Vienna

Today I'm going to do yet another thing that you'd never be able to do in New Zealand, unless you consider yourself a citizen of Tuhoe nation. I'm getting on a train in one country and getting off at another.

Both resting on the banks of the mighty Danube, the ancient cities of Budapest and Vienna are barely 150 miles apart. Despite the fact that they once shared an empire, the Austrians and Hungarians are like chalk and cheese – or more appropriately, like strudel and goulash. Coming from New Zealand, it's hard to comprehend how two cities just a three-hour train ride apart can be separated by thousands of years of history and progress. Whereas in New Zealand you could get on a train in a paddock in the middle of nowhere, ride for three hours and find yourself, well, in a paddock in the middle of nowhere.

Not that you could do that anyways, since we don't have passenger trains anymore. $570m worth of railroads apparently, but no passenger trains. I'm sure there's a Bruce Springsteen song in there somewhere.

Even as we make the brief walk from the station to our hostel, it's clear the Vienna has a much different air about it to Budapest. The locals are well-dressed and demure. The streets and shopfronts seem tidier, more orderly, more in tune with a New Zealand set of sensibilities. Our hostel is clean, affordable, well-staffed and there's a bar in the basement. What's more, there's not many Aussies and it's located just off a main street brimming with kebab houses and Austrian bars. All in all, I think we've done pretty well.

It's early evening, so the girls and I take an outside table at a nearby beer house, looking out on the busy Mariahilfer Strasse. The owners are strictly adhering to the European protocol of only ever having one waiter on duty at a time, regardless of how large and busy the premises is. This premises is very large and busy, and the waiter is a 120-year-old grey-haired elf of a man, who is running about juggling bills, beers and large plates of food, usually at the same time.

The menu boasts typical heartwarming Germanic fare – schnitzel, roast pork, bratwurst – with a few items that are foreign to my vocabularly. What, for instance, is cevapcici? I can't even locate the origin of the word. Is it Italian? German? Slavic? It's an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a riddle, then presumably served warm with potatoes and sauerkraut.

“What's this one, then?”, I ask our prehistoric waiter, pointing uneasily at the word to save myself the embarrassment of having to say it out loud.
“It's like, umm, it is meat, like the pork...”, he says, then trails off altogether and just stares at me apologetically. Then someone at a nearby table hollers for a beer and so he scurries off, leaving us none the wiser. Still, it'd be silly not to order it now, wouldn't it?

You probably could've guessed anyway, but cevapcici is some sort of meat dish comprising of pork or beef mince, spiced and fashioned into little sausages, and served with the curious combination of fries, sauerkraut, raw onion, red pesto and ketchup. I wash it down with another fresh pint of the beerhouse's own special brew and retire to the hostel, where the volatile contents of my evening meal swish about in my stomach like aircraft wreckage in a storm, finally dying down and sinking into the depths at around midnight. I suspect I'll hear more about it in the morning, though.

***

Vienna is home to a ridiculous number of museums; more than could be visited in two weeks, let alone three days. The Albertina, the Sigmund Freud Museum, the Kunsthaus (not as exciting as it sounds), the Museum of Fine Arts, the Leopold Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Clock Museum, the Austrian National Library, the Museum of Military History, the Furniture Museum (a must see for all furniture enthusiasts, I'm told), and many more.

We spent the morning strolling through the grandiose rooms of the Kaiser Apartments, situated in the midst of the Imperial Palace. This was once the home of Emperor Franz Josef I, who was so revered in his native Austria that they decided to name a glacier in a remote part of New Zealand after him. For my afternoon entertainment, I've left the girls and decided to give the Science Museum a go. I know nothing about science, so I figure this is the best place for me to visit if I want value for money.

“One student please”, I ask the lady at the ticket office cheerily.
“Can I see your student card please?”
Yes she can. I'm still a student, you see. A graduand in fact. Yeah I know, it gets all the girls.
“How old are you?”, she asks.
I have to think for a second. Never a good sign. “I'm 23”.
She regards me cautiously, as if suspicious that I've just lied to her to save myself two Euro. And let's be honest, she's right to be.
Suddenly she completely changes tack. “And may I ask what country you are from?”, she says. Wow, I wasn't expecting that.
“Ahhh, New Zealand”. The cautious look again. Has my moment's hesitation proven fatal?
“Seven Euro, please”. She takes my money, prints off a ticket and hands it to me without once looking up from her computer screen. The teutonic reputation for brutal efficiency remains rock solid.

It would've been nice of them to tell me that none of the signs on the exhibits were translated into English, but it's alright. Unable to read anything, I'm transported back to the days of being a wide-eyed young boy, or Winston Peters, wandering through vast halls and gazing in perfectly-ignorant awe at giant paintings, sculptures and diplays. The collection is undeniably impressive; though something is troubling me. Where's all the science stuff? I'm no expert on the matter, but paintings and antiquities seem more in place in an arts museum.

On the top floor is an impressive collection of coins, again introduced only in German. Playing on a crappy old television set in one corner of the room is the only display I can understand: it's a totally shameless videotaped advertisement, in English, for the Canadian Royal Mint.

“To create a world's first, you need cutting edge technology and fiery old world mettalurgy”, says a booming, Canadian-accented voiceover while images of molten iron being fashioned by goggled hardmen flash on the screen. “It's powerful, breathtaking, unique … it's from the Canadian Royal Mint”.
I'd swear it's a piss take but the fact that we're in a museum means that there's surely no way it could be. The voiceover man begins rabbiting on about the largest gold coin ever made, “100 kilos of pure Canadian pride”, which, if this advertisement is to be believed, has been fashioned by melting gold and resting it in a bed of sand, or something like that.

Now the CEO of the Royal Canadian Mint is on screen, staring directly into the soul of the viewer, or so she'd like to think. “We have a solid reputation for raising the bar”, she says in a grating management speak that could not be more incongruous with the setting of a centuries-old museum. With a touch too much zest for my liking, given the rather dry subject matter at hand, she outlines the design specs of their brand new coin, which in case you were wondering contains 99.999% gold bullion. “Once again, our investors can invest in the best”.

This is brilliant. I could stand and watch it all day but I have a city to explore, and besides it's just looped back to the beginning and the original voiceover. “To create a world's first, you need cutting edge technology and fiery old world mettalurgy”. Poor old Canadians eh, they'd do anything for attention.

As I make my way back out into the courtyard outside, it becomes clear to me why there was so little in the way of scientic exhibits. I've actually walked into the Art History Museum, rather than the Science Museum, and gone right ahead and paid and walked through the entire premises without even realising my mistake. “Nice one Max”, I hear myself saying, “you've really gone and outdone yourself this time”. Such stark revelations about your own spectacular lack of self-worth can really be hard to shake off, especially when alone and so far from home or anything familiar. From here it's a slippery slope into a world of listlessness and self-loathing that can only be arrested by the hasty consumption of alcohol.

Fortunately, my ability to find beer and drink it remains unparalleled. I locate an outdoor bar on the riverbank (when I say “riverbank” I mean it in the European sense. That is to say, a concrete accessway separated from the road above by a retaining wall and the water below by another retaining wall), from which I can watch the evening boats come in as the sun sets pleasantly on my back. A sign above the bar says “Drink with me :) You are at home”. You can't argue with that sort of thinking.

A decent smattering of patrons are lounging on chairs around the bar. On a stool at the bar is a large Austrian man of about forty with tats and ear piercings, staring at his beer as if it might suddenly spew forth some revelation to send him on the path to enlightenment. Maybe it will. An English lady is sitting by herself at a nearby table, her head buried in a Sudoku book that she no doubt purchased at Gatwick Airport on the way over for £1.50 (I know the price because I picked one up myself). A young Italian couple on deckchairs are arguing about something, or having a joke, I can't really figure it out with Italians anymore. And there's a pretty, red-haired Austrian girl sitting upright in her deckchair, crying. I want to invite her over to my table for a yarn, but am not sure quite how to go about asking. “So, you look like you went to the wrong museum this afternoon too. Wanna talk about it?” doesn't quite seem appropriate. So I let her be, instead focusing my attention on the American tourists with their shirts tucked into the belts on the far riverbank, hoping my concentrated energy may cause one of them to suddenly stagger backwards and fall in. Sadly not.

I still can't help but feel that something is missing from the evening as I walk back through Vienna's tourist-clogged main streets at dusk, pleasant buzzing from my riverside beers. I'm in no hurry to get back to the hostel, so I turn off the main drag and find myself in another of those uniquely-European mazes of streets that twist and turn every which way and occasionally bend back on each other, leading to much grimacing and scratching of heads. But there in the depth of those alleyways, as if ordained by a higher power, I find what I've been looking for. Yes. It's an Irish pub.

There's something tremendously comforting about an Irish pub when you've spent a long while on the road. Throughout the world it's an homogenous social space, inhabited by the same people with different names, adorned with the same furnishings and imbued with the same faux-Irish sentimentality that makes you want to spontaneously burst into a rendition of Dirty Old Town, if you could just remember any of the words. I'm drinking in Vienna, but I could be in Cork, Dunedin, Memphis or Ulan Bator.

This Irish bar proves to be just like any other, with it's dark wood pannelling, low ceilings, smoky ambience and the Corrs playing on the sound system. I take a seat at the bar at contemplate my choice of drink. Picking the wrong brew in an Irish bar in Vienna could mean social suicide, so it's worth taking the time to think it through. Ordering a Guinness would of course immediately identify me as a novice, and going for a Newcastle Brown would arouse suspicions of being a loyalist. The other options are Kilkenny and McAffrey's Irish Ale, a “traditional draught beer raised by hand pump from the cellar” - a Tui billboard candidate if ever I saw one. Kilkenny it is, then.

It's not until I put my glass down and look around the small room that I realise everyone else is drinking pissweak Austrian lager, which no doubt cost them roughly 3 Euro each. My pint cost me a scarcely believable 4.90, of which I handed over a 5 Euro note and received no change. What's more, not a single other occupant of the bar is a foreigner, let alone Irish; they're just workers who have come to enjoy a pint and blow smoke in some strange backpacker's face. The two old guys next to me, who look like burned-out roadies for a 1970s heavy metal band, are conversing with the Austrian bartender and laughing horrendous, throaty smokers' laughs. The couple next to me - a pair of younger, wealthier Austrians - are having a conversation with some lesbians seated at a booth in the corner. I just sit in between, dumbfounded, as volleys of conversation are fired over my head and every which way around the bar except mine. I realise that I've been totally gypped. I've been lured into a tourist trap and forced to pay way over the odds for a so-called slice of Irish culture. But the only thing Irish about this place is the beer.

The sound of mocking laughter follows me out the door and into the dimly-lit alleyway as I slink back towards what I believe to be the direction of the main street. “You haven't heard the last of this, you bastards”, I mutter under my breath. “I'm gonna tell my Irish mates about this place, and they'll come and burn it to the fuckin' ground”. Actually, they'll drink it to the ground first, then burn it to the ground. Priorities of course.


***

It would appear, from the campaign banners and billboards taking up every square inch of available public space, that there's an election coming up in Austria. Not being a particularly ardent follower of Austrian politics, I know nothing about the candidates and so the only conclusions I can draw about who I'd vote for (if eligible) come from the manner in which the would-be leaders are presented in their campaigns. This puts me in the curious position of disregarding policies and voting entirely based on who looks like more of a leader, which is probably how a large chunk of every electorate around the world votes anyway.

The jury's out on the current deputy prime minister, representing what looks like a centre-right party. There's something about the uneasy grin on his face that's not quite right. "His eyes aren't smiling", says Georgina. "You can tell a person isn't really smiling by the eyes". Not just that, but his stubbly grey goatee seems ill-at-ease with his otherwise cleancut, "I was organising peaceful student protests while my mates were smoking dope and listening to Hendrix" appearance. His main rival, whose red banners indicate he's some sort of social democrat, isn't showing his teeth at all in his banners. Still, he looks like my high school French teacher, so I like him. I don't know about his policies though: "Sozial. Entschlossen. Zuverlassig". Clearing one's throat may be an important part of the speech process but I'm sure the people of Austria would be more interested in hearing his key policy points.

Then there are the minority party leaders who will, in my completely uninformed opinion, probably fight over the scraps come election night. The Green Party candidate also has a grey beard and appears to be standing in the dark, perhaps foreshadowing what might happen to you the voter unless you heed your conscience and tick the box for him. Then there are the two right-wing nationalist candidates. The first is a young, dynamic looking man with photoshopped blue eyes who has been superimposed over an image of the national emblem, the Austrian eagle. He's giving the thumbs up and fixing the camera with a "vote for me and I'll shag you!" grin that's just bordering on creepy. The other right-wing candidate is our old friend and Nazi admirer Jorg Haider. He's the only candidate I recognise, and my prejudices would rule out the possibility of ever voting for him. If I had to vote tomorrow I'd probably lean towards the Social Democrat, but there's a long way to go in this election and any significant change in billboard portrayals could swing my vote in a new direction.

Our final evening in Vienna sees us in a traditional Austrian wine tavern, below street level in a tucked-away part of the old town. By this point we have debated to death the various merits of each party leader's billboard and instead turn our intentions to sampling each of the wines listed on the menu. They arrive in little quarter-litre jugs that are deceptively hard-hitting, and before long I'm grinning inanely as I tuck into a meal of bratwurst and (you guessed it) potatoes. There is a certain Olde World charm to the place that even our surly waitress cannot dampen. It's a convivial little haven from the tourist chaos in the above-ground world, the kind of place you could've imagined Allied spies hanging around in during the war years. I can see them now, sitting at a table in a little alcove in the corner, talking quietly and handing each other brown paper bags from trenchcoats and then sneaking out of the place while the soundtrack plays suspicious, plodding trumpet music. Hmmm, looks like I've drunk too much wine again.

After dinner, we emerge from the rain-soaked streets of Vienna and half-sprint, half-stagger down into the subway, where I take photos of myself grinning moronically and the girls pretend not to know me, as is now customary when we're on public transport together. Back at the dorm, I drink my own body weight in water than climb into bed, where a restless and shallow sleep awaits me for much of the evening.

Suddenly, at around 3am, I spring bolt upright in my bed as a little light bulb flicks on above my head. So that's what's been missing in my life, that's where I've been going wrong. It's clear exactly what I have to do now: I have to invest all my remaining money in the Canadian Royal Mint! Will get onto it first thing in the morning. Yes.