Vienna, the long way round

8 Minute Read

Art & Culture

Written by Angie Fay

Stranded after a Croatian wedding – turning a bad connection into a Before Sunrise stopover.

I have a habit of taking the long way home. It usually starts with a cancelled connection, or a fare that costs a kidney for a flight leaving at some godforsaken hour, followed by a bleary trawl through booking sites for a way to make it better. Not necessarily cheaper and almost never quicker, but better in some other way. Nicer. What begins as a personal affront quickly turns into a gateway opportunity: somewhere new, someone I’d otherwise not have seen, two bonus days of delirious holiday mode before touching back down in real life.

This time it’s the departure from a wedding in Croatia that has me stranded, with no sensible route home and a two-night stopover in Vienna instead. It’s a city I’ve romanticised beyond all reason: Before Sunrise, Guardian features with big glossy pictures of Bohemian coffee houses, the idea that classical music is on tap and Sacher Torte is a daily staple.

Time to find out what Ultravox were on about.

HotelMotto HouseEntrance (c) Oliver Jiszda (4)

Getting from the airport to the hotel nearly breaks me, and that’s on me, not Vienna. I wait on the wrong bit of the platform and miss two trains, catch the right one and sail past my changeover, then end up somewhere requiring a taxi that costs about what one from the airport would have. I begin to wonder if I should have just sat out five hour layover at Stansted.

Then Hotel Motto appears and I stop wondering. It’s a wedding cake of a building wedged into the point where two streets meet (a flatiron, I now know), draped in plants and smelling of palo santo and cinnamon. At check-in I’m offered sparkling wine or a gin and tonic and just about manage not to ask for both. The room is the size of a living room, with a bed I could happily lie in all evening watching YouTube videos of Vienna on the enormous TV. There are coffee-table books on the Heidi Horten Collection, a drinks cabinet stocked with gin, negroni and a shaker for the DIY bartender, and a sauna and steam room upstairs that I use with shameless enthusiasm. As places to be stranded go, it’s a hell of a one.

Dinner is a downhill wander past tall, grand buildings with ivy up the walls and, in perhaps the most Viennese moment imaginable, piano music drifting from an open window. I order a schnitzel, a goulash, a beer and a red wine: the full tapestry. The goulash is a matter of some personal importance. My mum made it weekly in North Yorkshire in the eighties, back when olive oil came from the chemist and sun-dried tomatoes were a rumour. I love her cooking regardless, but I’m keen to know how close she got to the real deal. Close-ish, it turns out. Well done Mum

Breakfast is at Chez Bernard, the hotel’s seventh-floor restaurant, tucked under a glass dome with plants dangling over the bar: the silkiest scrambled eggs of my life, scattered with a herb garden’s worth of greenery, and excellent black coffee.

Then it’s a beautiful Sunday and I retrace the steps of Before Sunrise, wandering towards the Belvedere via Café Sperl, where coffee, whipped cream and Sacher Torte (with more cream) are duly had. Further on, I stumble on Herlitschka, a restaurant in an archway that just has a vibe. Another schnitzel, chicken this time, with a potato salad that makes my potato-and-mayonnaise dump look like a hate crime. The Belvedere gets a stroll around the gardens, then it’s back to the hotel for a horizontal recharge.

Evening means drinks and barbecued fish by the river, then the trip’s epitome (and the film’s): the Riesenrad at the Prater. The funfair is the surprise. I’m used to haggard pop-up fairgrounds squatting on brownfield sites off a ring road. This is permanent, historic and full of genuine retro charm, and the wheel has been turning since 1897. Watching the whole city unroll beneath me at night, I decide the long way home was the right call.

Thank you to Hotel Motto for the stay