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Viennese watching college football on the streets, a common scene...

Austria had an interesting post WW2 history, I think, Vienna was divided the same as Berlin and occupied until 1955 when the four "powers" let them go their own way.  They remains unalligned to survive with the Soviet bear a few miles away in Hungary.  They are not in NATO and are bound by their constitution to remain neutral.  They are in the EU and the euro is the currency.  Hungary has a forint, I still have no clue how much lunch was there, something like 330,000 HFrs.  I should probably open my account and see.  Solvakia used euros. 

The gOogLez says ~300 HUF = 1 USD.  

330,000 HUFs would equate to roughly $1,100.  Either it was less than that, or you were eating some mighty expensive lunches.  

Reminds me of the time I was in Prague with a group of friends, watching World Cup soccer from the Old Town Square.  We were all getting a little hungry and one of my buddies (Bald Greg for those who've met him) found a little pizza vendor down a side road.  He brought back a couple of pizzas and offered it to us and when somebody asked him the price, he responded with a price in Czech koruna that would have made each slice about $50.  Another friend was reaching for the pizza and his wife, who'd done the math quite quickly, hollered out so loud pretty much everyone on the Square could hear, "Honey don't you DARE touch that pizza!"  It was almost a record-scratch moment but we all just started cracking up.

So then I was very worried he'd actually bought several hundred dollars worth of pizza, but after several of us looked at the receipt we saw that he'd mis-applied the exchange rate by a decimal place when he announced the price.  They were actually $5 slices not $50 slices.

There may or may not have been a tremendous amount of dark Czech lager consumed before that moment...

There may or may not have been a tremendous amount of dark Czech lager consumed before that moment...

Did you ignore the lighter,refreshing Pilsners whilst there? That'd be akin to stopping in Belgian and passing on lambics.

I had heard Budvar was terrific.  I sampled it a few times, it certainly is better than Bud, but I prefer say Sam Adam’s by quite a bit.   The other Vienna local beers were all solid, and fairly light, I saw zero dark beers.  I didn’t have any I thought were exceptional,  same with the wines.   

We stopped at a very cool crowded bar in Bratislava, great vibe there.

Seemed some little Austrian guy who was denied admission to  Art School didn't remain neutral

Don't ever go full Anschluss.

I felt much the same about Vienna, although we only stayed there a couple of days on our trip there last year. We spent the rest of the time in Salzburg and Graz. 

If you felt like Vienna was an interesting melting pot, try Graz. I felt that its location on the "Western" frontier, another 3 hours south of Vienna and only 30 miles from the Iron Curtain, was really reflected by the city. Italian architecture with Viennese schnitzel, with proper doner kebab to top it all off.

We are talking about where next, e.g., two weeks spent in some city.  I think Amsterdam will be next, but still musing.

The airlines really raised prices on their premium seats, and of course seats up front are $8 K or more now.