Vienna Hot Chocolate
Vienna Hot Chocolate
I remember as a teen coming across a 'Vienna Hot Chocolate' on a menu, ordering it and being delighted to receive a big glass of hot chocolate, topped with a mountain of whipped cream. So on arriving in Vienna, I was a bit excited about tracking down that, and other gastronomical delights.
Our first night in Vienna was Becky's last, so Emily, Maya, Bec and I met up for a last dinner as we would not be running in to Bec again. Damien had discovered a good nearby restaurant that serves Weiner Schnitzel. Vienna is Wein in German/ Austrian, to Weiner is Vienna, a Vienna Schnitzel. There was a large group of us as we'd collected some extras, and we had a great night catching up, trading stories and enjoying radlers (a shandy) and schnitties. Vienna was hot, high 20s so it certainly wasn't a hot chocolate kind of night.
The next morning I went on a bike tour of Vienna which was very enjoyable. I had to ask for a helmet and one of the organizers had said it wasn't necessary as it wasn't law in Austria, and the tour had us ride 100m then stop, look at something, then continue on. I then pointed out that if anything happened to me on that bike and I had chosen not to wear a helmet, not only would I have a blunt force trauma to the head, but I'd likely not be covered by my travel insurance. I was very quickly given a helmet. I'm so sensible sometimes. I met some lovely Americans on the ride and told them about hostels etc, I think they'll be tempted to try hostels next time they come to Europe. They were intelligent, thoughtful people which was refreshing :)
I met Emily and Louise that afternoon for lunch. It was Louise's birthday so we ate wherever she wanted. The stretch of road in front of our hostel was the Naschmarkt, or a giant market which was good to wander through and housed plenty of food options. After lunch we once again went our separate ways, I walked to the Belvedere museum to see Gustav Klimt's The Kiss (I'm collecting masterpieces, can you tell?) the gardens between the Upper and Lower Belvedere palaces are vast and impressive and I rather enjoyed walking through them to get back to the hostel.
For dinner, we had a brilliant plan, Emily, Maya, Louise, her friend Leah and I went to the supermarket and picked up a variety of nibbles and a couple of bottles of wine and headed to the opera house in the centre of Vienna where that night's opera was being broadcast on a big screen for free. We picked a nice bit of carpet on top of concrete (all the chairs set out had already been taken) and made our picnic while we waited for the opera to start. It was Strauss' Arabella (at least I think that was the name!). It was of course, all in German, subtitled in German, so we just made up the story, trying to work out whether the girl dressed as a boy was meant to be a boy or a girl and just made the subsequent fake plot as silly as possible. I think our wine was about €6 for the two bottles, and was surprisingly good. At intermission, we'd finished our picnic and were spent with making up our own translation of the plot so we headed back off to the Hostel to go to the bar for happy hour. We did actually google the plot line, turns out our made up version was completely wrong, such a surprise.
We're sneaky, we sent Louise in to the bar with some of the girls, while the rest of us blew up balloons and plotted. We surprised her and covered her in balloons singing happy birthday. The bar sprung a free bottle of champagne for us. Then there was also a surprise chocolate cake with candles. All in all it was a great birthday celebration and we stayed in the bar for a while. I headed to bed around midnight as I had a tour booked for the next day. Turns out the girls all went out and got home some time around 5am.
The next morning I was up early to go on an all day cycling tour of the Danube Valley and wineries. The weather looked a bit threatening but I figured it would clear. Boy was I wrong, and I repeatedly wished I'd taken my raincoat for the rest of the day. We rode bikes in to the Danube Valley which stretches 43km along the Danube River, but we only rode half way in to it. Half way into the ride to the first winery, it started to rain. At a short break I gave up and put on the poncho provided by the company, it was perhaps the most useless poncho in the history of poncho's, especially for use on a bike.
The first winery saw us tasting 3 white wines, one each of the three types of wines produced in the valley, covering 3 scales of alcohol content. The Riesling was surprisingly good. In the valley, each vine area has a different flavor depending on where in the valley it is and how much sun it gets. It mainly produces white wine but 5% of wines produced are reds. We only tasted whites on this tour though. They also had a delightful dessert wine which I discovered is so sweet because the grapes are attached by a fungus, Botritis. So, umm, eww, but yum!
Everyone was on either a cruiser, mountain bike or two people had motorized bikes. One couple from Australia had chosen to have a very romantic tandem bike... Those things aren't called divorce makers for nothing. This couple were constantly at the back, falling behind, bickering the whole way and generally having a hard time of it. Oh, and did I mention it was still raining?
We rode to another little town for lunch where I had a wonderful turkey salad. I've hardly had any salad or veggies on this trip as they're not readily available in a lot of places, so I absolutely smashed that salad. I went for a wander through town with an American girl I'd met on the tour. We headed to the chocolate shop where we were having a schnapps and chocolate tasting. I rather enjoyed the chocolate and ended up buying a decent stash to take on my travels.
After lunch we headed out again on the bikes to the final winery. I had my poncho on and buttoned up, but the water collected in the folds of the poncho and eventually started pouring in through the buttons of my poncho and straight down my chest. By the time I got to the last winery, I was drenched. Except my shoulders, they were dry.... So handy. At the last winery we ended up trying 4 or 5 wines, we normally would stop at a beach for a swim but the weather was awful and the way through the town past the beach was blocked by construction for an event, so we had an additional wine to make up for it. We had a Chardonnay at this one. I hate chardonnay's but in this valley, because hey don't want anything to interfere with the taste of the grapes and wines, they don't use wooden barrels, just stainless steel, so the unwooded Chardonnay and subsequently all wines were really tasty and true to their growing conditions.
On the way home, the tandem bike left half an hour early to try and get a head start and not waylay the rest of us. We were all wet and keen to get back and out of the now constant rain. We all rode at a fierce pace back the 23km to the office and the train back to Vienna. On the way, to keep spirits up, some Canadian girls started singing snippets of songs. Turns out the only song they knew all the words to, and so did everyone else, was Bohemian Rhapsody... So there were 12-16 people singing Queen on bikes through the grapevines in the rain. It was really very funny and fun.
On the train home I sat next to the American girl and we had a really interesting conversation about American politics, Obamacare and her views as a Republican. I explained how the systems in Australia work and and while we're not perfect it was astounding to us why America didn't have universal healthcare etc. We didn't offend each other, in fact I think we had a really positive conversation enlightening each other on the different points on both sides.
Once home I had a hot shower and met the girls for our last dinner together as the next day we would be parting ways. Louise and I were stopping at Gruneau and the others were heading straight to Munich. Emily, Maya and I went out for dessert, a Sachertorte which were invented in Vienna and is essentially chocolate cake with jam in the centre and a thick ganache over it. It's quite a dry cake so I had to have a Vienna Hot Chocolate with it, which was in essence exactly how I remembered it from my teens... though smaller.
The next morning we jumped back on the busabout bus and headed off. We had a lunch stop at Grenau where we had some of the best lasagna I've ever had. Louise and I said our farewells as we were staying in Gruneau while Emily and Maya got back on the bus to head to Munich.
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