Wien and Wieners

Having spent the weekend in beautiful Vienna with a dear friend I met in Chile last summer, I was still giggling after three days every time he would say, "This is how the Wieners do it," or something relating to Vienna's inhabitants, which are called "Wieners" in German.

I arrived after getting up at 5:30am to catch my Germanwings flight (the cheapest airline in Germany now) from Suttgart to Vienna, just under an hour trip. My friend Rob met me at the airport with a giant picture of me that he had taken of me in Chile (where I am holding a packet of maxipads called "Ella: feminine towels") and printed out in black-and-.white with the maxipads in original color.

After shopping for the fixings for a giant Austrian breakfast (bread rolls, herbed cream cheese, sliced cheese, sliced meat, yogurt, fruit, juice, coffee, granola, and hand-rolled cigarettes for his "dessert") we came back to his house (which he shares with four other people), which is nearly entirely decorated with zebra-print material. His room is painted "Porno Red" (self-described) and he spends as much time getting ready to go out as I do. In short, HOT!

After a power-nap, we saw a lot of beautiful baroque old-city Vienna as well as the Stephans Cathedral, which was a little disappointing as you have to pay 3 euros to climb the stairs up the
tower for the view, and then it stops halfway at a gift shop. We cooked dinner (vegetables in a coconut-milk curry with basmati rice and a giant salad that everyone stuck a fork in at one time or another) and then went out to a show, some friends of Rob´s were opening up for an Italian cover band called Eurosmith.

The lead singer looked and acted and sounded so much like Stephen Tyler that it was a little creepy because you´d think you were at an Aerosmith concert but then you look around and the place was filled with semi-nerdy metalheads and older Austrian Aerosmith fans, and it was in a smallish beer-hall. They totally rocked.

After the concert a group of us went clubbing, there´s an old wall that surrounded the city in the olden days, but now the wall (which isHUGE) is hollowed out and filled with shops and things, and one area had nightclub after nightclub. It was really fun, soo packed. I definitely felt like we had found the party in Vienna.