Sometimes while traveling, one can experience a simple delight that can transform the experience.
While we had a delightful and problem-free time in Vienna as traveling wives, we took a longer bike ride to the outskirts of the city. This, in my experience, means ‘tone down the gay and be chill.’ 1
We are about to cut over from the bike lane to the off-road path along the river, when we noticed a cafe called Prindl Cafe. We immediately gravitate towards it, as “Prindle Pond” was the name of the venue of our wedding the previous week. (Prindle Pond is a camp in central Massachusetts).
Of course, we go inside. My mind is full of toning down the gay and chilling, but my wife, bubbling and outgoing and desiring to befriend everyone, goes right up to the bartender and tries to explain how we got married at a camp with the same name as his cafe.
He grows quiet and has a stern expression; he does not smile at the coincidence of the name and does not congratulate us. I grab the elbow of my wife’s sleeve and prepare to take a step backwards.
As fate would have it, the man has no issue with gay marriage, but does not speak English. We try to explain in horribly broken German (though – I am still uneasy), but fortunately his English-speaking daughter comes to our rescue and translates.
Immediately, his face brightens. He claps his hands together. He runs to the pastry display and grabs us two croissants, two chocolate croissants, and a delicious apple something (which provided us a wonderful pre-airport snack the next day). He does not stop beaming the entire time we drink our beers. We stayed too long that we did not make it to the island before dark, but it was all so worth it. We had not felt uncomfortable in Vienna, but this was the peak of comfort, acceptance, and even joy from someone met on our travels.
Though this was a delightful interaction and a lovely cafe/pub, I am sad to share that I was nervous about someone’s reaction toward my relationship and my marriage. This is something I have dealt with the most in my own cities and American travel (that is, more than in Europe), but how disappointing that I almost turned away from sharing my story with a kind and gentle-hearted man, who did not flinch, double-take or have any reaction other than absolute delight at our story, just because I did not know how he might react.
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I lived in Columbus, OH for three years. It was a very open city, I was in a very accepting and progressive graduate program. I came out while living in Columbus. But half a step outside the I-270 loop, the gay-hating Christians appeared in full shaming force. (Note: the emphasis is on the geographical area, and I will point out that the Christian communities inside the city were, in my experience, kind and open and loving towards the Columbus LGBT community... in fact, issues inside the city stemmed primarily from yo-pro-bros asking to see us make out… but that’s another novel).
Traveling can be a difficult passion for those who have a demanding and/or low-paying job (speaking from my own experience working in the nonprofit/education field). It was important for my wife and me to travel for our honeymoon, something we had not done yet together due to post-graduate schooling, long-distance, and a wealth of other factors circling around finances and, well, being gay.
Our first “vacation” together was after four years, a gift to ourselves when my wife completed her PhD, purchased on significant discount from Groupon. Well, the resort was mediocre at best, but we enjoyed the beach and the sunshine, that is, until we suffered drastically from food poisoning on the third day.
But I digress. This complex budget is where I started…
I like planning, though our actual activities varied significantly from our plans! In fact, we spent about $500 LESS than this initial budget.
It might be surprising, but this was step one. I included everything we were interested in doing, so it could be a part of our wedding budget, and scaled back from there. I researched day trips that were reasonable, I calculated from the local currency to the dollar, I even looked up average cost of meals so I could determine how many days we could “eat fancy.” To decide where to go, we researched countries of interest and looked at the cost to fly there and average cost of accommodations. Central Europe was our focus, and flying in to Prague and out of Vienna was the most reasonable, and, according to our research, among the most gay-friendly.
Note: In Prague, we didn’t see many lesbian couples, but we always felt safe and not out-of-place, especially in the Vinohrady area. Only once did someone do a double-take at us, but it was at the Charles Bridge and it was a man in a University of Alabama hoodie. In Vienna, gay and lesbian folks were everywhere! I’ll go more in depth in other posts, but definitely a space we felt not only safe, but… a part of the norm. More so than in Boston!
My tips:
Stay in an Airbnb – take note that some have cancellation policies and some don’t.
Use public transit/ City bikes
Stay away from touristy areas for meals
Travel off-season
Many tourist destinations have free or discounted days or times (for example Prague Castle)
Following a painfully long layover (saves money!), we landed in Prague on Monday afternoon. One thing we agreed to splurge on – taxi service from the airport. Our Uber was not much, and saved us time and headache trying to get from the airport. Typically I’d swear by public transit, and I’d recommend this video to see how.
We arrived in time to check in to our airbnb. In searching for our airbnb, we were pretty flexible on the location because we knew we planned to visit a different part of the city each day. We researched primarily safety and cost, and actually, lucked out with a large studio apartment in the Old City, where we were close to a few major tram lines and could walk to the city center.
Besides the airbnb, our biggest money-saver was THE WEATHER. This may seem unfair, because obviously there is nothing one can do to plan around weather until it’s happening. As you can see on my ridiculous budget spreadsheet, we planned for many museums and attractions. In Prague, there is so much to do outdoors that is free. Our favorite was the Vyšehrad (Prague’s “other castle”). We toured some caverns for a couple bucks each but the grounds and rest of the castle was free. There are a couple restaurants where we enjoyed a cheap beer outdoors. We spent the entire afternoon wandering around, and spent maybe $5 (yes, that includes the beers).
The second biggest money-saver was… WE LOVED PRAGUE AND VIENNA. Seriously. There are dozens of awesome day trips in a 90 minute radius, and we planned to do 1 or 2, but there was so much to do in Prague and we loved every day so much, we had no desire to leave the city. If we go back, I have this list to refer to, but 5.5 days in Prague was not even enough. Once we leave the city-center, there are multiple other neighborhoods each with a distinguished and unique character. And I would recommend the same. Don’t spend all your money trying to cram the entire country into a few days, and spending that much more time on trains and buses. Guided day trips are expensive. Pick a spot and stick to it, well enough to get to know it. The most money we spent in Vienna was the day it rained (we went to museums) but avoiding the day trips was actually our best financial decision.
There are always free guided tours. One company I have used often is Sandeman’s New Europe tours, but other companies do guided tours for free as well. Yes it’s “free,” but please please please, always tip your tour guide.
In Vienna, we stayed in Wieden, which according to our research was not the most gay-friendly area, but we found it to be very inclusive. It was a quiet but hip neighborhood with lots of young folks, and major bike lines into the center of the city. The cost of our meals and airbnb was definitely much more than Prague, but still significantly less than Boston and other major US cities. The most money we spent on dining was US$75, including tip, tax, two entrées and three alcoholic beverages each. This was our one big “fancy” meal, I mean, we were not trying to be frugal, and we left tipsy, full, and happy on one of the best meals of our life. (In Boston, $75 would get you two beers and two burgers.)
The same meal in a touristy area of Vienna, however, could have been double that. So, my recommendation in that respect is to avoid dining in the city center. Grab a beer and snack if you’d like, but save the dinners for other neighborhoods – you’ll get a more authentic experience that way, anyway!
As most vendors prefer cash payment, we typically used cash during our stay. The ATMs of banks do not charge ATM withdrawal fees – so keep that in mind, as that is a cost that can add up quickly! Be sure to take note of your own bank, too, if it has international fees.
I wrote above that we spent much less than we budgeted. Again, this is primarily due to our outdoor activities in place of admission to museums and other major attractions. Flights were $680 each (round trip); airbnb was $85/night in Vienna and $75/night in Prague (that includes ALL costs: base cost, cleaning fee, Airbnb service fee, and tax); meals, attractions, Ubers, beers, wine, public transit, EVERYTHING ELSE totaled $900. That’s $33 per person per day in Prague. It’s $52 per person per day in Vienna.
I have always liked Austria, though I couldn’t tell you why exactly, as this was my first trip to Vienna. In college, I visited Salzburg while interning abroad in London (10/10 would recommend Salzburg to a friend, but this post will of course focus on Vienna).
So when our train pulled into Vienna from Prague, we quickly headed to our Airbnb to check in then explore our neighborhood, staying local our first evening.
Our first full day, we wanted to check out the vineyards in the hills overlooking Vienna. We started by taking a city bus (38A) to the top of the mountain – Kahlenberg – a cheap and direct route to witness beautiful views of the city. It’s a windy road; if you get motion sickness, be warned, and grab a spot near the front! There is both a fancy restaurant and café here at the top, and the option to take the same bus back into the city, but what I’d recommend is taking a hike.
It’s about two miles from Kahlenberg to Grinzing. Grinzing is a neighborhood of Vienna and is the heart of Vienna’s wine scene. You can reward yourself (as we did) following the 2 mile hike with a visit to a Grinzing restaurant or Heuriger (wine tavern).
Some of the smaller Heurigen have limited hours, and we passed many of them during our hike down the mountain. They spread dozens of picnic tables out across their patios or grassy areas, but unfortunately for us, many are only open on weekends outside of summer. So we settled for one in the area of Grinzing that had weekday hours.
We started our hike a bit later in the day than we should have done, and as the sun began to set the woods got a little dark. We didn’t have cell service, but fortunately, everything is well marked and the very moment we began to worry, a sign pointed us in the direction of Grinzing. We took that last bit along the road to have light, but not before capturing this gorgeous picture of the sun setting over the vineyards.
On our second day, we rented the city bikes. You will need to register an account on the first day, which we did a week membership for a whopping 1€. When you pick up the bike, the first hour is free. From there, it’s only 1€ per hour.
Vienna is a biker’s dream. With mostly protected and/or off-road bike lanes, you are wildly free from worrying about get hit by a car. You do want to look out for pedestrians, as, especially in the city center, many tourists are confused and walk in the bike lane instead of the sidewalk reserved for pedestrians… I could go onto a rant about it not being that hard, signs for bikers vs. pedestrians is pretty universal and do not require proficiency of German language, but – I’ll just leave it at that.
When our free hour was up, we docked out bikes and found this cute English pub that doubled as a library bookstore. This is what we had been hoping the “book bar” place in Prague would look and feel like, and this pub was comfortable and delightful.
While in the city center, we also indulged in the notorious Austrian cake, the sacher-torte, a chocolate cake layered with apricot preserves. Accompanied, of course, with some Viennese wine.
At the recommendation of Rick Steves, we headed to Trzésniewski, famous for its open-faced finger sandwiches. It lived up to the hype! With each one being just a couple of bites, and only 1€, we were able to try plenty of flavors. I’d recommend getting at least one that sounds a little wild – you may love it! And don’t forget to order a pfiff: a pfiff of beer is 0.2L or, about 6oz. Just enough to wash down your lunch! (But of course you can always get more! The beer is light and refreshing!)
On Day 3, we headed out to Schonbrunn Palace, but it was a beautiful day, so we didn’t pay for a tour inside. Instead, we explore the grounds, which are expansive – and free! We wandered for about 2 hours, but could have spent a whole day out here. How they manipulated the vines to create a canopy… it was wild. It was an autumn wonderland.
On on fourth full day, we picked up the Vienna city bikes again and explored the Danube trail. We biked only to the edge of the city and back, but for those who want a bigger biking experience you can go all the way to Germany, or to Bratislava, and onward! In fact, we had initially planned on doing a day-trip to Bratislava, but we loved Vienna so much, we couldn’t justify using one of our four days for a day-trip.
Resources:
Many of the places we went were recommendation of Rick Steves, particularly restaurants we went to. His stuff is a great starting point, and we use it to map out recommendations that are close in proximity to maximize our time.
Vienna Lez-Travel rating:
Vienna was a delight, and a place my wife and I always felt safe. Pride flags flew in many places, and we were far from alone, both in the touristy areas and otherwise.
I am a planner by nature, to a fault, even. But with our Europe trip immediately following our honeymoon, there was no time to plan in the midst of planning a DIY wedding.
But, it was good for me to break free of my organizer chains and experience the freedom of exploring by getting lost, or pausing to look at our adventure options over an espresso (or a pilsner).
So while winging it on our travels, we discovered a recommended restaurant for ‘authentic Viennese’ that was high-rated among tourists and locals alike. Like fools, though, was how we looked when we arrived.
Lez Travel 