still managed to go and have a good time. Everything went wrong and then resolved itself shortly after.

First, the night before we left, our Airbnb canceled. We scoured the internet for last minute places to stay, and there was absolutely nothing. We found a hostel that had terrible reviews mentioning stained mattresses and bed bugs, but in the time it took me to book that someone had beat me to it. I didn't want to sleep on a park bench in Vienna, especially in the first weekend of December, but I thought it would be kind of funny... luckily my roommate found a place for five people on booking.com.

When we got to the airport, one of the members of our group had forgotten his passport. He had kind of invited himself to the trip anyway, plus he didn't help with any of the planning, so we were a bit relieved. In fact, while we were searching for a place to stay, he was calling us trying to get us to help him check in because he couldn't figure out how. How he ever got to Spain in the first place I do not know.

The four of us made it to Vienna, and due to our lack of German and of common knowledge on how cities work, it took us awhile to figure out how to get to the city. We also had no idea how to find the place we had booked, and we were cold. I grew up in Wisconsin, but my friends were from California and Texas. We stopped at a Turkish kebab place to get lunch, and it was then that the place we thought we had booked called us saying that there had been a mistake with the booking website, and that he didn't actually have any available room for us. I started to get excited about the idea of a park bench again, but then he added that he did have a room open for four people, if one of us was willling to sleep on the floor. We told him that was perfect because we were actually a group of four since one of us forgot his passport.

We still didn't know how to find this place. We got a taxi and showed him the address, and he was confused because it was outside of Vienna. We racked up a taxi bill of 40 Euros ($45) and ended up in a dark lot far away from Vienna. The taxi driver was super kind and he didn't leave us there; we called the hotel and put the driver on the phone because we thought he could explain it better in German. He got the directions and left us at our hotel, which wasn't a hotel but rather a restaurant called Chicken King

with bedrooms above it. When the hotel keeper's son (who spoke English) left us our keys, he let out a sigh of relief. We must've been a handful.

As soon as I dropped off my stuff in the room, I wanted to get out and see Vienna. We were far away from the city center, about an hour taking a bus and the metro, but considering we booked it the night before, we were grateful.

Once in the city center, I remember turning a corner and facing this:

I thought it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen; it had been a really long day.

Walking around Vienna, I realized that this was the Europe I imagined before leaving for Spain. Andalusia has its own charm, but it's totally different from Austria.

We really only had one full day in Austria. We picked out what we wanted to do and split off for a bit. I went to the Imperial Treasury and saw lots of old things from important emperors as well as relics.

That afternoon/evening, we went to a Christmas market, something Austria is famous for. It was beautiful, but unfortunately I was too cold to take many pictures.

After trying Schnitzel (it's like a giant chicken tender-actually I was just informed that it's pork- I was a bit disappointed) at a cafe where Mozart once played, we went to a show that had opera, ballet, and music all crammed into 90 minutes. It was like reading the Wikipedia page on how to be classy. A total tourist trap, but I guess you have to do these things in order to not do them again. Plus, we couldn't have afforded the real deal anyway. Before the show started, I heard a "OH, hey guys!" and looked. It was the guy who had forgotten his passport! He actually bought a ticket for the next day and managed to find us in Vienna even though the day before he didn't know how to check into a flight. We had to break it to him that we got downgraded to a four-person room at our strange hotel, but he had somehow found himself a place to stay that night.

It was a cheap flight and a fun little adventure, but I wish we had more time. I have all my trips planned for this semester (France, Italy, Germany and Poland), and as of right now, I'll be traveling solo, because I know where I want to go and what I want to do and I feel more comfortable navigating foreign situations by myself.

Until next time!