Eating adventures in Austria

After a busy and stressful start to my holiday Vienna has been a welcome change of pace.

I think it has helped that I'm staying with well-traveled locals who have been able to guide me as to such things as whether to pay the 16 e admission to various museums and encouraged me to just take strolls to soak up the architecture or sit in coffee houses and people watch.

This is just the sort of holiday I have been needing. I feel like I'm slowing down to a pace where I can take a great big exhale and stop worrying about not doing my holiday right. I've even had a few pyjama days watching TV shows or TED talks on the couch with my friends, sipping on the never ending supply of coffee or tea on offer to me here.

And the food! Oh my god! In just the last couple of days alone I have eaten langos, which is a fried, bready dough covered in garlic, sour cream and cheese. We had food delivered from a schnitzel restaurant the other night and my dinner was half a chicken coated in schnitzel crumbs and fried. How have I not known that such things existed until now? There's also been an array of cheeses, dips, meats, bread, snacks, chocolate, candy, pastries and wine.

I haven't taken many photos since I got here. Partially because I'm usually so caught up in an involved conversation with one of my friends or shoving some new culinary delight in my face at any given moment but also because I feel like I've slid backwards on my thinking that I need to play sightseeing bingo and get a snap to prove I've made it to every sight in this city. I know what I've experienced here and I don't think it could be photographed effectively. I sometimes think that all my memories of travel are falsely constructed around images I have photographed. I'm smiling in the pictures so I remember being happy. There's nothing wrong with that I suppose but I guess I'm just hoping that in the absence of one dimensional images I might remember some more multidimensional memories.

Anyway, I must hurry off, We're planning on attending Genuss Festival today, a free culinary festival in Stadtpark. Perhaps I'll write again before I leave Austria, if  not you'll hear from me next in London or New York.