Austria: Salzburg, Vienna, and finding a soul mate city… post NSFW
I had a total blast in Austria, and as I expected came to find the ultimate in vegan friendliness - its name is Vienna. Immediately upon entering Austria I noticed the increase of health consciousness: fruit, smoothies and juices available for purchase, falafel places at the train station itself. In other news, my travelling is now being highly influenced by who I stay with in couch surfing. The people I stay with help me choose what to visit, teach me things about life/myself, and sometimes I spend a good deal of time with them.
- Salzburg (2 days)
- Vienna (4 days)
Salzburg was totally awesome, a small and beautiful city framed by the mountains. I hadn’t realized how much I has missed the mountains since Switzerland… when I saw them I felt almost relieved, I have loved the feeling of seeing mountains every day. My time here was very full, since my host Sandra and I clicked so well and did so many things together in such a short time. It went something like this: day 1 we went out for Indian food and toured around, did a bit of shopping and drank tea at a really funky African cafe… day 2 I borrowed Sandra’s bike and did my own tour around the city (including a climb to the top of the hill to see the fortress and art museum), then in the evening we visited her boyfriend’s house outside the city (by hitchiking! gasp!). My first time hitchiking in Europe was uneventful - Sandra happens to be a very lucky person and we ended up being driven by someone we got off the bus with, right to the neighbourhood we were seeking. I know that I said I wanted to do the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, but 35 euros was too much to consider, and I had heard a few bad reviews of the tour. Anyway, Sandra herself is a great girl, who is taking off to Burma, Thailand soon to help out with the earthquake victims. She also hates being photographed:
Oh yeah, and another observation: the tourist scene here seems to be all about the Sound of Music, and Mozart.
As is to be expected in the homeland of so many fantastic composers, buskers in Austria are of a higher scale of talent. Here is one on a grand piano:
Inside the African cafe, which had lots of very creative art made with recycled products such as plastic bottles:
A very beautiful…. graveyard?
Delicious Indian food at the Spicy Spice cafe:
On my bike tour I visited an interesting building, Hangar 7, which is essentially a building sponsored by Red Bull that has changing exhibitions of contempoary art:
…
My final impression of Vienna is that it is the only place I have been in Europe that I can picture living in. Beautiful, clean, safe in terms of traffic and cars, spacious, tourists seem to hide in only the most boring places, lots of international and exciting contemporary art exhibitions, lots of fun events, and, of course, extraordinarily vegan friendly. This impression of vegan friendliness was enhanced by my hosts, two proud vegan activists named Chris and Kathi and their adorable vegan dog, Snoopy. Snoopy is 11 in dog years but has an insanely youthful zeal and despite our energetic days he was there every step of the way, running and getting wet in fountains wherever possible.
I ended up trying so many new vegan foods in Vienna, and you know how much I love food adventures. These are not things I would eat every day for obvious processed reasons, but definitely fun treats:
- vegan cordon bleu
- vegan ice cream bar with chocolate shell (do not know what these are called)
- a fantastic new vegan cheeze from Greece that is better than any I have had
- been to a vegetarian friendly Irish pub and tried vegan schnitzel and vegan ghoulash
- tamarind fruit
- jack fruit
- vegan white chocolate made with rice milk (YUM)
- vegan wine gums
- seitan (I know, I know, but surprisingly up until this time I was a seitan virgin)
- and… I think that was it but my memory could be failing me.
And now, some photo highlights!
My animal (but not always photo) friendly hosts Chris and Kathi:
Snoopy the wonder dog roaming around a fountain:
Vegan cheeze of choice:
This post is NSFW since we happened to attend the Gay Pride parade! It was totally a blast! We did a lot of dancing at the Mamma Mia float with all of the ABBA and ABBA inspired music. I was happy to be out there supporting everyone and got some fantastic photographs:
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