What can I say about Vienna? It was big, rich, ostentatious, under construction. The buildings were newer than Prague's, due to imperial money and rebuilding after bombings. The Euro is bank-account-cripplingly strong, and I've always liked modern art more than classical museums. So I sought, in 2.5 days, to find the people who occupied this large, glossy place, and enjoyed most deeply the market and the coffeehouse.
The Naschmarkt is an enormous market in the city center, full of restaurants, fruit stands, and bustling people. It was here I noticed the city's diversity, people of color in much greater number than mostly homogenous Prague. It seemed cosmopolitan and metropolitan. I tasted hummus and baklava, both out of this world, and marvelled as smells of curry and schnitzel intermingled. It was here, not the old, grandiose buildings, that people lived and fought and joked. It was divine to be in the midst of it, chatting with friends in English and Czech, hearing German and Turkish and the language-free joy of children with chocolate.
For a more traditional Viennese experience, my friends and I went to Cafe Hawelka, a coffeehouse in a grand tradition, with newspapers in half a dozen languages on wooden dowels, affectionately rude waiters,, and sugar cubes. We were surrounded by various eccentrics cutting paper, smoking, having vivid discussions. The walls were papered with a colorful pastiche of posters, cultural events and advertisements, a little charmingly run down. It was great to just relax and talk in a room charged with creative energy of so many years of coffee and conversation.
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