Coming of Age in Vienna: Three Months as a Student

Those were the glory days

Sometime in 2017, I lost the phone that held my photos from 2016. I’ve lost multiple phones before and since, some to accidents, some to their own cheapness, but this one hurt. It was the phone I had taken with me on my exchange trip to Vienna, a trip I’d documented only sporadically (this being before my series of bids for Insta-fame), but which made the few photos I had all the more dear. To top it off, I’d forgotten to back them up on Google Drive. Argh.

I’d relive that trip often, in the years that followed — rough ones, often loveless ones, where the memories of having been young and romantic and adventurous brought me some warmth. I would grow, but never as much and as richly as I did in Vienna. I would love, powerfully and lastingly, but I could do so because the city had taught me how to as I wandered through it, alone and hungry for Life, Life with a capital L, to reveal itself to me.

I’d grown up mega-sheltered until then. Upper-middle-class family, an all-girls-school, and a car with a chauffeur to take us around. All of these have their advantages, but it does mean you don’t get much scope to do things on your own. My parents were ludicrously strict about me not going anywhere unless I took the car, and only after much arguing was I allowed to occasionally take the bus. The degree program was a step up, of course — no parents and no option but to use public transport. But there was still the safety net of the campus, the gates being locked at 11 and the teachers living in apartments right next to our dorms.

Vienna took all of that away. I was the only one from my degree program who went there, which meant I didn’t even have a friend when I landed. That, as you can guess, turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me — without restriction from or reminder of my past, I could be free.

Free, first and foremost, to drink. By the gods, did I drink. The wine was cheaper than either water or coffee and I swam in it. My digestion held up bravely to multiple glasses a day, taken alone or with pairings like chorizo or cheesecake, and I discovered grapes like Viognier and Chianti that I continue to love today. The first time I bought a wine bottle at the supermarket, I was asked suspiciously for my ID. The legal drinking age in Vienna, for reference, is 16 — I was 23. That’s…flattering, I suppose? I’m still mistaken for being younger than my age, especially without makeup — at the time, though, I was affronted and determined to assert my womanhood as thoroughly as I could.

Which proved easier than I had thought. Most of us from the degree program had had at least some fantasies about a European dalliance while we had the chance — it was the thing to do there, and the advice handbook passed down by the alumni of the exchange program even included tips on how much strip clubs in different cities would cost. I never went to a strip club, but there were almost always men at bars who found me pretty enough to chat me up. I’d been warned before going about the risk of racism, but my Indian skin tone proved more of an asset than otherwise. And they were nice, those men — no creeps or criminals among them. I wish them well.

When I landed in Vienna, the closest I’d come to unassisted cooking was sandwiches. In the kitchen of the little flat I shared with four other girls, I honed a talent for cooking pasta that I make glorious use of even today. Every night I’d dish up a steaming bowl that I’d season liberally with Grana Padano cheese and wash down with the local grape, Gruner Veltliner, with all the pride of a student who’s found a way to eat deliciously that doesn’t involve instant noodles or frozen pizza. Restaurants, of course, were too expensive to eat at, but I did make one exception. Vienna had an excellent cafe scene, with all the high ceilings and old-fashioned wooden interiors my heart could desire, and while their prices made me gasp, the air of romance was more than worth the cost of a weekly visit. I’d take my coffee and pastry and write, watching people come and go in their overcoats and muffled voices. It was like a scene from a novel, or an art film. I wasn’t the hero, but I played a part I’m still proud of.

One of the few cheap things I snagged was a membership at a nearby library. A short train ride away, it was choc-a-bloc with all the lesser-known Penguin and Picador classics I’d earmarked on Goodreads and searched in vain for free downloads of. I read some memorable books back then — “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit”, “Beware of Pity”, “The Songlines”, “The Bird’s Nest” — at the library desk or back in my room, late into the night. I wrote too, back then, although little worth keeping. I look back on the drafts I still have from those days and I see sadness — the sadness of a girl who feels all the pressure of being in a continent with a rich literary legacy, and the knowledge that she is too young, and too depressed, to make any meaningful addition to that. Things would change later, though. Vienna would be a setting in the novel I would work on between 2018 and 2020 and then abandon, and a short story that was published in Litro featured a fictional version of my student self there.

And then there was all the exploring around town, on foot or through the truly excellent public transit system. My family’s massively into art and music, so I was lucky to grow up primed for all the glorious treats Vienna has to offer. I visited art museums, both classical and modern, and wandered through Schonbrunn Palace and Belvedere Palace with a more than ordinary appreciation of their treasures. I visited Mozarthaus and Haydnhaus and looked with awe upon their handwritten drafts, the final results of which I’d listened to ever since I was a toddler. I took a few trips outside town too — to Salzburg, to Paris, to Berlin, to Rome and Florence. In Berlin I attended a concert by the Berlin Philarmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Bernard Haitink. Legendary. And in Salzburg I did the Sound of Music tour — touristy, but undeniably fun. I’ve grown up on that movie, and every good citizen ought to.

I did some non-arty things too, things my romantic-bougie side instinctively wanted to do. I visited a couple of Christmas markets and had the obligatory spiced wine and sausages — I don’t much care for the former as a rule, but in that setting and time it just felt right. I walked down the shopping street next to Leopold Museum and bought a navy-blue silk cocktail gown from the Viennese equivalent of Debenhams — one I still feel like a queen in. I took a day trip to a little mountain village named Krems and walked through the cobbled streets with all the eagerness of someone raised on 19th-century novels and hungry to feel like she’s popped into one. I splurged on a wine tasting in Tuscany and ended the night gloriously drunk on grappa shots with a bunch of strangers I’ll never meet again but whom I loved in that moment. I found, unexpectedly, a sister version of the Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, and mounted a rickety ladder to get down a beautiful butter-yellow copy of the complete Nancy Mitford novels. I read Dylan Thomas poetry by the banks of the Donau river at a metro stop where I was almost always the only creature, except the ducks who never approached me but made me feel welcome all the same. I found a go-to breakfast shop, a go-to caffe crema shop. And my flat, that tiny student flat — I grew to love it with all my heart.

I haven’t been to Vienna since then. I will, though — I have no doubt about that. I’m just as much of a romantic as I was back then, albeit a steadier one, and my love for cafes and wine has only multiplied since then, aided by the backing of my own not-inconsiderable income. This time, I might venture further beyond the city boundaries and hike — perhaps even cycle, as much of the population does in lieu of cars. I’ll probably drink a little less, and shop a little more, and have my husband with me for most of it. And maybe — maybe this time what I write while I’m there will last the course and become its own legacy.

I don’t mind, really. As long as I’m there. And as long as I can go back, again and again.

That’s what a home is for.