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glindarayepix's avatar

And since you asked about Vienna... We always try to get to the Mozart Cafe for Schwarzwald (Black Forest) cake and a Wienerwald franchise for the roasted chicken. The first is a bit too touristy, and the second is right up there with Denny's for quality, but when I [Ben] was growing up, these were first on the list of my family's annual pilgrimages. The food is solid, simple German, and you have to work really hard to get a bad meal in Vienna.

We have a deep connection to the city through my family's history in the wine and furrier trades, but both were interrupted by the Nazis. After the war, my Jewish step-mother went back to the fashionable townhouse she grew up in and saw her mother's piano still sitting in the front window. When she knocked, a pre-war neighbor she vaguely remembered answered the door, exclaimed, "We thought you were all dead!" and slammed it in her face. It took 30 years, but she got a reparations pension from the Austrian government of 350 euros per month--in compensation for two multi-million-dollar businesses! So we have mixed feelings.

And I really don't mean to rain on a parade, but the other thing is that we usually get there in January, when all those massive imperial boulevards turn into bitterly cold wind tunnels. But as long as you dress really warm, it's a great city to wander. And the local white wines are spectacular! And the countryside around town is some of the most beautiful on earth.

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glindarayepix's avatar

Great notes on photography! And you reminded us of our first time in Vienna, when we were standing opposite the arch by the Lipizzaner stables, trying to get a photo of the horse-drawn buggies coming through. We set up the shot, then suddenly, an Asian tourist stepped right into the middle of our photo with her iPad camera held aloft. We grumbled and groaned until finally she left, and we got our chance. But when we got home and compared the photos, the shot with her in it not only said so much more about cultures and the foibles of human beings, but was actually pretty hilarious. Nowadays, we go out of our way to include people in our photos, the more eccentric the better.

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