Aufwiedersehen Wien!

Shortly after arriving in Strasbourg, it finally seemed to dawn on me that my experience in Vienna as part of my Year Abroad and during that summer in particular had come to an end. Even once I’d returned to the UK and I wasn’t sitting in 4 hours of intense German language tuition on Monday morning, the experience still felt somewhat prolonged, mainly by the fact that during the couple of weeks that followed, my Facebook newsfeed usually featured photos from the summer course and Vienna in general, uploaded by the people I’d met there. The uploads and the comments meant that so many wonderful moments were relived a matter of a few weeks after they’d happened, and so the experience seemed to last a bit longer.

However, now that September is nearing its end and I’ve once again left my native country for foreign lands, it seems that all of us from the course have finished sorting through our photos and have instead now gone back to our lives outside of that bubble. Combined with the many statuses and photo updates that now flood my Facebook newsfeed of my various linguist friends also setting off on their Year Abroad, and that chapter now seems to have well and truly come to a close.

In many ways though, that’s a good thing, because the ending of one chapter means the beginning of the next, and so the timing of my moving to Strasbourg, this time for a much longer residency abroad, seems fitting in that respect. Or rather, it’s probably fitting that I should feel the sense of closing one chapter and starting a new one at a time when there is such an obvious shift in gear in my life.

There were things that I missed whilst living in Vienna, customs that I missed from the UK in general and more specific people, places and experiences that I missed, but when it came to end of the month and the summer course was over, I didn’t want to leave. It was a wonderful month, both in terms of the many fun things that I got to do and enjoy, the result of having a month in such a diverse and entertaining city as Vienna, and also in terms of the linguistic benefits, in that by the end of a month of interacting and thinking almost solely in German my language ability was greatly improved and those effects thankfully haven’t particularly faded.

Someone said to me during the final week of the summer school that you meet twice in every lifetime. While I can’t say exactly when or even where that’ll be, I look forward to it. Until next time, my friends from the Diplomatic Academy.

A cup of coffee and a slice of cake

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you… THE COFFEE AND CAKE CATALOGUE.

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To those of you preparing to embark upon a trip to Vienna in the not too distant future, consider this your handy guide to where best to spend your coffee breaks and what to order whilst you’re there.

Disclaimer: As much as I wish it were a complete list, I didn’t quite manage to get to every single café and bakery in Vienna, so this list is by no means exhaustive. Also, a warning: an Eiskaffee and a slice of cake is likely to set you back the best part of €10 at most of these establishments, so it’s not the cheapest of experiences, but one that I would argue is most definitely worth it.

Café Demel A charming and bustling café in the city centre near the Hofburg palace. This one gets bonus points for the fact that you can order a lot of their cakes to go, plus they have a ice cream stand open at the front on warm days and they have a gift shop if you wish to take a sample of Viennese confectionary back with you to your nearest and dearest. The café itself is mainly upstairs, and while you may have your suspicions when going up the fairly narrow staircase, you emerge into various small and elegantly furnished rooms on the upper floor, with waitresses rushing about, carrying trays of coffee and cake. When you order, you go and choose the cake you want yourself, down to the specific slice if you so desire, so you get a good look at all the sugary delights they have on offer. It’s also the disputed second creator of the Sachertorte, and they have their own take on the classic cake, compared to Hotel Sacher’s. Essentially, the difference lies in the use of apricot conserve in the cake. I won’t say anything more, and instead I’ll let you try it for yourself!

I enjoyed a ginger hot chocolate and piece of Sachertorte, which I can heartily recommend! Sadly I only thought of taking a photo at the end…

Hotel Sacher Hotel Sacher is arguably the most famous establishment on this list, usually known as the home of the Sachertorte. Its culinary reputation precedes it to the point that letters sent there are occasionally addressed merely to Hotel Chocolate Cake. As the name suggests, it also functions as a hotel, but the restaurant is open to all, and they even have their own café next door. The inside, like several well-established Kaffeehäuser, is elegantly furnished and decorated, and you do feel as though you may have fallen back a century. The various rooms of the café are smaller and each room has its own waiting team to help make the experience seem more personal.

Naturally I had to have the Sachertorte here, served in the traditional manner with whipped cream.

Café Schwarzenberg This seems to be a slightly lesser-known café among the ranks of the best Kaffeehäuser in Vienna, but I would argue that it’s every bit as good. It has the elegant interior decor and the comfortable outdoor seating of many of the others, and a good selection of coffees and teas as well as cakes available. I must admit, my heart did flutter a little when I couldn’t find Eiskaffee on the menu, but I asked anyway and was promptly presented with one. In addition to the various more well-known cakes of Vienna, they had also taken the decision to cash in on the cultural side and had a Klimt torte on offer.

It turned out to be a simple but tasty vanilla cake layered with cream and an edible miniature print of part of The Kiss on the top.

Here’s Manuella modelling with her Sachertore at Café Schwarzenberg.

Café Central As the name suggests, this is a rather optimally located café for those in the city centre. The inside is larger than most of the other cafés I went to, presumably to make up for the reduced amount of outdoor seating. It adheres to the great Kaffeehaus architectural tradition with its marble columns and ornate ceilings, and you spend your time torn between looking up at the building around you and down at the cake sitting in front of you. Like all good cafés and bakeries, they have a counter immediately in front of you as you walk in with all of their cakes on show, and every now and again a chef will come from the kitchen, bearing a laden tray to replenish the stocks! They also do a nice selection of savoury foods, should you decide to have what some would call a ‘proper’ meal, rather than just cake. Although frankly, I don’t see the problem with just having cake…

Palmhaus Café Having been here twice, I consider myself a sort of expert on the place. It’s a wonderfully located café, with a look out over the Burggarten and with the Hofburg on one side, the views are a great example of Vienna’s classical elegance. It’s particularly lovely in late afternoon, when the sun is well into its descent and there’s a warm summer breeze, when you can sit back and listen to the sounds around you with the smell of coffee wafting gently around you. I don’t recall having any cake here either time I came, so if I did it can’t have been particularly memorable, but the Eiskaffee was particularly good.

Café Museum I ended up going here following The Third Man Tour in the sewer system of Vienna, after which I felt that a restorative Eiskaffee and piece of cake were much needed! The ticket for the tour included a discount voucher for the café, so a group of us went over there afterwards. The outdoor seating offers great opportunities for people watching, as it’s near Karlsplatz, a busy area on the edge of the city centre. The café is also right next to one of the exits from the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station, which makes it very easy to get to and therefore a good meeting point, assuming you manage to find the right exit!

I had a piece of the many-layered Landtmann torte, which was a light vanilla cake with marzipan.

Along with an Eiskaffee, of course!

Halle Café (Museums Quartier) Alas, I have a bone to pick with this particular café. In fact, two. First of all, what was listed on the menu as a tonka bean Eiskaffee turned out to be a small coffee with no cream in sight and a temperature high enough to liquefy any iced dessert in seconds. However, it did taste rather nice with the tonka bean flavouring, so that’s something at least. Secondly, one of my friends ordered this, and the waiter, having heard our accents, presented it to my friend and told her in English that it was the chocolate cake.

This is not a chocolate cake. A chocolate torte, yes, but cake it was not. Trust me, I know my cake. It was quite dark in taste and the texture was less crumbly and more akin to that of a brownie. It was still really nice, especially with the redcurrant sauce, but I was still up in arms about the deceit. Firstly an Eiskaffee with no Eis and then a chocolate cake that wasn’t cake. I despair…

Schloss Belvedere Once you’ve been for a look around Oberes Belvedere, the upper half of this Viennese palace where there’s a permanent Klimt exhibition featuring The Kiss, the café on the ground floor beckons. They also have a good deal of outside seating, offering views into some of the gardens and orchards around the palace. By the time I came here, I had become firmly cemented in my habit of ordering an Eiskaffee, and so this time I paired it with an Esterházy torte, the design of which will remind many of school dinner puddings in the UK. Trust me, this is a lot better. Alternating layers of sponge and cream make for a wonderfully light cake, and like many Viennese baked delights, the added hazelnut filling and almond decoration create a rather delicious result.

Zanoni & Zanoni Ok, so technically this is an ice cream parlour rather than a café, but I felt it deserved a mention for the Eiskaffee alone. Certainly among the largest eateries in Vienna, the outdoor seating can make you feel like you’re being squashed in the middle of a large caffeinated and sugar-fuelled crowd, but once you acclimatise to your surroundings, it becomes more of a thriving and bustling communal area, rather than a disaster waiting to happen. They have a good selection of ice cream dishes as well as more flavours than you can shake a stick at, and what’s more, they’re rather reasonably priced given the standard and location.

Eissalon am Schwedenplatz An ice cream parlour whose name is literally ‘Ice cream parlour at Schwedenplatz’. Like Zanoni & Zanoni, it has a great selection of ice cream flavours and dishes, including a pretty fine Spaghettieis. If you don’t know what one is, it’s ice cream put through a spaghetti slicer to create a dish that looks like spaghetti bolognese, but using vanilla and strawberry ice cream with coconut flakes. It’s heavenly. It also has a bakery area where they have a selection of various cakes. I had a slice of Mozart torte, which contains only just enough cake to maintain structural soundness and an awful lot of pistachio cream, covered in bright green fondant icing. It tasted good though, so I won’t judge it on appearances alone.

Aïda Aïda is a bakery chain in Vienna, and it’s bright pink logo makes it fairly easy to spot on a crowded square. Despite being a chain, there are slight differences between the various branches, depending on the tastes of the regular clientele, so you may well find something different in each one you go into. They’re pretty tourist-friendly in that they usually have posters up on the walls with diagrams explaining the difference between various coffees, so that you can understand what to expect when you pick something at random off the menu. In addition to working as a small café, they have a bakery in each and you can order cakes to go if you want. Speaking of which…

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During the summer course, it was the birthday of one of my friends and classmates, Maxime, and so we celebrated it in true Viennese culinary style! Seeing as Maxime’s birthday fell on a day of lessons at the academy, our teacher had also decided to take the opportunity to celebrate and so had preordered a Sachertorte the day before from her local Aïda, which she brought in. A couple of my classmates had even organised getting a card signed by the rest of the group, and we had candles for the cake as well, so it was a true birthday experience!

Not knowing this, Maxime brought in Schwedenbomben for his birthday too, after he had found a nearby bakery that was open early and that was selling them. Schwedenbomben are rather similar to the Tunnock’s tea cake: a round chocolate shell filled with marshmallow cream and a wafer base to hold it all together. Schwedenbomben, however, go one step further, and they’re usually coated with chocolate and coconut flakes. Interestingly, this year was apparently the first year that Schwedenbomben have been produced en masse during the summer, as they require cooler temperatures to make and the main producers had found it too difficult in the past.

One final bonus point on the food in Vienna: I have realised that my entire life up until this point has been a lie, and I was forced to confront this shattered illusion everyday of my stay in Vienna. They warn you that the Year Abroad will force you to look long and hard at the things you once took for granted and that your expectations will be turned on their head and made to dance in front of you. I thought I was prepared for that sort of thing, what with having studied the language and the culture for many years and having travelled widely too. However, I was not prepared for this:

ALDI, despite being a German supermarket chain, is not called that in Austria.

I did find some sense of solace in the fact that the supermarkets in Vienna are nevertheless of a high quality, and I might even argue a higher quality than in the UK…

The SPAR here aren’t just any old SPAR, oh no! They’re gourmet!

Learning to say no

They tell you as you’re gearing up for your Year Abroad that if in doubt, just say yes. And yet, I’m not sure that that’s always the best idea.

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Thankfully, I’ve not had any bad experiences from saying yes so far, although some of them have been rather tamer scenarios. For example, when ordering an Eiskaffee and a slice of cake in a Viennese café last month, the waiter said something to me that I didn’t catch but I gathered was a question, so I just replied saying yes, that would be fine. Given that it was cake I was ordering, I figured it ought to be fine, because no one in their right mind would put meat in a cake. As it turned out, he’d been warning me that there was marzipan in it, which I happen to love, so that worked out rather well. I had a similar experience in Café Sacher when I didn’t catch what the waiter said after I’d placed my order. It turned out that I’d agreed to having whipped cream with my Sachertorte, as is tradition and again it’s something I enjoy, so that was no bad thing.

However, during my time in Vienna, I started finding the value in being able to say no occasionally. Before I go any further, I should just say: I’m not advocating refusing any and all offers of social interaction presented to you, but there are moments when saying no might indeed be the better idea. Although saying no may feel like you’re then avoiding doing anything, it can lead to unexpected opportunities and experiences. My walk through the Prater, which I wrote about on here earlier, was the result of saying no, albeit indirectly. I was trying to meet up with a couple of friends, but through being delayed and then agreeing to meet them later and elsewhere, we ended up missing each other and I instead spent two quiet relaxed hours strolling through the park.

In some respects, I see saying no as one of the ways of making sure I get those mental health self-care days, the days when I take time for me, just to relax and not worry about planning everything in meticulous detail.

In their guidance notes for Language Assistants, the British Council writes:

As a golden rule, try to say yes to every social opportunity presented to you that does not compromise your personal safety. Accept invitations to places and activities even if they do not sound interesting as you might meet other people there who do share your interests.

I agree with this, but if anything I would put more emphasis on trying to say yes to every social opportunity, or knowing that you can say no, and that so long you’re actively choosing something else over the offer you’re being given, then that’s perfectly fine too. There’s a difference between saying no because you don’t want to do something, and saying no because you’d rather do something else. The first isn’t particularly conducive to getting involved and doing things, whereas the second one usually is.

A year abroad can be tough and at times frankly rather exhausting. Not only are you generally expected to be far more active and involved in your surroundings and the community than you ever are normally at university and in your home country, but you’re also living almost every moment in the company of other people in another language, which is certainly a more mentally strenuous activity when you first start. Even if you’re highly proficient in the language, as many languages students are by the time they go on their year abroad, there’s a difference between being able to speak fluently and easily in a 1 hour class and speaking with the same sense of ease and security throughout the day in a whole host of different situations.

For me, one of things I’ve been learning to do more so over the past year or so is knowing when I need a break, and more importantly how to get that time out and what I can do to make the most of it and relax fully before diving back into a hectic lifestyle again, rather than just falling into an apathetic spell of lethargy. I’ve discovered that, as much as I love being around people and having conversations, I occasionally need some quiet time to myself to be able to think and not have to relate my thoughts in the language of my surroundings.

And so those moments come in the form of quiet days, of days by myself, of days off from lots of interaction. That doesn’t mean becoming a hermit, retreating into my darkened cave up the mountains or in the middle of some impenetrable forest, and it’s not even always spending time at home by myself. I will often still do as much as before, but instead I’ll go to a museum or an art gallery, or I’ll wander the busy streets of the city centre, knowing that I can blend in with the anonymity of the crowd.

A lot of these thoughts originally come from a day about two weeks ago, when I reached the end of a more strenuous week at the summer course in Vienna and I’d got to the point where I just needed a break from the work of it and the people that I associated with that work. I avoided making plans with other people and decided instead to spend a day visiting some of the museums I hadn’t yet had a chance to see in Vienna. I was still going out in the city and surrounding myself in the German-speaking environment, but it was one where I didn’t have to worry to much about speaking the language myself. Indeed, the only times I did speak were when I was paying for admission to the museums and in the café I went to for lunch, and they were standard, predictable conversations that by that point were fairly automatic for me.

One particular experience from that day stands out to me, and that was when I entered Café Sacher, one of the most famous cafés in Vienna and, for what I think might well have been the first time in my life, asked for a table for one. There are so many tropes and clichés surrounding the idea of asking for a table for one, but doing so quite happily made for a wonderfully relaxing and enjoyable experience. In a world where we seem to be constantly surrounded by technology and social media that keep us almost permanently linked to those around us, I’ve started to appreciate the value of saying no and taking some time for introspection and to be with myself.

To go back to the British Council’s advice, I realise that one of the driving principles behind it is that getting involved will present you with more opportunities to improve your language, which is the reason I’m doing a Year Abroad in the first place. However, just as you can’t successfully manage to work at full capacity for hours on end without some sort of break, you also need to take a break when it comes to working on your language. When you’re in the environment of the language you’re studying, you’re still going to pick up on things from what you hear and read, even if you’re not actively using your language.

I guess what I’m advocating is self-awareness and making sure that when you say yes, it’s an active decision and not one made out of apathy or as a base default. ‘No’ needn’t be a bad thing and it needn’t have the negative connotations that we so often give it. On the one day that sparked this post, I said no, and that has made all the difference.

It’s time to drink champagne and dance on tables

Not so much because I have sadly now left Austria, but more because it is an activity that I feel we ought to engage in a little more often than we do at present.

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The title of this blog post comes from a reusable coffee mug I saw on sale in the Albertina Museum gift shop after I’d been for a look around the galleries. (This was also the same museum where the museum party was being held, for those of you who remember that photo from a previous post. Clearly there’s something alcoholic in the air there…) I decided not to buy it in the end for the sake of being thrifty and not adding to my already oversized baggage. It was still 23.2kg on the way back, but let’s not dwell on that fact.

Regardless it was something that rather took my fancy, and lo and behold, the idea seemed to crop up at various points later in the month, albeit not quite as literally as you might think…

At the end of the first week of the summer course, I took a trip out with some fellow students to the region of the Wachau, known in Austria for its vineyards, apricots and generally being a rather beautiful place.

Exhibit A: one of the many monasteries in the region.

During the course of the day’s conversation, we talked about the waltz lessons we were going to have later on in the month, and I mentioned how I’ve already been dancing for about 8 years now, doing Ballroom and Latin alla Strictly Come Dancing, for those interested, and so I was rather looking forward to getting back to waltzing around. As it turned out, one of my friends who was there with us was also a keen dancer, so we decided we ought to take to the dance floor in some form sooner rather than later, because she was only staying for the first two weeks of the course and so would miss the waltzing. As fate would have it, there was a small stage in the courtyard of the second monastery we visited that day, a quiet and unassuming religious institution a little off the beaten path. And so, among cries of carpe diem (thankfully I managed to avoid the concept of YOLO whilst in Austria), we took to the monastery stage for a fast cha cha cha and an even faster Viennese waltz. Having originally believed the courtyard to be empty except for us, I then remembered the lady sitting in the admissions booth near the entrance, who had poked her head out to see what was going on. Once the dance was over, I proceeded to walk past this rather bemused Austrian lady, inclining my head and wishing her a good day as I passed, trying desperately to retain some sense of dignity and respectability.

The courtyard of the monastery in question.

Two weeks later, we had the waltz lessons at the academy, two 90-minute sessions in the main hall led by a professional couple who run a dance school in Vienna. I definitely had the upper hand, especially as I realised that I’ve been dancing for about as long as I’ve been studying German, so the combination of the two seemed rather fitting. We started with the various basics, learning separately before partnering up, and by the end of the first session we’d got as far as dancing in a circle, which varied in size from couple to couple. Thankfully all involved had successfully negotiated 90 minutes of waltzing without so much as toppling over or treading too heavily on each others’ toes. However we were still very much at the slower waltz speed, and so the second session was spent expanding the circle to the size of the room and increasing the speed. Cue many panicked looks and faces of deep concentration. Luckily I found myself dancing with a Ukrainian lady who’d also danced before, so by the time we got to the second session we had reached the happy stage at which we could (literally) waltz around the room, looking serene and relaxed, whilst still trying to dodge the odd couple here and there. Sadly ball season in Vienna starts around November and runs until around April, so the lessons were more designed for the eventual possibility that we would return to Vienna and attend a ball at a later date.

My final dancing tale from the month was a wonderful combination of a more studied style and the generic dancing that is to be found in nightclubs. After the farewell dinner on the final evening of the summer course, a few strings had been pulled and a ‘disco’ set up in the common room of the academy. I use the term loosely, as the situation was thus: two large speakers plugged into someone’s iPod had been set up on a table at one end of the room, in front of which were two sofas and a coffee table. In the middle of the room was a round wooden floor in a sea of burgundy carpet, with more sofas and armchairs by the doors on either side. In one corner there was a dimly lit pool table and in the opposite corner a small bar area with appropriately tall stools. It was therefore probably just as well that only about half of the summer course participants went along, as I’m not sure the space would’ve coped well with a larger crowd.

As the music was being played from one person’s, and later several other people’s, iPods, the resulting playlist encompassed many styles. And so I found myself going from dancing fast Salsa with yet another energetic Ukranian woman to Mas Que Nada, to performing a less structured club style of dancing, complete with the occasional slut drop, to Timber by Ke$ha and Pitbull.

I woud like to think that my next story will go some way towards evening out that slight dent in my reputation, as it starts in the parliamentary buildings of the region of Burgenland. As it involves day drinking though, I’m not entirely sure that this will preserve my image as a saint, but we’re all only human after all. At the end of the third week of our summer course, we had a day trip out to Burgenland, one of Austria’s smaller regions, which is situated to the east of Vienna on the border with Hungary. While it is out in the country, you can forget those mental images of verdant mountainous slopes overlooking crystalline lakes with Julie Andrews’ voice ringing out from somewhere nearby; Burgenland is in the east and so is as flat as a pancake. Trust me, I’ve seen more hilly-looking landscapes in a frying pan on Shrove Tuesday.

Anyway, the day’s visit started out with a visit to the regional parliament buildings, where we were greeted by the president of the regional council, who then gave us a short lecture on the governmental systems in place in the region, as well as a brief overview of the area in general. Afterwards, we found that a small civic reception had been set up for our visit, comprising of a selection of sandwiches and various local wines. Before I’d had the opportunity to glance at my watch and consider the matter, I found myself sipping on a glass of sparkling rosé and nibbling a cheese sandwich, making small talk and lauding the virtues of the building’s architecture. I do sometimes think that I’m starting to become a caricature of myself, but there we go. Not wanting to offend or pass up the opportunity of sampling a glass of the refreshing-looking local white wine, I collected a second glass from the table after having finished the rosé.

Now, a quick note on wine servings in Austria: whereas in the UK you can usually order a small or large glass of wine, or even a medium in those establishments that cater for the indecisive, Austria seems to stick to just two sizes: small and large, which are referred to as ein Achtel or ein Viertel. That is to say, 1/8 or 1/4. Of a litre. Now my previous experience has usually been along the lines of a small glass being 125ml and a large being 175ml, so when presented with a large glass of white wine (the only size they’d poured – ah such a shame…), I was a little wide-eyed in shock. Not wanting to offend (at least, that’s the excuse I’m going with), I proceeded to void the glass of its contents whilst continuing to make small talk.

Needless to say, I was starting to feel the effects when we got back on the coach for the short drive to the next city in the region. We had a short tour around the ‘city’, a word applied only in the most official sense to the collection of buildings that housed around 2,000 people and which felt rather like a large village more than anything. However, it certainly did have its charms, what with the various wine taverns and wine merchants there.

In what I feel was a bid to bring the town into the 21st century, certain establishments had taken to referring to themselves as a Vinothek, a word that brings to mind that oh so modern of inventions, the discotheque.

Others had gone for the more Starbucks-style approach of catering for the young businessperson, too busy for a slower pace of life, by offering wine to go.

In amongst the town swimming in a mist of ethanol, we found more than just the wine taverns and merchants. With its population of 2,000 people and its propensity for a glass or two of wine, the town was naturally going to have a wine academy as its institute of higher education of choice. They even do short-term courses for those of you who think your liver would have enough to deal with under the regime of a normal student lifestyle, never mind one where drinking is a required part of your education.

Having explored the town, we then settled into one of the many wine taverns for a late lunch in the form of platters of breads, meats and cheeses, and a hearty supply of white and red wine. Being a vegetarian, I opted to substitute the meat part of the meal with wine, also in a bid to maintain equilibrium given my teetotal neighbour at the dinner table. Unfortunately maintaining my own balance later turned out to be a little more difficult, but I managed to stay upright.

We later proceeded to spend an hour so on the shores of the Neusiedlersee, a large lake in the area. Being from the heart of England and so usually a good 3 hours away from any shoreline, I took the opportunity to go for a paddle, despite the looks of derision and disparagement from my peers. They were later to be convinced of the joys of such pastimes, and we ended up sitting together on a jetty in the warm afternoon sun.

To round of what has frankly been a rather alcoholic post, I shall leave you with some photos of various signs I saw outside bars and wine taverns around Vienna.

“Who drank my lunch?” (A coaster also to be found in the Albertina Museum gift shop.)

“Grab the vodka, we have to talk about feelings!”

I’ve heard of Irish pubs before, but this was a first. Anyone care to explain?

“Wine, what else?”