Vienna in 48 Hours: A Capsule Hotel Blunder, Four Bus Lines & a Tower at Midnight

Vienna was our first city of the Europe trip and our first lesson in how a holiday can go sideways in the first hour and still end up beautiful. Two days, all four Hop on Hop off lines, two palaces, one 150-metre tower, an apple strudel, and a hotel room that turned out to be a glorified shelf. This is exactly how it happened.

Day 1
A Train, a Capsule Hotel & the Park Where We Vented

We took one-way tickets to Vienna. After boarding the train and a bit of struggle finding our hotel, we walked into the booking I was most proud of - the one where I'd told Harshit, "Look, the room is so big." It wasn't. During booking, I hadn't realised it was a small capsule. Not a room. Other amenities were fine, but I was heartbroken after the blunder. Harshit took it well, the way he always does. He is adjustable in the worst of things. He napped. I couldn't.

Once we'd peeled ourselves out of the capsule, we ate pasta we'd carried from India (the start of a long tradition this trip) and headed out for our Hop on Hop off pass. Vienna's HoHo runs four routes - Red, Yellow, Brown and Blue - and we explored three of them on Day 1, jumping on and off, peering at statues whose names we promptly forgot, and walking the streets.

For dinner we ate costly and not-so-good burgers, which I am still slightly bitter about, and were back near the hotel by 5pm. We walked about 3 km and then collapsed in a park and just talked - about the people, the food, the country in general, and our lives back home in India. The kind of conversation that only happens on Day 1 of a long trip, when you have just enough culture shock to start noticing things.

Day 2
Schonbrunn, Belvedere & 360 Degrees on the Danube Tower

We slept properly and woke up at 7am. I managed to cook in the room - rice, poha and dal makhni. We ate some and packed the rest for later, because if there is one thing an Indian traveller learns fast in Europe, it is that home food is cheaper than a museum sandwich.

Day 2 started with the Green Line Hop on Hop off, the line we'd missed yesterday. We bought 24-hour tickets and decided to use our 48-hour Vienna pass to the absolute max. First stop, Schonbrunn Palace. The history we picked up on the tour was great in the moment - I will admit honestly that most of it has since slipped out of my head. Then on to Belvedere Palace, which is an art museum and therefore - for people like me - boring. But the gardens and the framing of the city through the hedges make it a very good place for pictures, which is what we used it for.

By 5pm we were tired. I told Harshit we should still squeeze in the Danube Tower, since it stays open till 11:30 pm. Best decision of the day. Standing 150 metres above the ground with a full 360 degree view of Vienna, in heavy wind, watching the lights of the whole city stretch out - I cannot put it into words and no picture can do justice to it. Up there we finally had the city's traditional apple strudel and a Viennese coffee. The strudel was different and good. The coffee was good and explained, in one sip, why this city has a cafe on every corner.

We came back home around 10pm, packed our bags again, slept around midnight and woke at 4am for the 6:30am train to Prague.

Vienna Observations (Written on the Train to Prague)

I wrote most of this sitting on the train to Prague while Harshit slept beside me, trying to catch the city before any of it slipped away. After two days, here is what stuck:

• The architecture is heavy and great. Apartments, buildings, statues, fountains - the whole skyline carries its weight beautifully.
• Transportation is hell good. Bus, tram, cycle, walk - every mode has its own signals and lanes, and it all just works.
• Drivers stop for pedestrians, which is highly unlikely in India and took us a full day to trust.
• Karlplatz and Oper were our most-used stations. Karlplatz especially is a hub.
• Language is German, and we picked up almost none, but people were helpful enough that it never blocked us.
• Food we didn't explore - Austria isn't really a vegetarian country, so we mostly cooked.

The line I keep coming back to is the one above the section break. I'd grown up surrounded by the mindset of earning to enjoy life. Vienna was the first city that flipped it for me - here it felt like people were enjoying life and earning to survive. Completely opposite to what I'd been raised on. I shouldn't complain about my upbringing, but I definitely aspire to adopt a bit of this. Overall it feels like a city to live in. Good work-life balance, I will say.

Vienna Quirks: 3D Chess in the Park & the Ticket Nobody Checked

Two small things I want to record before they fade. First - in the park close to the Danube Tower, there is a 3D chess board where instead of pieces, real people stand in for the king, queen, bishops and the rest, and a game plays out at human scale. I'd never seen anything like it.

Second - and this is part advice, part confession - nobody checked our tickets. Not on a tram, not on a train, not once in two days. By the time we'd figured out how to use the system, it was already time to leave. So when we needed to get to Wien Hbf for the 6:30am train to Prague, we skipped buying the final morning's ticket and walked onto the platform with the calm of seasoned criminals. Did we get away with it? Yes. Do I recommend it? Officially, no.