Octopus balls and Bratwurst

It’s always odd on a first day of a holiday when you take a plane. Well, I think so, anyway.

You start off in a familiar environment. You enter an airport terminal where everything looks the same as any other airport terminal. You board a plane. There’s a faint feeling of movement (I’m ignoring the few bumps and drops experienced during the rougher bits of the trip) and then you land.

You leave the plane and enter an airport terminal where everything looks the same as the airport terminal you left three hours ago. You follow the signs to the taxi rank and queue up for one.

You tell the driver where to take you. It’s dark, so you don’t see much, something not helped by a big lack of street lighting. He drops you outside a hotel. You check in, dump your luggage in your room (after making sure it passes muster with Mirinda…which it did…with flying colours) then head out.

It’s not till you hit the streets that you realise you’re somewhere else in the world. Somewhere you’ve never been. And it’s very, very pretty.

I moaned about the Christmas lights in Regent’s Street last weekend (with good cause) well, not this week. The ones in Mariahilfer Strasse are heaps better and there’s hardly what you’d call a crowd.

We went in search of Christmas; the Austrian Christmas that we’ve heard so much about. The Christmas of markets and cold, gluwein and bratwurst. We found it in Maria-Theresien-Platz.

We had a jolly good wander around all the stalls, picking lots of things to buy (but didn’t) then finding roasted chestnuts (for Mirinda) and bratwurst (for me…though Mirinda had one too, just to be on the safe side) before heading back to the hotel.

Naturally we had to stop off at Starbucks for a night cap, given Starbucks is just up the road from the hotel. I couldn’t have planned it better.

Our hotel – Das Tyrol Wien

Oops, I almost forgot to explain about the octopus balls.

We were at the airport waiting for our flight and decided to eat at Yo Sushi. We both love the conveyor belt restaurant concept and thought it too good a chance to pass up.

We sat down and started selecting meals. Mirinda picked these deep fried looking things that appeared to contain either mince or greens. She bit into one and declared it was vegetarian and very nice. I followed suit, agreeing.

It wasn’t until later, when studying the menu, that we realised it was crispy battered octopus balls.