A Mixed Bag - Vienna, Oct. 17

I've got mixed feelings about Vienna. It's quite varied depending on where you go, so it's been hard for me to make a complete assessment. Some things are nice, some things aren't, and to be honest, I've overall not really been a fan of Vienna since I've gotten here.

Let's start with where I'm staying, which is another a&o hostel about 2km from the city center. I again got another private room, which was especially after the Innsbruck hostel I stayed at. My room is very similar to all the other a&o rooms which are reasonably nice, no complaints there. However the location is pretty crap. It's right on a major road running through the city, and holy moly is there a lot of noise that comes from it. A hundred cars moving at speed makes a lot of sound, plus people honking at each other and the occasional sirens get quite annoying quite quickly.

And these roads are really not pedestrian friendly. The main road does have crosswalks with traffic signals, those are fine. However the adjacent side streets are much worse, there are very few intersections that even acknowledge pedestrians. Here's just one of many examples, there are no labelled crosswalks, and cars just cruise right on through. Your best option as a pedestrian is to wait for a clearing, but because these are right next to a major road, big enough gaps are uncommon. I've felt pretty uncomfortable crossing these sometimes, cars have hardly ever slowed down when I was crossing. These intersections are terrible in my opinion.

There also aren't a whole lot of food options around this hostel. It's got more options than where I stayed in Munich, but most of the places I can find are bars or similar social places. I don't want to hang out with strangers during a pandemic, I just want dinner! For both nights, I just ended up ordering takeout from an Indian restaurant nearby, their food is pretty decent.

So I'm not staying in the nicest area. But I've usually found the city centers to be nicer than further out, so I made my way there using the public transit. Over the course of the day, I took a bus, tram, and metro, all of which have been fine. They seem to come fairly frequently, usually every 5-10 minutes or so, and there's enough routes to get to your destination with only 1 or 2 vehicles. Nothing about it was spectacular, they seem like older vehicles, but certainly usable.

Before going to the city center, I first explored through an area called Neubau since it was on the way, and it had a pedestrianized area. Although it was just one long street that was pedestrianized, it reminded me a lot of Stuttgart since it got really quiet just 1 or 2 blocks over. But the main street was decent, it's pretty typical.

One thing I observed is how much seating can change the feel of an area. I noticed that in sections of this street with seating from places like restaurants feel nicer to be in, since it's more of a place to stay at and enjoy. In contrast, areas without any seating are just areas to go through rather than stay and enjoy it, so they aren't as nice to be in. Maybe that's just me, but I just realized today how much seating can affect my perception of the area.

Another thing I noticed is how pretty much the entire area is paved over, there's very little greenery or natural terrain. Why? Why no grass? Why no flowers? Why cover it all up with bricks? Why pour asphalt all around the trees? This is so excessive, some natural terrain would make it much more lively!

Obviously Vienna is not the only place that's gone overboard with paving everywhere, I just realized it today. Since these pedestrian streets are usually rather wide, there's plenty of space for some natural terrain, which would just make it so much nicer.

I kept making my way to the city center, which took me through a park area. I must admit, Vienna does make very nice parks, they felt very lively with all the people around, and there was clearly effort put into making these nice. Each area had it's own unique feel, so if you get bored of one, go to the next!

I got to the city center, which is thankfully much more pedestrianized. However I didn't really care for it all that much, it feels like more of a tourist area than a place to live. There's lots of historic buildings around, and loads of people around. There's also a large number of horse carriage tours going through, it definitely just felt like a place for tourists, so I didn't enjoy it all that much.

And that's about all I've got from Vienna. I was feeling rather tired from all the travelling and wasn't really enjoying myself too much, so I decided to just head back to my hostel. So as I've said, I've got mixed feelings about Vienna. There are good and bad areas, and I may have just gotten unlucky with where I'm staying, but nothing has struck me as being super nice except for the few parks I went through.

While we're here, I can give an update on my travel plans. I've only got one more travel day on my Eurail pass, so we're close to the end! I'm heading to Prague tomorrow, and will be there until Thursday. Then I'll be flying to England for another week to visit family once more before I head back home on the 27th (my flight only cost about $400, half the price of when I came here!), at which point this trip will have concluded. We're almost there, just the final stretch now!