Vienna: City of Palaces, Tiny Glasses of Water, and Schnitzel.

The first thing I saw when I got off my plane at Vienna International Airport was a great big sign pointing you in the direction of the smoking room. As a matter of fact as soon as I was able to go outside I took in a great big breath and smelled…cigarettes and bread. I’ve never been around people who smoke so I’m not accustomed to the smell but I quickly realized that I better get used to it since everyone smokes here. I’ve had a couple of different people ask me if they could get a cigarette and clearly didn’t believe me when I told them I didn’t have any. After going out one night we joked that we might as well have been smoking since we had inhaled so much of it.

However cigarettes aren’t the only thing I’ve noticed about Vienna. Eating out is an entirely new experience. There is no such thing as a quick meal here and even if you tried you would fail. You order your food and drinks, eat, and then talk for 2 hours. Servers are absolutely nowhere to be found. They leave you alone to eat your meal, and unlike servers back in the States, they don’t stop by every 15 minutes to ask how everything is. They’re also generally pretty grumpy but you don’t have to tip much or at all so the grumpiness I can deal with.

Viennese food is probably everything I would expect it to be. Usually there aren’t very many meat choices besides pork so I’ve unwillingly turned into a vegetarian. My first Wiener schnitzel was pretty good, though the American in my yearned for a bottle of ketchup.

I’m increasingly overwhelmed by the age of everything. Walking around the Ringstraße you can’t help but think you might be walking exactly where Sigmund Freud walked. While also a city full of artists, Vienna is a city bursting with contradictions. A city of stunning architecture and tired eyed homeless families. Ancient palaces next to fairly new government housing. In many ways it has continued to be the city of the Habsburgs and in many ways it has not. All I know is, this city is beautiful and perplexing and older than I will ever truly be able to imagine.