Next stop was Vienna! K had friends on exchange here, so they took us to Freiraum. It’s a very casual bar/ restaurant on a busy street called Mariahilfer Straße. Pretty noisy too but the atmosphere is fun. For non-smokers, it’s good to keep in mind that in Vienna, you’re allowed to smoke inside restaurants, although they have designated areas. Even though there’s a non-smoking area, the smoke really just travels over. The restaurant was packed, so we ended up sitting in the smoking area. Not ideal, but being in Europe for so long, I’ve sort of gotten used to the smell.

Zwettler Beer

We ordered the Zwettler Beer since apparently it’s the most common Austrian beer. For some reason, I think the server heard us wrong, and he brought us a variation of the typical Zwettler beer. It had a taste of lemon and wasn’t very fizzy. It didn’t even taste like beer…

Freiraum Schmarren

I was way too hungry to wait for dinner, so I had ate some kebabs before arriving at dinner. So instead of having an entree, I ended up going for an Austrian dessert. On the menu, it’s called a kipferlschmarren. I think it’s more often known as the Kaiserschmarren or just the Schmarrn. Schmarrn means shredded pancake and Kaiser is named after one of the Austrian emperors who enjoyed this pancake. Basically they were pieces of fluffy pancake mixed with caramelized walnuts and apples. It was topped with a bit of icing sugar and came with a side of homemade applesauce. I actually really enjoyed this! No need to fuss with cutting up the pancake into smaller pieces and the toppings worked really well together. It didn’t taste too sweet, which can happen with maple syrup. It’s a very common dessert in Austria, so I recommend trying this!