Before sunrise
I’m not proud of how little I knew about Vienna until yesterday. There’s only 2 things I really associated with the city, actually, which should tell you everything you need to know:
Before Sunrise, of course. The classic (smart) teenage movie, where Rich Linklater has Ethan Hawke and Frenchwoman Julie Delpy meet on a night train from Budapest to Vienna (and Paris) — and fall in love on the way;
The Sound of Music, of course x 2. The definitive musical of all time, which famously starts in pre-war Austria, the rest we know… with Julie Andrews positively transcending the genre and the late Christopher Plummer portraying a fairly convincing Baron von Trapp. Classic.
None of that is arguably enough to get a feel for Vienna — or any feel really: it did not escape me that both these references are fictional (although Mr. von Trapp did exist). And so I had to figure out for myself this week. With my little family in toe.
To make it more scenic — and more practical — we actually took a night train from Paris to get there. Pretty amazing: you depart at 7 pm from Gare de l’Est (10 min on foot from our place) and, by 10 am the next morning, you’re fresh in Vienna. Well, fresh-ish: the ride was a little bumpy.
Not quite for us: I mean, not any more than a plane or a boat (the latter not being an option anyway). And I’ve been known to sleep on benches, cars and/or school chairs in a matter of seconds. More for baby Sophia — who’s actually not a baby any more, she’ll have you know — for whom that whole experience was a fairly new thing.
Sophia likes new experiences though: within minutes, she was running up and down the corridor, making friends with another couple of kids, a 3.5 year-old French boy with a bunch of toy cars and 2.5 year-old Czech-Swiss-Italian girl who kept cuddling with her. Getting our kid to sleep after that was somewhat of a hurdle: she tried every excuse in the book, from wanting to read a… book, watch a Peppa Pig episode, drink milk, not wanting milk anymore…
Eventually, a little after 10 pm, she was out — she usually goes to sleep around 9 pm. We didn’t care: another 12 hours to go, hopefully 10 of which in peace. Not that she’s a hindrance, mind you — but she is a handful. Especially in a confined space. With little to no wifi.
The plan worked. Until around 7 am, when we heard a loud crashing noise. Sophia, who was sleeping in the middle bunk — for safety — managed to slide down her bed where there was no protection; then moved to the side. And ended up on the cabin ground. In a split second.
As luck would have it, she managed to avoid the table on the wall or any other sharp object in her fall. All she got was a bruise on her leg and a bit of a scare. We assumed she wouldn’t want to get back to sleep. She was out again 3 minutes later. And we had to get woken up by the train stewardess at 9 am for breakfast…
Welcome to Vienna!