Quarter Life Brain Snap

As I sit here on a 5 hour train ride from Vienna to Prague, my mind wanders to the timeless German proverb; “everything has an end, but a sausage has two”
Does it make any sense? Not much that i can garner, but more on that little gem a bit later.
So a few days ago I arrived in Vienna, or ‘Wien’ if you want to pronounce it like a real Viennese local, and yes, those amongst you with an eye for silly wordplay will be wondering if they refer to themselves as “Wieners” …why yes. Yes indeed.

So after a 2 hour flight and several hours of stuffing around in airports, I met the lovely Miss Caroline at a train station & we headed back to her place to drop my bags. We headed out shortly after to a genius little dive bar called ‘the Debakel’ for few beers & a catch up from the last missing 7 years! I also met Carolines brother Robi over a (horribly lost) game of Foosball. Turns out the 3 of us have a very similar sense of humour & a nearly identical taste in music which made for some excellent jokes at the expense of the guy picking the playlist in the bar. I had a great first night & talked lots of music and crap – Good fun!
On Wednesday Caroline showed me some of the city’s sights via bicycle, then we headed to Robi’s place to grab some dinner before we hit a club.
What happened next was the greatest Schnitzel experience to grace my tastebuds in 26 years.
Caroline, Myself, Robi and his housemate Matias all headed for a traditional Austrian restaurant, apparently known by the locals for its traditional Austrian schnitzels.
I ordered the regular Wiener schnitzel (that’d be Viennese Schnitzel for those up the back) Caroline ordered a half-size regular Schnitz, while Robi and Matias both ordered the Schnitzel Cordon-Bleu.
My Schnitzel was Epic. It hung over the edges of an already large dinner plate, overlapped itself in several places and was accompanied by a separate bowl of creamy potato salad for extra stodgy goodness. Green stuff? Pfff! Who needs nutrition when you have a snitz bigger than your head! Bravado aside, I was slightly worried, it was a seriously enormous slab of delicious battered meat – but then I heard the manic laugher of Robi and Matias & looked across at the Cordon Bleu Snitz. Holy shit.

Robi and Matias were both laughing in terror at the monsterous Schnitzels in front of them. They had a Snitz that was easily as big as mine, but it had been folded over onto itself and stuffed with a metric tonne of cheese and ham.
Caroline’s “girly serving” was suddenly looking a lot more reasonable. At the Table next to us, a pair of fat British ladies were staring agape at the Cordon Bleu’s.
“Umm, excuse me” one of them enquired “is…that just one serving?”
Robi stopped giggling at his gargantuan plane of pork for a minute and explained that it indeed was, and it turned out that they had both ordered the standard one like mine and were quite clearly shocked at the prospect of eating one each.
While the fat british ladies summoned the waiter to revise their orders we got stuck in & it was seriously fantastic. Best Snitz of my career thus far. After many deep breaths, groaning and sweating, I managed to eat the whole damn thing!! Not Robbie or Matias though, they got about halfway through the Cordon-Bleu-of-Doom & threw in the paper towel (SOFT!) To be fair I wouldn’t have been able to do much better! Amongst many, many complaints of feeling too full to move, feeling sick and general whinging from the 3 of us silly males, Caroline lead us to a club called Flex down on the Danube as they had an indie night on Wednesdays & usually had some good tunes playing.

Dear Sydney. Before you install any more sound systems in bars, please go to Flex in Vienna and see how it’s done properly. None of the usual “we need one loudspeaker for every ear in the venue” scatterbomb approach that plagues the rest of earth, this bar had 2 small  line arrays up front and a Subwoofer enclosure that was actually the entire stage – cast into the floor with cement. The result was clear, crisp sound, plenty loud enough, but not uncomfortable or deafening! not only that, the venue handed out earplugs for those who found it too loud. So bloody nice for a change!
So I spent the next 2 days sleeping in till about lunchtime, hanging out and doing some casual sightseeing with Caroline and Robi. Highlights include but not limited to: A huge mansion/manor up on top of a hill with a sweet view of Vienna. The Museum Quarter with its famous outdoor chair things, an imperial Crypt under the city and an epic palace, which was only the royal “summer home” Fancy indeed!
When I first arrived, Caroline had told me that Vienna wasn’t a love-at-first-sight city, but rather it grew on you the longer you spend there. I didn’t really know what she was on about at first because I liked its casual mix of gritty and new right from the beginning, but sure enough, the longer I spent there the less I wanted to leave! Aussies tend to pride ourselves in having a “laid-back” attitude to most things, well I hate to break it to you but by the Viennese leave us for absolute dust! Imagine if you will, a city that never had the fun scoured out of it by the late 90’s “political correctness” fever, A city that isn’t shitscared of being sued by its inhabitants ham-fisted clumsiness, or a city that isn’t crippled by an irrational fear of terrorism.
Its the little things that make it such an appealing place to live – they have conveniences long lost in modern Sydney; things like garbage bins in train stations! remember them? Or proper play equipment for kids in parks, that aren’t surrounded by a fence or re-surfaced in rubber matting. Brilliant!
The whole place just gets on with things & doesn’t get stuck up on all the trivial little bullshit details, I love it!
One of the best examples of this relaxed attitude I saw was in a Cafe. It seems that Vienna has only just introduced a ‘No Smoking Indoors’ law, only a few years behind the rest of us. They haven’t banned it completely though, rather implemented the first step of having a sectioned off area for smoking & non smoking. The particular cafe I was in however, had realised that the vast majority of its clientele enjoyed a smoke with their coffee, as per the Viennese cafe culture, which might I add actually pre dates white settlement in Australia, but I digress. In the back of the cafe they had taken an interesting interpretation on the law, and glassed off a few tables in the back for non-smokers, while the rest of the cafe, including the barista/waitress, enjoyed some delicious second hand smoke.
My hair and clothes stunk like I’d been to the pittwatter RSL sports bar circa 2002. What a flashback.

So Having been to many of the major citys in Europe, I’m seriously re-considering my plan to work in London. Why? Well, while I had an absolute blast in London’s turbocharged full pace lifestyle as a traveller, I don’t really think I want to live there having seen the incredible lifestyle of Europe’s great cities. Space, relaxed attitude and casual work sure beat crammed, furious and high pressure in my book!
For the first time on my trip I actually felt like I could live in Vienna – a thought that is very different to the other common twang of: “jeez I’d like to live here” that has popped into my head in almost* every town I’ve stopped in (* Marseilles being the smelly exception)

There are some issues with this little idea of mine however,
Problem 1: I don’t Sprechen ze Deutsch. So much so, that I can’t even say ‘Sprechen’ properly (much to Robi’s amusement) It involves some rolling spit noise with the back of my throat that I’ve just never made before. Suddenly I feel sorry for the Japanese when they try to say English words like Lollipop.
A solution, as suggested by Caroline, would be to get a job in an Australian bar (English speaking) while learning German, hell I’ve always learnt best in the deep end.
Problem 2: and this is a bit more of a roadblock than not knowing a language: I don’t have a working Visa for Austria.
Sollution: I’m currently looking into it, watch this space.

Aaaanyway, so Sunday night rolled around and brit-rockers Kasabian were playing at a really cool open air venue just out of central Vienna. Unlike Australia, gigs and festivals are hilariously cheap in Europe, so when I found out the gig was 29 euro, I was in! So I tagged along with Caroline and her friend Connie to the gig. Arriving at the gate, we showed our tickets as usual and Caroline presented her bag for inspection. While it was being rummaged through by the scrutineering eye of a security guard, some bloke next to the guard took my camera from my shoulder, and handed me a ticket stub. Mumbling something in German, he taped the corresponding number to my camera and put it in a box. I was not pleased by this. Not at all & I freaked out a bit at this point, as I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I got Caroline to translate, & the guy had spotted my camera and knew it was “professional” I rebutted this by saying “look at the size of it man, I’m just travelling” in a feeble attempt to get it back. The camera thief couldn’t have looked more bored by this no doubt common exchange, and he grunted “its Professional enough” in English “little cameras ok, not these” he said gesturing at the box, which I now saw was full of SLR’s
“but It is little” I said weakly
No dice. I was sans camera. My precioussss was in a box, and all I had was a little yellow square of paper with 26 written on it. I didn’t realise how much that lump of glass and metal means to me until this point, but I felt like I’d lost a limb or I’d been robbed or something horrible. So blubbering like a child without his teddy, Caroline dragged me to the bar where we had a few beers, I ate a kebab type thing & felt a fair bit better.
Kasabian were awesome, the crowd loved it & the skies stayed clear of rain all night, & I really enjoyed it! As it was an open air show, they finished up before midnight & we hurried to get my camera, which thankfully wasn’t an issue, so I quickly ran back to the stage & snapped off a few shots of the awesome setup.
Robi hadn’t come to the gig, so we headed to the Debakel again to say farewell (it was my last night in Vienna y’see) Once again the music selection was hilarious, but for whatever reason, they started playing a bunch of old german euro-pop stuff. I was laughing at a song that had yodelling in it when Robbie translated the immortal words from another song: “everything has an end, but the sausage has two”
This got me thinking. (actually it got me laughing, but hey…)
So while I guess my brilliant time in Vienna was coming to an end, a sausage will still have two ends.
or is it that life is like a sausage? Perhaps when you first come to an end, there’s another end at the other end which could be a start depending on the end which you start with?
I’m still not sure, however I’m definitely getting a sausage with mustard when I get of this train though.

So I really can’t thank the lovely Caroline & Robi (great bloke, not so good at pool though…hehheh) enough for showing me around & letting me stay! I know you’re both probably going to read this, so I’ll just keep it at a really sincere thankyou! I haven’t felt at home anywhere in Europe except Vienna, & I know that’s only because you guys showed me the real city & the real people. Loved every second of it.
Hopefully see you guys again soon!

Prague blog (Praha) next!
(I’m in the incredible city of Berlin at the moment actually & sorry for the slack update schedule, but writing this thing takes up what little spare time I have & even longer to get on the internets with photos & such. So its usually a bit behind what I’m actually up to!)