The Council of Vienna

You're probably thinking that the Council of Vienne was in France during the 14th Century and I've clearly mixed up Vienna, Austria with Vienne, France, but I promise that my title references a different event entirely. The Council of Vienna is the name I've given to the "come to Jesus" (as the Southerners say) moment we had as a family where events and attitudes converged in such a way that our only two choices were completely switching our approach to traveling together or going home.

I'm pretty sure any group of people living and traveling together for 10 weeks will have a "come to Jesus" moment at some point. I'm not sure why ours happened in Vienna except that it has a history of some pretty good fights. For example, during World War II, Churchill ordered Vienna bombed because he thought the Viennese were too enthusiastic in their support of Hitler. Then, Hitler ordered it destroyed when it was clear that the Allies were in a position to overtake the region (I guess loyalty wasn't his strong suit). Vienna wasn't destroyed (by us or them), but it was hit by an Allied bomb or two, and we dropped a few verbal bombs ourselves (at each other, not the city).

So, part of the reason Vienna almost made it onto the "Places we were too tired, grumpy or cold to appreciate" list was my fault, the boy can share some blame, and the rest will go to McDonalds and Last Minute Travel.

Last Minute Travel:

Although tents are fine in the country, there is no way to see Vienna--or any other city in Europe--in a tent without joining a protest movement. Because the travel books (Fromer's, Traveling Europe on a Shoestring, and Rick Steves' Europe) are so popular with Americans, it's difficult to find an available room at a place mentioned in one of these books without booking far in advance. Partly out of laziness and partly to remain flexible, we generally book places less than 24 hours before we get there--sometimes not finding lodging until we've arrived in a city or town. So, the travel books are not as useful as they'd be in the off-season or with a more scheduled traveler.

The solution for us so far has been Expedia. For discounted prices on nice hotels in Europe, Expedia is your friend. For example, every place we contacted in Salzburg was booked 24 hours before we arrived. We sent out at least seven e-mails and called two or three places (another annoying thing about lodging mentioned in travel books is you generally need to book them on the phone or through e-mail), and no luck. Salzburg was about to make it onto the "scrap it" list when we found a room via Expedia at a hotel called the Star Inn which was separated from the old town by only one block and a pedestrian tunnel, and cost $120/night.

Last Minute Travel, on the other hand, has been no help at all. There is an LMT app you can download, but it more often than not tells you that they have nothing available in the city in which you are querying. When it does work, it tells you that the hotel is within a certain geographical region, but won't be specific until you book. This works fine when you're in New York City because you at least know the hotel is in Manhattan. But in Vienna, the difference of one mile east or west matters a great deal more and we ended up in an airport hotel which is separated from Vienna by an industrial area that looks like the Dupont Plants off of I-95 in Delaware, but smells like Staten Island (or Kaukauna for our folks joining us from Wisconsin).

If you don't find this appealing, it will appear less so when you tell the TomTom lady the address is in Vienna, she takes you into downtown, your husband says "Well done" because the neighborhood is lovely, but there is no hotel there by your hotel's name because your hotel is not technically in Vienna.

Once you traverse the city and the industrial area to find the soulless area that holds your hotel, brace yourself, because there is still room for disappointment. There is no AC in many European hotels (this is one of them) and it is 91 degrees. On a positive note, if you ever wanted to learn Hungarian or Czech, this is the time to do so because your room is above the outdoor tables outside the front entrance, and late arrivals as well as the hotel staff need their smoking breaks throughout the night. So, you have the choice of boiling with the windows closed, or listening to the front desk lady fight with her boyfriend's voice mail--presumably because he wasn't home when she called at 2am--while wondering how much second hand smoke can actually give you cancer. (I actually don't know Hungarian well enough [or at all] to say who she was fighting with or why, but one has a sense about these things.)

INTERMISSION (you probably want to get up and get a drink or stretch your legs now)

Now, you probably thought I was going to start ranting about the navigation system as soon as I mentioned the TomTom lady, but Vienna was not her fault. However, if you don't trust your navigation system and you rely on the signs as much as you rely on her, you'll want to keep in mind that Vienna is "Wien" (pronounced veen) in Austrian/German while wine is Wein (vine), and if you enter Vienna from the west, you have to go through the wine region of Austria. So, be carefully you don't follow the wrong signs and end up in a winery instead of Vienna. Although, if you are having your own family council, wine might be completely appropriate.

Wiener Aside:
A Wiener (veener) is a person from Vienna, not a 1980s way to say that someone is socially challenged. So, Wiener Schnitzel means "Viennese Schnitzel", not Schnitzel with a sausage, but there is some debate about whether the dish actually originated in Vienna.

McDonalds:
In the interests of full disclosure, McDonalds and I are not close. I hate eating there and I don't allow the kids to eat there more than once a month. In fact, when I leave my husband at home for any length of time, he collects all of his one dollar bills and heads to McDonalds instead of a strip club. Then, he hides the McDonalds wrappers in the neighbor's trash can so I don't see them, and I never do, but his Catholic guilt causes him to confess on a regular basis.

In Europe, I am willing to tolerate McDonalds because it is one of the few places you can feed a family of four for under 20 Euro. If you go to McDonalds near St. Stephen's Cathedral (where Mozart was married, his funeral mass was held, and Allied bombs blasted out most of the windows), and you see a kiosk which allows you to order in English (and, therefore, stop eating chicken nuggets because you can't figure out how to say "Plain Chicken Sandwich" in a way that will keep the mayonnaise away), don't get excited. Once you input your order and press complete, it will tell you that it doesn't like your American credit card. It won't actually say it to you in English. Instead, it will say it in German on the receipt that prints out with your order. If you want to annoy the lady behind the counter, take that receipt to the "pick-up kiosk order" line and ask if you can pay there. You can't, and she'll yell this at you in Hungarian.

To be fair, American credit card problems pop-up at all kinds of machines--including train station kiosks (though they work at highway toll stations for some reason)--but not accepting American credit cards at McDonalds kiosks borders on treason. Worse yet, McDonalds couldn't resist the European temptation to charge for their bathrooms (50 Euro-cents). So, if you want no dinner and a show, you can go to the lower level bathroom after the kiosk and watch your child jump up and down behind the turnstile while you search frantically for a 50 cent coin. Now, in McDonalds' defense, you can take the toilet receipt to the cashier and get the 50 cents off your meal, but you're assuming you can actually order.

We tried the kiosk a second time with a different credit card, but the same result. We, then, went to a different cashier with the receipt and asked (in German) if she could just copy the order on the receipt to her register so we could pay. She said "No", then continued talking in an aggressive way, and that's when my Wisconsin upbringing demurred to the last 17 years of living on the East Coast. My "talk to the hand" hand went up while she went on and on about how difficult this request would be to fill and I started a sentence with "Go f", but pulled it back to "forget it", then walked out with two confused children and an amused husband behind me.

You may be wondering why my husband was amused and I'll tell you. He wanted to skip Vienna. He said it was too much city with too many museums we wouldn't be able to visit with the kids. He said we'd be frustrated by walking past buildings that held major art work like Gustav Kliimt's, The Kiss. He said it would be hot and crowded and no one would be happy, and he was right.

You may also be wondering what happened at the Council of Vienna. It was a half-day walking event (a thunderstorm caught us in the end) where I agreed to trust my husband's judgement on where we should visit; he promised not to rush us from city to city without knowing where we would stay or giving us a bathroom break; and the boy promised to be civil, and stop asking to go home.

The Boy:
This last part is important because the boy had already gone through a hunger strike; multiple punishments for bothering his sister; for speaking loudly; for saying the word "Sucks"; and for dropping, then walking away from his new filtered water bottle in the park because he didn't want to carry it anymore. He had also asked to go home at least three times each day up until Vienna. In fact, two days before we arrived, while walking through Melk Abbey gardens, he poked me in the arm while asking, "Can I go home, Mom? Why can't I fly home? Mom? That's not a good reason. Give me one good reason why I can't go home. Why aren't you answering me? Mom? MOM!" I eventually smacked his hand away and said things that one shouldn't say anywhere near an abbey. But that was before the Council of Vienna, and things are much more civilized now.

In the end, Vienna was spared by the Council, a gelato, a theme park, and two cemeteries. We also followed our newly patented, "If you're having a bad time in a European city, you need to do the following things" formula which I've listed below:

1) Stop talking.
2) Walk to a town square that doesn't allow vehicle traffic and order a gelato for everyone (There will be a vendor nearby.)
3) Sit in the shade against a 500 year old building and eat your gelato.
4) Still no talking.
5) Walk into a church (there should be one on the square) and sit down. The kids can walk around while you sit there, or they can sit while you walk around. You're always visible to each other which is good for security, but you have your own space. More importantly, the silence is enforced by church authorities, not you, which is good because now you're feeling bad about being grumpy... but not bad enough to let anyone talk to you.
6) Cancel whatever plans you had and find the nearest park or play area. This is your penance for being crabby.
7) Don't talk about why you were crabby. Never mention it again.

So, this is how Vienna turned out. The Council, gelato, the church where Mozart got married/had his funeral mass, and the Prater Amusement Park saved the first day (though a lot of Euros were lost for the cause), and the cemeteries where Mozart and Beethoven are buried saved it on the second day, because (and this is important) cemeteries are big parks to kids and full of art that should be in museums to adults.

(Above): The McDonalds you want to avoid.
(Below): Proof that McDonalds charges for its bathrooms.

(Above): St. Stephen's Cathedral

(Below): The square outside St. Stephen's

(Above and Below): The interior of St. Stephen's Cathedral

(Above): Outside Mozart's Vienna home.

(Above and Below): The streets of Vienna

(Above): Taking a reading break

(Below:) The most famous picture of the Prater is of the Ferris Wheel, but I don't have it on my phone. It's on the other camera and I can't find the adapter. So, we took one picture of the kids in a boat at the Prater before my phone went dead. I will load the Prater pictures when we get home.