Vienna....I am an outlier

That a notable destination doesn't speak to you is probably very common.

Please, everyone reading this, please sit down as the following will shake you to your core. Sitting? ...... okay, some people dont enjoy Budapest. Hard, nay impossible to believe, but true. So just imagine how many more must be bored by Vienna?

I liked Vienna quite a bit, for some strange reason I really enjoyed Hallstatt. I was turned off by Salzburg, and could not see what was so special about one of the Bad towns. So Austria doest light my fire to a huge degree. But Austria is in good company cause I feel the same about Germany.

Bruce, as Mr. E. said, that is common. Some places call to me and others not so much. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy them, but it does mean I probably would not return. And Vienna was one of those places. I did enjoy its beauty and history and especially loved the surrounding area, but it's not a destination that I have a burning desire to return to, unlike some others.

Which big cities in Europe do you like?

I tend not to make comparisons. I usually find something to like about almost every place I visit.

I did like Vienna, but the only other place in Austria I've encountered was Salzburg. I'm sure there are many other places I would like, also.

Would I return? Probably not, but that's because I'm old and have so many places I still want to see.

What other cities in Austria do you like?

Where is it written that everyone has to love, or even like, the same things and places? Just because someone praises a place (effusively or otherwise), doesn't mean that you have to enjoy it to the same degree, or at all.

I like Vienna just fine. Is it my favourite city in Europe? Not by a long shot. Have visited it more than once, and would I do it again? Absolutely, if only to revisit the Kunsthistorisches Museum one more time. And FTR, I don't like Sachertorte.

Nobody likes Sachertorte.

You should have been eating Strudel!

Lol Emily. Trust me, I would never turn down Apple strudel. In fact, I have some on the kitchen counter right now.

I think we should encourage this! I wish more people didn’t care for Paris.

I wish more didnt care for Europe. Getting crowded.

Per Hank: "Which big cities in Europe do you like?" Stockholm (my favorite large city) , Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rome, Amsterdam...to name a few. And, as much as I require chocolate alone or in combination, amazing Sachertorte in Vienna is not enough of a draw for a return visit.

You should have been eating Strudel!

Yes! With vanilla cream sauce, of course.

Funny, I don't love Stockholm, stately expensive and boring. We will not be contributing to each other's crowd problems :)

Mr. E I agree on Salzburg, it's a lunch stop and heck outta there in my concept, much like Heidelberg not worth the crowd

Hank, no, it just didn't work for me. Most really like it.

I've now visited Vienna twice. I think it's a great place to just hang out and relax, and it would be an excellent introduction to a German-language country for the less experienced traveler.

This recent discussion may provide reason enough to visit:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/austria/best-places-for-pastries-in-innsbruck-and-vienna

On the most recent visit I discovered the Hundertwasser Museum, which is now one of my favorite museums anywhere - his House as well. Not the type of artistic expression that comes to mind when you think of Vienna.

Mark my wife was an art history major and did a year abroad at the University of Vienna. She loves the place. It's a fantastic city for art 1850-1950.

I don’t particularly care for Paris or Rome but love Vienna, Berlin, Lisbon, Copenhagen etc. We’re all different.

I feel the same way about Vienna, but could have spent a week in Salzburg!

PQ

I love Vienna but I'm doing my part to reduce the crowd in Venice, which I've only been to once, in 1985. And I've never been to Barcelona and have no plans to ever go there.

I'm not all that into desserts, so I didn't eat any Sachertorte or strudel in Vienna. But Vienna is my favorite city in Europe. I was underwhelmed by Paris, I think because my expectations were too high.

Est. Prof. You had a brain fart (happens to me often) you might want to revise schnitzel to strudel.

Mister E - Thanks for the heads up about the fart. I don't know my desserts, just or otherwise.

But you cant find a good steak in Vienna either.

Correct on the steaks. We go to Croatia for good steak.

I dislike Vienna so much that I’m heading there again this year! ; ). Besides the Christmas Markets, I going to try to partially eat my way through Emily’s pastry list - thanks, Emily! : )

If I was listing out my favorite cities in Europe, many in the Top 20 are the smaller cities & even some tiny ones. Munich is one of the larger ones that’s had less appeal after two stays there. And London is exciting to visit - been there twice, but it doesn’t make me sigh with happiness when I think about being there like many others do.

But you cant find a good steak in Vienna either.

This is definitely not true, but you have to invest in searching, because it is not part of the Viennese cuisine.

I deleted my previous post because I think it was a bit confusing :-)

So, I judge cities based on whether I'd want to spend more time there. The spirit of some cities only becomes clear to me after I've been there longer and can delve a little deeper into daily life. That's exactly what I'd like to do in Vienna – stay for a few weeks. I don't need all that Habsburg stuff, because I have something similar at home, but of course in a much smaller version. But I have the feeling that Viennese life offers many little surprises, some of which I'd like to discover. There are cities that have a certain attitude to life, and I think the same about Vienna.
Since I'm from Munich and know that the typical attitude to life isn't reflected in any travel guide, I know what it's like as a tourist to only scratch the surface and never get to know what life there is really about. Vienna is, along with Hamburg and Paris, one of the cities where I want to look beneath the surface. There are cities where I don't feel that way, and those include London, Rome, and Berlin. They're nice to look at, but I don't feel like looking beneath the surface.
So it's clear that the spark has to fly first to create the desire to get to know the city better. If that spark doesn't fly, then it's just not the right city.

Mignon, happy to help you light that spark.

In my opinion, there are two Viennas. The one where you visit the one where you live. Vienna, like the Viennese, is very hard to get to know and befriend. But once you do, you are like family. (Just ask my upstairs Viennese neighbors who now have no qualms about folding up my dainties from the laundry rack when they care for my cats.) Very few tourists get to live in Vienna, but it can be done even with just a few weeks.

Thanks, Emily... I'll definitely come back to that :-)

I have a friend in Schwechat, and through her, some coworkers and my stays in Vienna, I've realized that we (Munich residents and Viennese, or let's say Bavarians and Austrians) are in many points similar. I also know from her that this will allow me to immerse myself a little more deeply. I'm not talking about living like a local, because you never achieve that. I'm talking about doing what I love so much at home when I'm not working - just going with the flow and enjoying the city's amenities (like beautiful markets, great cafes, and places off the beaten track) more intensely and taking more time for everything.
In cities that warm my heart, I also love to simply sit on a bench for hours and let life pass me by. No rush and no desire to complete all the bucket list items, because that's not what this experience is about at all.

Maybe I need to explain the Bavarian-Austrian thing again. It's obvious that we're geographically close, but we also have a lot in common culturally. Of course, there's also a shared history.

I always notice this in my daily life when I listen to the weekly podcast from the newspaper 'Die Zeit'. 'Servus Grüezi Hallo' is a podcast with three hosts: a Swiss from Zurich, an Austrian from Innsbruck (working in Vienna), and a German from North Rhine-Westphalia (working in Berlin). All three are journalists of the newspaper 'Die Zeit', and each week they discuss a political topic or any topic that's been in the news. Each person explains their country's position and how individual governments deal with this issues, or rather, the legal situation in their respective countries. It sounds boring, but it's quite funny.
Why am I mentioning this now? It often happens to me that when this guy from Berlin says this is how it is in Germany, I think, “Huh? What is he even talking about?" On the other hand, when this guy from Austria says something, I think, "Yeah, exactly, that's how it is in Bavaria too." :-)

I've realized that we (Munich residents and Viennese, or let's say Bavarians and Austrians) are in many points similar. ...

The main common ground is the language, Bairisch (with i), spoken in parts of Bayern (with y) [Bavaria] and most parts of Austria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language

OK, now I must ask a question I’ve pondered for a few years. Leaving Grinzing and a large meal, I packed up the strudel for the next day. Going through the airport you’d have thought my foil wrapped strudel was a time bomb…I was taken out of line, interrogated, xrayed I think, and when I said “ Please, just keep the strudel’” I was required to repack it and take it with me. The sturm und drang wasn’t worth the first bite…the apples were unpeeled! One bite was all I needed to know. Is this normal or did I get a lazy baker’s effort at what I thought was the worst strudel I’d ever eaten. I remember my Hungarian grandmother stretching strudel dough over the kitchen table with the instructions that it wasn’t ready until you could read the Forward ( the Yiddish language newspaper) underneath it , which I will count as my strudel creds.

... the apples were unpeeled!

It depends on the type of apples whether you must peel it or may leave them as is. But there are a lot of people who say that peeling is mandatory. Even for Apfelstrudel there are different recipes.

Barcelona and Venice both leave me cold. But I have no interest in knowing whether other travelers are out there who feel the same way. Our tastes are very individual. (For the record, I absolutely love Vienna.)

”…this will allow me to immerse myself a little more deeply. I'm not talking about living like a local, because you never achieve that. I'm talking about doing what I love so much at home when I'm not working - just going with the flow and enjoying the city's amenities (like beautiful markets, great cafes, and places off the beaten track) more intensely and taking more time for everything.”
”In cities that warm my heart, I also love to simply sit on a bench for hours and let life pass me by. No rush and no desire to complete all the bucket list items, because that's not what this experience is about at all.”

Mignon, wow, you’ve described so beautifully how my mind works when I’m traveling solo! Reading it instantly put me back through memories of Puglia two months ago. Some people see my 10+ cities itinerary as chaos, but this is my mindset at each of those locations. Thank you!

The main common ground is the language, Bairisch (with i), spoken in parts of Bayern (with y) [Bavaria] and most parts of Austria.

Yes, right, and I wish Bairisch would be an official language. Unfortunately, it's just a dialect without official grammar :-) And especially in Munich, most people don't speak it anymore. It's a real shame. But I had the feeling that many more people in Vienna still speak the Viennese dialect that I love so much.

The thought briefly crossed my mind that I might prefer some cities because I like the sound of the language. But I immediately dismissed the idea, because then I wouldn't like Paris at all and would like Rome very much. And yet it's exactly the other way around.

Grinzing

Denny, that is your problem right there. You go to an overly touristed area and you can expect subpar performance. While I am only an amateur expert, my experience tells me that the apples should be peeled. The biggest strudel hill people die on is whether or no to include raisins.

Thanks for the replies. I suspected my error was indeed the locale. It was disappointing in many regards and I should have realized everything changes and often not for the best. I wanted to revisit after 45 years and it was nothing like the good old days, or at least as I remembered them. And Gramma’s is always the best anyway. . And I’m fine with raisins…poppyseed with raisins (or mohn growing up) is a favorite of mine too. In 1975 we spent a month traveling through Central Europe and I remember the Hungarians raging about how the Austrians usurped their pastries and claimed them as their own. The Austrians of course raged against the Hungarians; indeed the internecine hostility from one country to the next back then was a constant theme and an enduring memory to this day. Take care all.

I wish Bairisch would be an official language.

@mignon
As seen from linguistic science it is a language, within it different dialects like Bayrisch and Wienerisch exist.
See here for the intricate details: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bairisch

@wmt1

That may be true, but the Bavarian (Bairisch) spoken in Bavaria is not an official language. There is no official grammar, and it is not officially recognized as a language, like Low German (Plattdeutsch) or Frisian (Friesisch), for example. But it doesn’t have to be, because it’s perfectly fine the way it is :-)

I am always really curious when someone says they do not like Vienna. Why do I consider it to be one of my favorite cities in the world when others can't appreciate it? Possibly because I never take the Sachertorte, or because I have a taste for crappy wine and high octane schnaps? I don't know, but if you gave me a free trip anywhere, I would have Vienna on my list.
I can't count how many times I have been there. I have stayed in just about every accommodation possible.....attic apartments, the Intercontinental, Club Med (it ain't no more). I have dined in a great number of small and fabulous local places. Crepes/fruit flambe, powidltascherl, a good high octane schnaps, I'll skip dinner and go straight to desert! Lunch? I walk into a butcher shop and have a sandwich made for me. Austria has it all. Great bread, sausage, an appreciation for good mustard and cheese. Beer. Heck yeah. They have that.
I think the city can be a bit intimidating. All of the art and music, not everyone is comfortable with that. But that is just one layer of this wonderful cake. There is so much more. Go, stay, stay longer than a few days. And forget about those silly horses and that dry slab of cake. There is so much more.
True story, the first time I took my wife there I was at a business meeting throughout the day. She decided to entertain herself by heading into "town". Her timing was pretty amazing. Drawn by a line of people on the street, she happened to see Dianna and Charles driving by literally with yards of where she was standing. Needless to say, she was pretty pleased with herself for her good timing and luck. My meeting with local Philips staff was not nearly as exciting, but as I recall, it was successful.