Jet lagged and tired after 11 hours of flight, we land in Vienna. It is raining. We press our noses against the window of the taxi that is taking us to our hotel, zipping across the wet roads with some classical music playing softly in the background. It has cost us 70 Euros (nearly Rs 5000) for a 20 minute drive. Yes, some of us are wincing.
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Hotel Cyrus is dark and gloomy and eerily peopleless at 10 pm. At the reception is a gaunt old man with a hook nose who has stepped right out of a Ramsay brothers’ horror film. I smile at him nervously. He won’t smile back. “Can’t we go to the US?” Saransh whispers in my ear. Isha is trying to hide behind me. “Uncle is scaring me,” she mumbles. Uncle is scaring me too so I wait for the guys to start a conversation. That, we soon realize, is next to impossible since uncle only speaks German.
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Through theatrical gestures, smattered with the German he has been cramming over the past few days over Scotch, Puneet manages to discover that we have to haul our suitcases up to the first floor; there is no dinner; the restaurants outside are all shut. There is no hot water either so we can’t even heat up our ready to eat MTR chole and rice. In our rooms, we nibble on cold puris that Puneet’s mom had so lovingly fried for us in Delhi. Tanu has forgotten the achaar. Everyone glares at her and one by one we drop off to sleep. A bent old man with a surgical scalpel in one hand keeps shuffling in and out of my dreams.
Salsa on the streets of Wien
After a lousy breakfast of salamis, bread, orange juice and coffee; we walk down to the tube station that is just five minutes away. Puneet is turning into a brooding monster ever since people accused him of scrounging and booking us into a rotten hotel; completely ignoring the fact that no one else was interested in doing the dirty work. We marvel at the organized traffic, the delightful roadside cafes, dogs on leash stepping obediently into the tube, incredibly tall girls on high heeled boots and poodles and old ladies with strange haircuts. Buying a day pass for 7 Euros each (kids free), we take a ride to Stephansplatz and climb the steps to where the towering Stephansdom overpowers us by its sheer presence.
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It starts to rain. Cold and wet, we decide to take a Tram 1 ride around Innere Stadt (Old town) recommended by Lonely Planet and gush over the marvellous old world architecture with fountains and statuesque figures (mostly killing other people) looking down at us from the walls. The rain spoils things that day but on our way back from Switzerland 10 days later, we stop by for a day to find the sun shining. Puneet wants to chill in the hotel (a nice one this time) since he wants to check out some pubs in the evening so we dump the kids with him. Manoj insists on chaperoning Tanu and me (much against our wishes) on what was to be a “girls only” shopping spree.
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We take a walk down the street from Stephansdome and soak in the full splendor of Europe’s street side musicians, sensuous salsa dancers, leggy beauties in small skirts. Manoj gets into photographer mood and starts changing lenses. We happily lose the photographer and saunter around the shops with our leftover Euros jiggling in our pockets. Mozart is playing on a giant screen and people are sprawled on the road, sipping beer in silence. We wander inside the beautiful Stephansdome, check out a Gustav Klimt exhibition and roam the streets picking up gifts for friends back home: silk scarves and pendants with Klimt’s The Kiss on them and glass lamps painted with city landscapes.
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We sip spritzers and coffee while listening to the musicians on the street and drop coins into hats and open guitar cases. A Johnny Depp lookalike doing the Salsa with his beautiful partner catches our eye. Destiny reunites us with Manoj who is still clicking away passionately. Reclaiming him, we pick up pizza slices and sandwiches and head back to the hotel, bypassing an Erotic Show poster with incredibly buxom babes doing incredible things with ropes and poles that make Manoj grin like a school boy. Outside the hotel we run into Puneet looking fresh as a daisy. It’s his turn to explore the city and having seen the Erotic Show poster, Tanu decides to ditch us and tag along with him.
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Rachna Bisht-Rawat is a journalist and writer but mostly she is mom to an 11 year old and gypsy wife to an Army officer whose work takes the Rawats across the length and width of India. She blogs at http://www.rachnabisht.com/