My Honest Opinion about Vienna

I recently had the chance to visit Vienna, a city I had heard a lot about but one that had never occupied a spot in my bucket list. I went into it with little knowledge and little expectations, just an openness to discover a city loved by many.

I’ll start from the beginning, where I hopped on an Austrian Airlines flight from YUL to VIE for an 8 hour journey. It was my first time using this airline and I hadn’t heard much about it. Now, you should know that I am a fan of flying and that unlike many other people, I always look forward to my airplane meals.

Unfortunately, Austrian Airlines ended that pleasure for me and served the worst food I have ever had on a flight. Think white chicken with white sauce, boiled vegetables with a strange texture and a breakfast sandwich no tastier than cardboard. To top it off, half of the flight attendants seemed to hate their lives and did not crack a smile for the entire flight. The best way to ruin my perception of something is through bad food and worse customer service. Luckily half of them were kind enough to smile and allowed me to maintain some of my sanity.

Airplane aside, once arrived in Vienna, our transport to the hotel, organized with the hotel itself went smoothly and I have not a single bad thing to stay about them. In fact, I loved the hotel so much that I’ll be writing an entire article on it, so stay tuned for that.

Now, the city itself wins points in my view mainly for its cleanliness, as this is perhaps the cleanest city I have ever been to. We regularly saw workers strapped to ancient buildings scrubbing away at the walls, the same way you’d see window cleaners on sky scrapers in any big city. The architecture was beautiful yes, but very uniform in my view, in true German-fashion from what I was told. I much preferred the flow and creativity of places like Barcelona, where Gaudí had the chance to work his magic. As someone who doesn’t particularly connect with Paris, I would even say that Paris’ streets had more character than those in Vienna.

Moving on, had I known that my experience with the airplane food was but a forecast of what I was to experience in Vienna, I would have urged the pilot to turn the plane around and drop me back home. I cannot tell you how much I heard about the schnitzels and the strudels, only to arrive and be disappointed. Schnitzels were like the larger, heavier and drier version of cutlets and the strudels were simply not what I expected. Most of them were served with raisins, and all of them were made with a very thin dough surrounding a rather plain filling. It felt like eating a pastry without the comforting taste of a pastry.

Don’t get me started on the sausage dishes, which were glorified hot dogs with the bun served separately. No matter the type of restaurant we went to, fancy or casual, local or touristy, we were repeatedly served hot dog sausages at a price nobody should have to pay for fake meat.

The most heartbreaking part of it all is that we were promised a delightful experience at Vienna’s multiple coffee houses, who would supposedly serve us excellent coffee and decadent pastries. Guess what? That didn’t happen. There is no doubt that the coffee houses with decades of history are beautiful to look at, but when I hear about a country known for its coffee houses, I expect the best quality coffee. What we were served instead was the coffee they usually serve at hotels, from those machines where your latte comes out at the press of a button, in a sickly beige hue no less. My coffee fanatics will know what I’m talking about.

Unfortunately, the service on Austrian Airlines was also foreshadowing what we’d experience in the country, because Vienna made encountering a warm smile equivalent to a treasure hunt. The cherry on top is that we chose ÖBB, an Austrian train company, to transfer to Krakow and ended up having the worst train ride ever. Why, you ask? Because despite promising to serve food on their website, we got on the train ahead of a 6-hour journey, from early morning to early afternoon, and were told that these trains did not serve any food. Despite there being menus on every table at every seat, and despite us paying for first class, we were given a single water bottle during 6 hours.

My hypothesis is that these trains do in fact serve food and that someone, somewhere did not do their job that day, so the train employee decided to feed us rubbish. Regardless, my hypothesis doesn’t matter because it happened and there is nothing we can do about it. At this point you may think I am harsh, or that I’m spoiled and ungrateful or maybe you agree with me. No matter the answer, I was honest with you, because that is what I vowed to do when I started Table for One. Considering all of the above, I am still happy I gave Vienna a shot, because every trip is an opportunity to learn and you never know unless you try.