Wanderlust: Vienna, 2012, Part 2

Our second day in Vienna, we went on a biking and wine tour through the Wachau region, just north of the city. And to prove what a small world it really is, our guide was from Marathon, WI, and her grandparents live in Hermosa, SD. She just happened to marry a Viennese man, and know she lives in Austria. Also on our tour were about 10 Australians who were all on multi-month backpacking trips across Europe. Apparently that's a popular thing to do in Australia after high school and/or college.

The first winery we stopped at was a co-op of sorts for the region. There are three different categories of wine from this region, they are classified by alcohol content from 10.5 to upwards of 16 percent. Starting with the category with the lowest alcohol content is Steinfeder, which translates to "stone feather" and is named after a plant that grows in the rocky soil. Next, is Federspiel or "feather play" and is a term used to in training hawks, another popular activity in the valley. Lastly is Gramand, named after a lizard that suns in the vineyards. (Who knew Austria had lizards, and these are like serious, big lizards we're talking about.) Most of the varietals that are grown here include Riesling, Gruner Veltliner, Pinot Gris, and Chardonnay, and can be made into any one of these three wine categories depending on fermentation.

We hopped back onto the bikes and headed to Durnstein where we had lunch (Weiner schnitzel for Corey and sautéed veggies for me). Then we samples some of the local apricot schnapps. In addition to  grapes, the area has quite a few apricot, apple and pear trees, from which they also make liquor. However, what we call schnapps in the US is really more like a liqueur in Austria, and Austrian schnapps is like straight up moonshine.

In the afternoon, we rode right through the vineyards. It was nearing the end of harvest time, but we still saw a few people out in the rows picking the last of the grapes by hand. Our final stop of the day was at a Heurige Mana in Weissekirchen. A heurige is is traditional Austrian wine tavern. However, for hundreds of years, only the church could sell wine for profit. It was Empress Maria Theresa who finally allowed winemakers to sell wine from their homes, but to prevent over saturating the market, the laws only allowed for two heurigen per town to be open during tavern hours. These laws are still in place today, and when it is the heurige's day to be open, they place a wreath outside their doors.

After the heurige, we went down by the Danube river and got a game of sand volleyball going with the Australians. Now, I may have had a per-conceived assumption that all Australians were great at beach sports like vball and surfing, but that stereotype was proven wrong. For once, I wasn't the worst on the team! One guy even split his pants trying to dive for the ball... Too funny.

At the end of the day, we had biked just over 17 miles. It was a perfect day, only made better by the delicious meal we had once we returned to the city. We headed over to the Naschmarkt, an open air market with a ton of restaurants, and ate at a fish stand. I had the best pumpkin soup of my life with a tasty scallop swimming on top, and Corey had a giant pot of steamed clams. Just lovely.

Our final day in Vienna was busy-busy as we tried to fit in everything else we wanted to see and do before leaving. We started out by returning to the Naschmarkt to check out the day crowd. In the mornings, it's much like a farmers' market with fruit, vegetable, cheese, meat, bread and wine vendors up and down the alleys. We bought some bread, speck (cured meat like proccutio), and cheese (French cheeses, seeing as the few Austrian cheeses we had tried earlier did not impress), and set off with our picnic lunch to the Schonbrunn Palace, the Hapsburg's summer residence.

We toured the, again, ridiculously large summer palace where Napoleon had stayed for a while, and where a 6-year-old Mozart played violin for Maria Theresa way back when. Once we had made our way through the palace, however, it had started to drizzle outside. We found a dry-ish bench in one of the several gardens (once upon a time, this palace was considered "out in the country" and they would go hunting in the huge gardens). 

To warm up after our picnic, we had some coffee and cocoa with some famous Viennese apple strudel back in the palace. It was a all very posh. They also offered a cooking demonstration on how to make strudel, but after seeing a few of the photos, we decided strudel was like puff pastry...it's much easier and tastes much better if you let someone else make it.

Our next stop for the day was the Belvedere museum, home to a huge collection of Klimt's, including the famous "Kiss." My mum introduced me to Klimt a few years ago when I helped her paint the set that she had designed for Charlie's Aunt, done a la Gustav Klimt. Thus, it was pretty fun to see his gold glinted work up close and personal.

Before we knew it, the sun was setting--but we still had a few sights left on our list to see before we left for Slovenia! We made our way over to Prater, a Coney Island of sorts, to ride the Farris wheel made famous by The Third Man (which is now on my Netflix for when I get home). On our way, we made pit stop to see the Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment building designed by Austrian architect Hundertwasser who didn't believe in straight lines or flat surfaces. Pretty bizarre, but pretty outstanding.

Back to the Farris wheel. So this thing is like an old school carnival ride with huge, enclosed cars that fit up to twelve people or so. It takes up to half an hour to go around once depending on how many time it stops, but the view from the top was well worth it (even though I may have been looking a little ghostly).

For our final sight of Vienna, Corey insisted I see St. Stephen's Cathedral. Located in the heart of downtown, it's beautiful both inside and out. The exterior is full of Gothic spires, many of which were destroyed during WWII. The parts that survived are all black and charred. They have restored the fragile spires, but with white stone, so there is an interesting contrast. 

By this time, we had worked up quite the appetite.  One of the guides on the bike tour the day before had recommended a place called the Twelve Apostles Keller, somewhere in the vicinity of St. Stephen's. Cursing my lack of i.phone 3G technology, we were forced to ask for directions. We asked three different people for directions, and they all responded with something along the lines of, "Ahh, the Zwoelf Apostelkeller! Yes, I've been there. It's very important that you go. Very Austrian. But I don't remember where it is. Walk in that direction and when you get closer, ask someone else."  Like searching for the holy grail!

At around 10:30, we decided to give up and head back to the subway. In one last-ditch effort, I asked a couple of women if they knew where it was. They looked confused, but one let me use her phone to Google map it. They were headed in the same direction and said they could take us there. Turns out, they were actually Hungarians living in Vienna, hence their unfamiliarity of the place.

We finally found the place with an unassuming sign on the sidewalk, only a block away from where we had asked the third person on our quest. Incredibly grateful (and hungry), we offered to buy our new Hungarian friends a pint, but they declined, telling us to instead visit Budapest on our next trip abroad. Looks like it will be Hungry in 2014.

The Keller was totally worth the journey. It's deep underground in a cellar that dates back to the 1300s. We graciously ate our goulash and roast beef while sipping on our cider-like wine, thankful for the serendipity that traveling brings. For dessert, we indulged with a Kaiserschmarrn, chopped up pancakes with some plum jam, which is said to have been Emperor Francis Joseph I's favorite meal. Corey ordered us a round of schnapps, and we made our way back to the apartment just before the subway closed for the night.