Travel Fail by the Danube

I've been thinking that I ought to start creating daily recaps of my travels. That will help better represent The Annie Scott Experience, ya know? It'll help dilute the "pictures of my cat" content.

Today is Day 3 of a trip to Vienna, sponsored by the Vienna Tourist Board and Cool Capitals. This is an "individual trip," aka I'm all by myself and the program has been tailored to me -- no buddies. Basically, on an individual press trip, you discuss with the arranging company (in this case, Cool Capitals) what you want to cover, they set up an itinerary which you agree upon, and then ... good luck to you, soldier.


This morning I met with a Vienna Tourist Board rep at my hotel (The Altstadt, which is fabulous except for the lack of a bathtub -- honestly, it's at least 4-stars but where do I soak my stinky feet? Nowhere, that's where. Doesn't eclipse the glory of the hotel, and each room is different ... but as I know I'd be disappointed if I were spending my hard-earned vacation money, be warned that the Leonie Room has no bathtub.). We had a delicious breakfast then headed to the Funeral Museum.


The Funeral Museum is not part of Vienna's museums; it's a government-owned institution responsible for most of the undertaking in the city which happens to have a museum. That said, the museum is fascinating. You can only tour the museum by appointment, but the guide (there's only one) speaks English and I'll tell you all about it on Gadling. The Austrian mentality about death is worth an article all its own.

After that, I went for an enormous Wiener Schnitzel (right) at Figlmüller, where they claim that theirs is the biggest (maybe it was, but all that just sounds dirty to me), then back to the hotel. I had a 4:30 appointment at a local Vienna winery, and I left for it at around 3:20.


OMG, fail. So, I took the underground to a stop by the Danube. I'd been instructed to take tram 31 to "suchandsuch." I disembarked the train and walked out to an exit right on the river. I knew that couldn't be right, so I reentered the station and tried the one across the way. Sure enough, there was a sign right there for #31 to "suchandsuch." It appeared to be a bus stop, but I looked left and right and didn't see a tram. It had to be lost in translation, right? RIGHT? Sigh.


I waited there for an hour. I'm ashamed to say that, but you have to think about what you'd do in my situation. You're by yourself, you don't want to seem like a jerk emailing the tourism board saying "hey, your buses are slow" (and god forbid you pay out of pocket for a phone call or taxi), and it's not that cold. So you wait.

Finally, I realized something must be amiss so I started asking passers-by if they spoke English, which is really classy. I did indeed finally find one speaker, and he informed me I was standing at the stop for the night bus, like, the bus that runs after the trams shut down, and he redirected me to a tram, a real tram stop around the corner. It was probably four minutes away, but I couldn't see it from the underground exit, and the tourism rep had told me that I'd be able to see the tram stop right from the underground stop, so I hadn't gone around any corners. I'm thinking I took the wrong exit. But how could I know?


Long story short, it was fine from there, I got to the winery, it was amazing, I'm slightly tipsy, and I know a lot more about Viennese wine than I did. Articles to come.

On the way back, I learned the fun practice of chasing down a tram. The winery owner offered to take me back to the tram stop in his car, but when he didn't see one, we just followed the track awhile. When a train came into view, he sped past it to the following stop and dropped me off there. See? Chivalry's not dead.


Then I headed back to Spittelberg for Austrian nachos (weird) and I met a cool Austrian photographer who told me that there are tunnels under the Sahara. I'm intrigued!


Then I came home. And that was Day 3. Feedback welcome, I'll try to keep these up. Antwerp tomorrow.