Vienna - Day Thirty Five

I was right about this town; it definitely deserves more than a few days of exploration. After a hectic month of dashing from city to city it has been really nice to slow things down a little and get the feel of Vienna at a more civilised pace.

I checked into my hostel on Thursday and almost immediately bumped into someone I knew. I had met Will - a British guy on a one man cycling odyssey - in Munich about a week before. In the time it had taken me to interRail between Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna, he had cut a swathe through the Bavarian countryside on his bike and trailer, sweating it up and braving the elements as I reclined in sleeper carriages and quaffed beer in hostel bars - that sort of behaviour takes the wind out of your sails a bit when you imagine yourself to be roughing it around Europe.

About ten minutes later I also bumped into Jenna and Isaac, a couple from San Fransisco I had spent an evening in the laundry room with in Munich as I tried desperately to keep myself out of the bar for a night. They ended up drifting away after a brief chat, but I've spent most of the last few nights with Will, eating like kings in the excellent (and affordable) restaurants of Vienna, and hustling drunken Americans at pool. We´ve sampled traditional Austrian (two cannonball-sized dumplings of stodgy potato, encasing a cricket ball-sized mass of sausage meat, on a bed of sauerkraut... yummy), Italian, Vietnamese and Turkish. Admittedly though, the Turkish was a kebab.

I've passed the days lazily wandering the streets of this beautiful city. You can almost smell the history that wafts from every grand public building, elegant museum or extravagant statue that you pass, and when it all gets a bit too much you simply duck into the nearest kaffeehaus for a comfortable sitdown and an invigorating caffeine hit. My favourite of these by far is the excellent Phil on Gumpendorfer Straße. I'm not taking the credit for discovering it (it was recommended by the same girl who told me to check out Monsieur Vuongs in Berlin), but I've already spent several happy hours in there. It's a combination of cafe, furniture store, bookshop and music store. If you can find a seat (it always seems to be packed with all the cool kids of Vienna), you can kick back, sink a few excellent coffees and get chatting to friendly locals while a DJ plays the sort of background music that has you planning significant additions to your record collection. I had a great conversation with a Viennese guy called Matthias in there the other day - he's a graphic designer and proved to be extremely chatty whilst also wearing the coolest hoody I have ever laid eyes on. I felt significantly more fashionable just being in its presence, bathing in its reflected wonder. No one that cool is usually so friendly. Got a few more insider tips for the city which I'll hopefully check out over the next few days...

Today I was shown around Naschmarkt - a farmer´s market that´s been running since 1780 - by Bernadette, my informative local guide to the city. We assembled an extremely tasty (and uncharacteristically healthy) lunch from various market stalls which we ate with her flatmate Lizzy, then we walked to the top of a hill that overlooks the city. It´s only when you look down on Vienna like this that you realise how flat the surrounding landscape is for miles and miles around. This lack of geographical impediment also explains the fact that it gets really bloody windy. I wandered around at a 45° angle to the ground as frequent icy blasts painted my cheeks rosy red and threatened to carry me off into the distant Danube, but the view made up for the frostbite.

If all goes to plan tomorrow I might make a little day trip to Bratislava, which is only an hour away by train. I have decided to stay at least until Wednesday night so that I can take in a legendary club night at Flex - a place described in my hostel as "best club in civilisation". About five people now have told me to go on a Wednesday for a night called London Calling. With a name like that (my favourite album of all time) I´d turn up even if they played non-stop James Blunt, but apparently it´s the defining night out here. Time will tell.