pikolint

Viennese coffee houses serve wonderfully decadent concoctions, and the desserts on display in konditoreien were constant temptations. Sachertorte and Apfelstrudel seemed on offer at every other street corner.

We found Austrian meals to be tasty but heavy. Undaunted by the calories, we made sure to have our fill of Wiener Schnitzel during our short stay.

For our first meal at Café Weimar, before we were at all acclimated to the city, we had some kind of knödel (dumplings), which our waiter translated for us as “dumplings of fat.” Served with a heaping portion of sauerkraut, they were far more delicious than suggested by translation. The meal, taken at a leisurely pace (a pace we’re not entirely used to in the middle of the day!), finally gave Alán a chance to glance at his email after our battles through multiple airports.

Another food highlight was dinner at Flein, a French restaurant tucked off of Boltzmanngasse. We indulged our craving for paté, and I especially liked my pumpkin quiche! A quiet, sweet dinner to savor.

We also happened upon a lively Russian restaurant, not far from a movie theater showing films in English. While a singer belted out a mix of tunes in various languages accompanied by some kind of karaoke-like sound system, we watched a guy selling roses from table to table without much luck — until a well-dressed man bought almost all of the enormous bunch for his date. This gent made an extravagant show of selecting which flowers he wanted with a bored finger-point to each bloom. The waiter then produced a vase from the kitchen area, and his companion accepted the enormous bouquet as a matter of course, without much of a reaction at all. The other men in the restaurant gamely followed suit, perhaps out of guilt, to purchase single roses for their dinner partners. Alán and I also took great pleasure in watching a group of young guys flirting with a table of young women seated on the other side of the restaurant. Alan evaluated their various strategies, as they pulled the women onto the dance floor to dance, sent roses over to their table, posed for photos, and joked with them until one guy succeeded in getting a phone number. Courting rituals over music, food and drink seemed fairly similar to what we’ve seen on the other side of the Atlantic. From open-air kebab stands to tiny neighborhood establishments, we loved the variety on offer in the city.