Jenna in Vienna (and Bratislava)

Guess who took a trip to Bratislava, Slovakia with four male coworkers for a physics conference (specifically the ATLAS Top Workshop) and stopped to see Vienna, Austria along the way!

Nick!

(jk, it was me, Jenna).

Day 1 (May 10th, 2025)

I had to get up pretty early to bus to the airport, but Nick walked me to the bus stop and waited with me. By the time I got to the airport it was probably only about an hour until boarding (the risk was worth the sleep) and all the boys except one had gone through. Unfortunately, we ran into a liquids issue with security. I technically had less than 1 L worth of liquids (the "allowed" amount), but they wouldn't let me take anything that didn't fit into one of their 1 L zip-lock bags! Stupid bottles with nozzles taking up all the space :(

The plane ride to Austria was quick, and then we hopped on the bus to the Vienna Hauptbahnhof (main train station). Here we tried to store our bags, but all the lockers were full, so we had to carry them. At this point we were pretty tired and hungry, so we grabbed some grub at the Hauptbahnhof. I had a falafel sandwich, to which I was asked if I was vegan. "No," I replied, "I just like falafel."

After lunch, we walked around Vienna for a bit, bags in tow. There was a pretty church, which none of us except one wanted to pay to enter. While we waited on a bench, he climbed to the top of the church and took a photo of us from above! We then walked by a mini vineyard in the middle of the city (apparently this is a thing?!). Finally, we found a park where we could lay down under a tree until our AirBnB was ready.

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After dropping our bags at the AirBnB, we decided to go take a walk around the Schönbrunn palace gardens. The Schöbrunn palace was the main summer residence of the Hapsburgs. The boys commented that walking through the gardens felt like "doing a promenade, like in Bridgerton". My favourite part was the "roman ruins" --- apparently back in the day it was quite popular thing to install fake roman ruins! At the end of the gardens there was a beautiful building (now a café) upon a big hill. We climbed to the top, and then treated our selves to some drinks at the café. I had a nice refreshing radler, of course.

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Once out the gardens, we went to another café to get some cake, because apparently Vienna is popular for a specific chocolate cake called sachertorte (one of the boys said John Lennon sung about having this cake in Vienna). So we ordered three cakes to split: sachertorte, some sort of walnut cake, and some sort of hazelnut. I didn't much like the sachertorte, but the other two cakes were delicious!

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Finally, for dinner we went to some local, modern, hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had very tasty food! I ordered the trio of schnitzels, as did one of the boys (so far this man has only eaten schnitzel on the trip!) Two of the other guys split some food, and decided they wanted one more order of three dumplings to share, and then the waiter came back with three orders of three dumplings!

Day 2 (May 11th, 2025)

Wondering what happened to the extra dumplings? The boys ate them for breakfast the next day! But, we did also get an array of tasty pastries and some coffee from a local kosher bakery.

Our morning for this day was open, and so we decided to go to the Belvedere! This is an old palace that is now an art museum, and home of the largest collection of Gustav Klimt paintings. Probably the most famous painting that they had (and certainly one of my favourites) was The Kiss. It was very large and had actual gold foil in it, and there was just something about it that made it impossible to look away. They also had an exhibit talking about some of the methods Klimt used and showed x-rays of his works where you could see early drafts of the paintings, much of which they discovered using machine learning!

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There were also many other very beautiful impressionist paintings, many religious paintings, one particularly famous portrait of Napoleon, and a handful of bizarre and slightly disturbing modern art pieces. They even had some Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, and one Vincent van Gogh. Not to mention the beautiful art work on some of the ceilings. Honestly, I had no idea this museum even existed before this trip, but I think it may have been my favourite part, and I'm so happy I got to see Klimt's The Kiss in person!

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After our walk through the palace we stopped for drinks again (radler for me) and had a cake to split (hazelnut). For lunch, we ended up in a very Austrian restaurant that had a surprising number of vegan options. I had my second schnitzel of the trip (one of the other guys' had his third schnitzel meal of the trip).

At this point it was time for our boat ride to Bratislava! We all sat on top as it went down the Danube river. It went quite fast, and so there was a lot of spray on the upper deck, particularly if you leaned over the side to look towards the front of the boat. We passed a few castles along the way, too. An hour later, we were in Bratislava.

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The old town of Bratislava was beautiful! This whole section of the city was pedestrian roads and plazas, and we agreed as a group that we liked it much more than Vienna.

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After dropping our stuff off at the AirBnB, we met up with some other physicists that the boys knew for dinner at a Georgian restaurant. The restaurant had a very cool look to it, and there was a live singer performing next to our table. I had the chicken Kiev and a glass of wine. It was pretty good, but is it bad if I say that I like the chicken Kiev from M&M Meat Shops better? Whoops! Also, we grabbed some gelato on the way home (I got mango, of course).

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Day 3 (May 12th, 2025)

First day of the conference! There was a whole day full of talks, which I won't bore you with. For lunch there was a good buffet, and they always had coffee and other beverages (like carbonated water) whenever we wanted them. By the evening I was feeling pretty tuckered out, so I stayed home, ordered some fast food for dinner, and went to bed early.

Day 4 (May 13th, 2025)

Yet another big conference day! Although on this day I did go out for drinks with the groups (some beers at a pub). The two post-docs then left us to go eat dinner with the "real adults" (lol), and the rest of us went to a Slovakian restaurant. Two other colleagues from the conference just so happened to already be there, and so we all sat together. I had my third and final schnitzel of the trip, as while I love schnitzel, it does get boring after awhile (especially because most of the places served it plain).

Day 5 (May 14th, 2025)

The penultimate day of the conference! While not much of note happened during the conference (other than that I had lunch with some new friends), tonight was the night of the conference dinner! This dinner was hosted at the Bratislava castle, and the restaurant is located in the old stables (haha)!

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Before dinner, one of the physicists who are actually from Bratislava gave us a bit of a history lesson. Honestly, I didn't retain much, except he might've said that the castle burned down at one point and was rebuilt. Classic. But the view of the river was great from up there!

When we walked into the restaurant we were each handed a glass of champagne, and each table (seating 8) had three bottles of wine to share (a white, a red, and a rose)! Side note: some tables finished their bottles and the waiters offered them more?! I don't know who was paying for this wine, but I love them. For the appetizer we had a "salad" which was honestly more sheep's cheese than vegetables. For the main course, I selected the chicken with mashed potatoes, which was so good. By this point I was incredibly full, but of course I ate the dessert that was given to me, which was strawberries and meringue.

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Once we had all eaten, we played a Kahoot-style trivia game that the organizers had put together! It was a mix of top quark group related questions and Bratislava trivia. One of the questions was like "what was the most ongoing analyses we ever had at once". My favourite question was, "Why does this subgroup give out a spoon as a prize at their workshop?" Spoiler: it's given to the person who goes the most overtime in their talk! It was pretty hard; I think I scored like 40%. Each person also had to enter their name for the trivia, so we had someone who had used the name of the person who made the trivia, "guy on the horse outside", etc. I went really undercover and picked "Jenna". They'll never know it was me! The top three scorers each got a bag full of goodies, and went around sharing their loot with the group.

A bunch of physicists ended up going to a karaoke bar after the dinner, but I was full and tired and, as we all know, Jenna needs her beauty sleep. So I went home to bed.

Day 6 (May 15th, 2025)

Alas, it was the final day of the conference, so we just had a few morning sessions and one last lunch before everyone parted ways. On this day there was actually another conference (related to biology, I believe) going on at the same time, and they were much better dressed than we were. I think I saw one guy from our conference in a graphic t-shirt and basketball shorts standing next to someone from the other conference in a suit. I guess the rumours about physicists' fashion sense is true (though my roommates did iron their shirts every morning so ... credit where credit is due).

We had originally intended to see more of the city after the conference, but two of the guys had virtual talks at different times in the afternoon. I ended up listening to one of their talks (since it was relevant to my work) and then I took a short (much needed) nap.

For dinner, someone suggested that they wanted Indian dosas, and when I asked what a dosa was, they said, "You've never had one?! Well now we have to get Indian dosas!" For those like me who have never had an Indian dosa, it's sort of like a crêpe, but with some Indian dish inside (for example, I got butter chicken in mine). The waitress also seemed to think it was cute that this was my first ever dosa, and explained to me that I had to dip it in all three sauces to get a bit of sweet, a bit of savoury, and a bit of spicy. It was sooooooo good. Probably my favourite meal of the trip. They also gave us all a free dessert, that was something like a ball of coconut shavings drenched in simple syrup.

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For some reason I agreed to getting gelato again after this, even though I was super full (did I mention the dosas were about as long as my forearm?!) This time I got chocolate, but it had an unpleasant acidic taste to it :( At least I was too full to eat it all anyways!

Day 6 (May 16th, 2025)

The last day of the trip! For breakfast, I went to a local café with two of the boys, and had myself a cremé brûlée cinnamon bun and a sparkling water. The former was very sweet but very tasty. The latter got me roasted by my breakfast mates (is it really so bad to drink sparkling water in the morning?)

After breakfast, we packed up and left the AirBnB, hung around the old town for a bit, and eventually transited back to the airport. Three of us had some pasta at the airport at one of THREE Jamie Oliver restaurants that were right next to each other. (Is Jamie Oliver Austrian? Why does he have so many restaurants in the Vienna airport? I want answers.) I was also able to buy some lemon wafers that I used to get all the time in Germany, which made me very happy.

Finally, I flew home, where my partner and the dog he was dog-sitting were waiting for me :)