We started our third, and last, day in Vienna at Demel--a famous chocolate company that opened in 1786, and served Empress Sisi herself during her time in the city. We'd stopped by Demel a few days earlier to buy small bars of dark chocolate (which were amazingly smooth), but never would have imagined we'd be back...for breakfast.
Our last day was a Sunday, which meant the entire city was closed. Shop windows were dark, passersby were heading to late-morning services, and not a drop of coffee was to be found anywhere. The one espresso-brewing, milk-frothing location we could find was the royal chocolatier itself.
So we sat upstairs in what seemed like an old living room or lounge, with its almost Parisian décor and poufs and curved footed tables and gilded mirrors. I finally tried an apfelstrudel (you guessed it: apple strudel), and Ryan got a slice of chocolate cake so sweet that the waiter politely warned him twice just how sweet it was. (Needless to say, he didn't touch anything else with sugar for the rest of the day.)
We wound our way through the slowly awakening city to the Parliament Building and the adjacent Rathaus (town hall), both of which showed vestiges of the ongoing Vienna Pride. New installations were being added for Pride's final party that upcoming Friday, and HIV/AIDS awareness ribbons, ads, and signs were posted everywhere. We walked by one particularly raucous electronic dance party that seemed to have started the night before, and was still going at almost 11 AM.
Our next stop was Vienna Secession, an art museum dedicated to a group of avant-garde artists that named themselves The Secession at the turn of the century. Luckily for me, these artists were almost exclusively of the "very very very avant-garde" category--and by "luckily," I mean "it was the most miserable experience of the honeymoon, besides losing my credit card and throwing up walnuts in an alleyway while a pigeon pooped on my head." I'm not a modern art person. Besides seeing Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze--a famous fresco depicting Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony--it was a lot of blank canvases, top hats in the middle of the floor, an overturned vase of flowers in the middle of the floor, a ruined door leaning against the wall, and a vile of blood and makeup on a stool...each of which was supposed to be some grand example of artistic expression. I was that grumpy teenager in a corner taking snarky Instagram Story pics and trying to gauge whether the security guard was more or less grumpy than I was. (I think he might have won.) Ryan, however, was happy.
It should be known that Ryan's notes for talking about the Vienna Secession here included a long list of all the artists and pieces we saw and even what they symbolized. My separate notes for the Vienna Secession comprised exactly two words: "Modern shit."I've tried to compromise here.
At this point, we had an entire afternoon to sightsee and were running out of...well, sights to see. There were plenty more museums, zoos, and similar tourist traps, but the only thing we were even a little interested in doing during our last few hours in the city was the Jewish Museum. We sat down at their café and were so overjoyed at their prices that we stayed for lunch. Two $4 falafel pitas later, we'd just handed over a few Euro coins when I looked up from the table and saw a familiar face staring right back at me from only 20 feet away: Russell, a pianist at ASU and close friend of Ryan's advisor, and who served on Ryan's dissertation committee. Russell has lived on and off in Vienna for 30 years while studying and, now, while teaching. He was gracious enough to ask if we wanted a more personalized tour of the city he knows and loves so dearly, and we were overjoyed at the offer.
Instead of hitting Vienna's main attractions, which we'd already familiarized ourselves with over the days, Russell took us through its historic side streets. He pointed out aspects of its culture, architecture, and cityscape that we would never have known otherwise, and after an hour of winding through cobbled alleys and staying far from the hustle and bustle of its (less culture-filled) main streets, he asked if we'd been to a heuriger.
When I was helping Ryan plan our time in Vienna, I was immediately smitten with what I kept reading about heurigen. These are basically "wine taverns" that give craft breweries a run for their money: Each local winemaker serves his new wine--made from grapes grown within sight--during alternate months during the growing season. We added a line item on our Honeyfund for wine tasting at a Viennese heuriger, and put a lot of research into the small village of Nussdorf (Nußdorf) that is filled with heuriger after heuriger. But when we saw just how far away Nussdorf ("nut town," derived from its groves of hazelnut trees) was from Vienna, we gave up all hope of actually visiting.
Russell laughed at this, and said that it was only six or so stops away on the subway. Ryan and I gave each other one of those looks that meant "...there's a subway?"--and off we went, heading straight for Nussdorf. It took mere minutes before we were in another province of Austria entirely, and the city faded away into rolling hills, vineyards, and the Danube right beside us.
Nussdorf was first mentioned in the early 1100s, and the village feels about that old: It can't consist of more than 30 small huts, a mix of wood and stone, with a fresco on the side of its one church commemorating the Ottoman takeover in 1683 when they stopped through the village. Now, it's almost entirely filled with heurigen (particularly its wine-centered faction known as Kuchelau); it even has its own symbol for fresh, local wine being served: Branches of evergreen hanging over the door signal to guests that the wine being served has just finished the fermentation process and is ready for drinking.
So the three of us sat outside under a thick canopy of grapevines, mixed white wine with sparkling water (this is a huge custom in Austria and Hungary, particularly when it's hot outside), and nibbled on cheese platters, olives, and pieces of spongy bread larger than Ryan's head and beard combined. (Ryan laughed at this, but admitted it's true.)
Russell saw us back to the train station, where we said our goodbyes and went on our way to Hungary.
