Oh, and Also Vienna

Just a very brief post. And a story. About the miraculous, restorative effects of Vienna’s “shovers.”

We flew to Skopje through Vienna on Austrian Air, but booked on Turkish Airways for our return flight because they had the only flight that left Skopje on Sunday and landed in Washington on the same day (albeit by first flying East to Istanbul then West back to DC). All other flights left on Sunday but landed Monday, which we didn’t want, since we work for a living, man.

Then, a couple of weeks before our trip, Turkish Airlines unceremoniously cancelled the morning flight from Skopje to Istanbul. Not delayed; not a plane change. No flight. That day. From Skopje. Freakin’ Turks – first all of the eye gouging on the frescoes of the saints in the Byzantine churches, and now this. When will the indignities end?!

We had originally considered an Austrian Airlines flight through Vienna with an overnight layover that would have given us more than half a day there. We like Vienna for the reasons noted below, so we were down with that. But, we needed to get back to work on Monday, and so ruled that out. With the abrupt cancellation / eye gouging by the Turks, we were now going to pursue that plan. So, a slight upside.

Our previous experience with Vienna bookended our 2006 bike trip down the Danube from Vienna to Budapest. After we finished biking, we stayed a few more days in Budapest, then trained back to Vienna, where we stayed for a day and a night, and then moved on to the Czech Republic.

Our departure from Budapest and later that morning in Vienna were characterized by the same thing – pretty serious hangovers thanks to a long night in a Budapest bar with two Dutch guys, a German Swiss woman, and an Italian Swiss guy (who had to speak to each other in English, which we though was hilarious). (One of our favorite lines [up there with “look me!” and “train or bus!”] was spat out here by one of the Dutch guys with regards to the bartender at the end of the night, but the moment doesn’t really lend itself to text, so we’ll just move on.)

That was a long night with round after round of either Hoegaarden or Leffe (both of which are Belgian white ales and taste exactly the same – one of us thinks we had one while the other of us is convinced it was the other). The end result was the same, either way. The next morning was a struggle and our conditions did not improve on the train to Vienna.

While lurching around Vienna’s main pedestrian promenade after we arrived, we sought something that would help with our condition. Then, we saw this:

The legendary Wiener Wurstl kiosk! Vienna’s unique (we think) take on brats.

Rather than placing them into a split bun, hot dog-style, the Viennese slide a crusty roll onto a wide-bore spike to create a brat-sized opening, squirt mustard (GAC’s senf) into the cavity, then shove the freakin’ brat into the hole. Ingenious! The grilled brats taste just as awesome as in Munich or Innsbruck, but the combo of convenience, texture, and flavor in the shover is a far superior experience.

Preparing the shovers – one roll already spiked . . .

The shovers brought us back to life that day.

Ever since, we regaled others with this Viennese wonder, so much so that our friend Michael recommended that we open a stand in Old Town called “Cheauxvers” to sell them to the general public.

So, when we arrived in Vienna that Sunday – a day we would have been in the air to Istanbul had it not been for the eye-gouging Turks – we made a beeline to the pedestrian promenade to hunt down our shovers. And we found them:

Still as awesome as we remember.

Eh, here’s some other stuff in Vienna. There’s a better account here, from our first trip, where Lisa realized she dug ghoulish stuff when we descended into St. Stephen’s catacombs and we saw thousands of skulls and bones from plague victims.

One last thing – for the last 8 days, we had been eating the same variation on a theme in Macedonia and Albania (with a couple of fish exceptions). We enjoyed the rustic Balkan grub, but really needed a break. So we hit restaurant Opus to change things up.