Day 6 (2025) - Exploration Day

Today (Tuesday) was the first day of the trip without anything really planned. We had already seen most of the 1st District on our walking tour yesterday, so I decided we should venture out to some other districts I had noted that were worth walking around. But before we did that we met Amanda and her friend, Allie, for brunch. Allie is also a Lehigh student and lives next to Amanda in her Vienna dorm. Last night after we made this plan I did some quick work on “the Googler” and found a place to meet for brunch that was about a 15 minute walk from the apartment. They finished class at 10:15 and we met at the brunch place a little after 10:30.

Brunch was nice, as was Allie, but the most interesting part was Debbie ordering a latte. Oh my. 

We added a 6th for Brunch - Allie

 

After brunch we decided to walk to the 7th District, which I had heard had some cute shops. The walk took around 20-25 minutes and we eventually got to some streets with places to check out. Everyone picked up a little something along the way, well, except me. Oh well. After a while Amanda had to leave to get back to her class, and the rest of our continued walking around the 7th District for a while.

When we felt we had seen enough of the 7th District I decided we should go to the 3rd District and check out something I had seen on my Instagram research – the Hundertwasser House and Hundertwasser Village. I didn’t know a lot about it, other than the house was very colorful. And I really didn’t know what the village was. But it was on my list of things to see, so see we shall do.

We took the street car this time to the 3rd District, where we then had a short walk to our destination. We encountered the village first so we went in. It’s hard to explain exactly what this is, but in summary it’s a little enclosed shopping area that they developed because so many people were coming to see the house. They have information on the artist that developed the house – named Hundertwasser, of course, as well as some other little touristy shops. We resisted the urge to buy any trinkets, and exited the village where we then encountered the house. It was indeed quite colorful and is actually a residential building. Not sure I’d like to live there, as cute as the place is, with all of the tourists coming by every day talking photos.

By this point were a little hungry, so our next stop was the Naschmarkt, basically blocks and blocks of food options. We started at one end and worked our way to the other end, taking note along the way. One things we noted was that if you liked olives or nuts this market would be ideal.

Some of the vendors offered free samples, including a nice man at the beginning of our journey who gave us a taste of his delicious falafels. There was also a not-so-nice man who was giving our free samples of cheese. He first offered it to Debbie, who passed, but Brian took him up on it. Brian was going to just take the cheese and keep walking but the guy gave him a hard time about not commenting on the cheese. So Brian stopped and told him he liked it. But when Brian then went to leave he started to berate Brian for not buying anything. We decided to pick up the pace a little to get away from the mean cheese guy – although Debbie insists she was close to going at the guy. That likely would not have gone well.

Along the way we did stop to buy some sort of dessert thing, actually two. One had chopped walnuts and the other had poppy seeds. We stopped at a bench about half way through and ate them pretty quickly, as we were hungry and they were really good.

We got to the end and started up the other side, but that side was mostly sit down restaurants. And after walking all the way to the end, we decided to go back to the nice falafel guy and get something there. See, being nice helps. We ordered 15 falafels, with a couple of sauces on the side, and were pleasantly surprised that it all came to about 8 euros. We took our bag of falafels and our sauces and found a quiet place outside of the market to sit and eat them. While the location was quiet, clearly we weren’t the only ones that found this place a good place to use, as it seemed to have a distinct urine odor that often wafted our way. This lovely aroma didn’t dampen the enjoyment of the falafels, although we may have eaten them a little faster than we would have otherwise.

We vacated our lovely location and decided we needed something wash it down with, which of course meant we had to get some baklava. Because nothing washes down falafel like baklava. After the baklava (which was excellent), we headed back to the apartment.

 

 

 

I know someone that might like this

Amanda came to the apartment after class and after resting for a short time (very short) we headed out to dinner. Once again, dinner was near the apartment so we walked. Tonight’s dinner was a recommendation from my fraternity brother, Howie Corb, and was called Plachutta. This restaurant was known for its boiled beef, called Tafelspitz. They advertise it as “world famous” and to prove their point they have many photos of celebrities on a wall on the way to the bathrooms that have eaten there over the years.

Much like the Paris steak restaurant, there was some trepidation (I know, a nice 50 cent word instead of the 5 cent version – fear) about this meal, but four of us decided to give it a shot. Amanda was the holdout and opted for schnitzel. The waiter asked us we wanted “pancakes” in the broth, and we said sure without even really knowing what it meant.

When dinner arrived it came in two large pots of broth and the waiter gave us each a bowl with what looked like egg noodles. He then ladled out soup from the pots to each of us, but there was no meat in the soup. I forget if he simply sensed our confusion or if someone asked, but he then told us “soup first, then meat” or something like that. The soup was really good – very hearty and we came to understand that the egg noodles were likely the pancakes he asked us about earlier.

After each of us finished the soup, came back and gave us the meat from the pots, along with some vegetables and potatoes we had ordered on the side. Once again, the initial concern about the meal proved unfounded and everyone loved the meal. We ordered for 4, and even with two of us who tend to eat anything that is in their vicinity, we had some leftovers to bring home. 

 

For once we were too full for dessert, so we headed out to walk back to the apartment. Along the way back, Debbie spotted some clothing stores that were closed but had interesting items in the window and expressed an interest to come back. So I guess we will be coming back to this area at some point.

We got back to the apartment and settled in for the night. Tomorrow the Volks head to the opera!