Category: Italy

56 Hours of Chaos

Published on by carolinepotterLeave a comment

My trip to Vienna this past weekend was fantastic, but also the most chaotic 56 hours I have had while abroad. Here is an approximate hour by hour breakdown of how this chaos unfolded. 

On Thursday afternoon, I got a text from an unknown number. Our flight to Vienna was cancelled due to a travel strike (you’ll get familiar with these if you study abroad in Italy). Austrian Airlines had rebooked us to the same flight on Saturday afternoon, which was not ideal because our return flight was on Sunday afternoon. Eventually, we got rebooked on an Air France flight through Paris that was guranteed to take off. With Vienna by Billy Joel stuck in our heads after playing it all day and a sense of triumph from dealing with our first travel issue we fell asleep.

Hour 1: After the 20 minute walk to Santa Maria Novella, Kira and I met up with Clara. We waited for the tram to come so that we could get to the airport and were chatting about everything that we were excited to do upon arrival in Vienna. After about 20 minutes, we realized that it was odd that no trams had come and that the ticket machine was not accepting credit cards, both of which were very odd. Looking at the public transit feature on Google Maps, we saw that there should be another tram coming in 2 minutes so we decided to wait. When there was yet again no tram, I quickly googled “is travel strike impacting trams in florence?” and was informed by the Florentine Daily News that indeed the trams were on strike. We quickly scrambled to get a taxi (Uber is prohibited in Florence due to local ordinances), but 100+ people were also in our situation and had the same idea. We needed a plan C.

Hour 2: We hopped on a bus that with 3 transfers, would get us to the airport just before our flight left. However, this bus was unable to pull out into the street due to gridlocked traffic which put us at risk of missing our connecting bus. Needless to say that we were becoming increasingly panicked. All of a sudden we saw a tram moving!! We sprinted across the tracks, and eventually made it onto the tram. It started to look like we were going to make it on time!! Not even two minutes after getting on the tram, the conductor opened his door, turned on the emergency stop and sprinted away. Kira, Clara, and I immeadiately broke out into laughter due to the irony of everything happening. Five minutes later, the conductor came back, turned off the emergency alarm and we were on our way. 

Hour 3: We were just one stop away from the airport when suddenly three men boarded the train in navy blue jackets striped with reflective material. I quickly realized that in all of the chaos of getting on the tram and worrying about making it to our flight, we had forgotten to get our tickets for the tram. These men were the ticket checkers, and immediately asked me for my ticket. I admitted that because of the strike and the machine not accepting credit card I didn’t have a ticket. This resulted in a 43 Euro fine, which was unfortunate, but I was focused on making our flight. Next, our boarding passes were not able to be printed at the mobile kiosk, so we went to the end of the quite long line to get help from Air France. 

Hours 4-8: After waiting in line for a while, we got pulled to the front of the line because our flight was scheduled to take off in 20 minutes. After some back and forth with the agents at the desk, we got our boarding passes only to learn that our flight was delayed 20 minutes. While this was nice for us making our flight in Florence, it cut our layover in Paris down to only 20 minutes. Upon landing in Paris we went to go rebook our flights yet again. Eventually, we landed in Vienna safe & sound.

Hours 9-13: We got to our Airbnb and found that it was… not exactly what the photos had shown. Some highlights were a shattered window in the entryway, linens reeking of cigarettes, and the cherry on top- police seals on the door of our room. We were starving and headed out to Schnitzel XL to get some dinner and our first taste of Austria’s specialty! After this, we wandered down the street to an Irish pub called the Golden Harp where we had Steiegl, the local beer and debriefed our day.

Hours 24-30: We spent all day Saturday roaming around Vienna. Starting off the morning with the most delicious chai latte I have had from Jonas Reindl. Then we went on a quest to find either pancakes or waffles for breakfast because we were all craving them. After striking out a few times, we stumbled into Vollpension. It is a resturaunt where they employ women over 65 who live off of pension, which is barely enough to get by in some cases so they can have supplemental income. They bake their recipies that you can taste by redeeming an “Oma Token” and you even get to watch them baking in a separate kitchen if you would like! The “pearadise” cake was insanely fluffy and my muesli was perfectly filling. We then ventured to the Belvidere palace and walked around the gardens, taking photos of the immaculate baroque architechture. 

Hours 30-36: Next up was a 2 hour cruise down the Danube. We arrived 20 minutes early and then got in line to board. It was then that we were informed we were on the wrong boat but as long as we were fine with it, they didn’t care if we crashed the boat (it was a gathering of 55-65 year old Russian men). We had an amazing time looking at the cottages tucked away in the forest and new buildings along the waterfront. After we arrived back on land, we booked it over to Prater, an amusement park famous for their ferris wheel. There, we had the best nutella churros EVER and went on a haunted ride before getting a view of Vienna from above. The sun had completely set and all of the lights from the buildings in the city with St. Stephen’s Church standing tall in the distance was magical. Before we knew it, we were sound asleep and not ready for our trip to be over.

Hours 48-52: We got up early Sunday morning to get to Cafe Central, the iconic breakfast spot in Vienna, where figures like Freud and Trotsky were known to sip on coffee. We had Kaiserschmarren (scrambled pancake) with a plum sauce that was to die for. After feasting on that and some apple strudel, we headed over to the Hofburg Palace, which is the Austrian equivalent of the National Mall & White House in Washington D.C. Impulsively, we ended up in the Natural History museum and spent about an hour looking at geological formations, dinosaur skeletons, and recreations of the first civilizations in present-day Austria. 

Hour 56: We had smooth sailing the whole trip back to Florence and arrived around 6 P.M. Sunday. Taking the train back into the city (made sure to have tickets this time even though nobody checked them) was seamless this time! This trip may have been very chaotic and stressful, but we came home with so many fun stories!!

Arreviderci!

Caroline

Location to Locals: Oktoberfest

Published on by Alex WinnLeave a comment

It Does Not Always Go as Planned…

Location: Munich, Germany

I traveled to Munich with my mind set on one goal: to experience Oktoberfest in all its beer-soaked and German glory. We chose the first weekend – September 20-21st – equipped with only our sense of blind optimism and limited social media research. According to TikTok, we had to be in line by 8 a.m. at the earliest (false), tent camping was the best accommodation for location and comfort (false), and transportation between the campsite and festival site would be simple and easily accessible (most definitely false). Looking back and clearly experiencing some hindsight bias… consulting TikTok might not have been our best decision and was most certainly our first mistake.

We woke up at 7 a.m. at the campsite, thinking that would leave ample time for picking up our pre-rented dirndls and joining the Oktoberfest crowd by 8. The pickup location was a two-minute walk away according to the Google map provided by our dirndl vendor. Yet, after that two-minute walk we were greeted with nothing more than a 10-acre, overgrown grass field and a phone call informing us the actual shop was a 30-minute drive away.

At Lederhosenverlieh – the dirndl shop – all possible sizes in my pre-rented and chosen dirndl had been taken. I was instead given a red, white, and blue cotton number that screamed “God Bless America” even more than my American accent already did. I could have convinced people I was headed to a Fourth of July lake day rather than a Bavarian beer festival.

Eventually we arrived at Oktoberfest around 10 a.m., where the streets were lined with sauna-temperature tents filled with hundreds of people. Walking up and down each tent aisle, not a single seat or table was available. We walked from one tent to the next while trying the food that TikTok claimed was a must. I personally do not enjoy pretzels or bratwurst but “it’s part of the experience.” My bratwurst was undercooked, and schnitzel was overcooked and filled with gristle, so I skipped trying the pretzel figuring that third time was not going to be the charm.

Eventually, we found a tent and sat for two to three hours simply to pass time and justify our financial investment in Oktoberfest. All feeling equally defeated after getting no table, no beer, and no photos, we asked a kind older man to take pictures with his beer. That was the most Oktoberfest thing we did the entire day. After leaving not even ten minutes later, we booked a hotel room that night to avoid the campsite at all costs.

So, what did I leave with? A hotel room reservation and 20 euros in cash that was originally meant for a stein.

…So, You Make the Most of It

Locals: Kufflers Weinzelt

Oktoberfest is a festival, but also a community and a culture – one I believe is overlooked or intentionally dismissed. Once you walk deeper into the venue, passing the main party tents like Hofbräu-Festzelt, you will find the smaller tents, favored and enjoyed by local Germans. This includes Kufflers Weinzelt, a family-run tent since 1984 and that can be found each year at Oktoberfest for two weeks.

After our hours of mishaps and misfortunes that Oktoberfest and specifically the Hofbräu-Festzelt tent brought us, we found ourselves near the back of the festival, past the carnival rides, and outside Kufflers Weinzelt – the last tent in the mile-long festival line-up. Inside, we spotted an open (though technically reserved) table in the center of Kufflers Weinzelt. We sat here for three hours – until the heat became unbearable – before leaving. Despite the table technically being reserved, the staff allowed us to sit until the reservation time, and luckily, they never showed up.

There seems to be a tradition of standing on the benches – not tables – during speeches or songs that are familiar, and this did not stop here in Kufflers Weinzelt. Though we were the only Americans in the tent, were still invited to stand, dance, and sing with the local German groups and families.

We – students around the world – go abroad to study and travel (though maybe not in that order) but we also go abroad to experience the cultures around the world that are so different to that of the States. The U.S. is a melting pot, but what a unique experience it is to travel to places and experience the individual cultures that make the U.S. that melting pot. Kufflers Weinzelt might not have been the most popular, international, English-speaking tent, but we found ourselves truly immersed in the German culture and traditions which made for an unforgettable experience.