I Flew to Vienna for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — Right here’s What I Did When Her Exhibits Have been Canceled

I used to be crawling into mattress after a protracted journey day when the information alerts flashed on my cellphone, one after one other. “Taylor Swift’s Vienna Concert events Are Canceled After Terror Plot Arrests” from The New York Occasions. “Taylor Swift cancels Vienna exhibits after two arrested on suspicion of plotting assault” from The Washington Submit. These had been shortly adopted by a textual content message from my buddy Ale, who’d managed to attain the tickets. I rushed to learn by means of the tales and felt my coronary heart constrict additional with each. 

The journey occurred to fall throughout a very busy interval, each personally and professionally. So except for cataloging a number of factors of curiosity and a few eating places on a Google map (the primary ritual in my travel-planning course of), I hadn’t really made agency plans earlier than I’d left my house in New York — a deeply uncharacteristic transfer. 

Laying in my compact-but-charming “Shoebox” room on the new Hoxton, Vienna, which opened this previous March, I alternated between doomscrolling Eras Tour Instagram accounts and checking to see what was on on the varied museums I’d pinned so I may cobble collectively an itinerary. Once I lastly pressured myself to strive sleeping round 4 a.m., I had a tough recreation plan: I’d spend a whirlwind 72 hours targeted on tradition, structure, and meals.

I’d already began off robust on my first day on the town. After selecting up our VIP tour packages on the Ernst Happel Stadion, Ale and I met up along with her husband on the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Austria’s largest artwork museum. The Renaissance Revival constructing itself is visually arresting, with a 200-foot-tall dome and opulent marble entrance corridor, and the collections it comprises are not any much less spectacular. I lingered within the Portrait Gallery for some time, taking in work from Vermeer, Velázquez, and Caravaggio, amongst different masters.

Afterward, we headed to dinner at Alma Gastrotheque, which was really useful to me by a fellow journey author who is aware of my penchant for pure wines. Basking within the heat Viennese evening at an out of doors desk flanked by citrus bushes, we tore right into a parade of small plates, together with tangy sourdough bread slathered with salted butter, juicy summer season tomatoes, and peaches paired with creamy stracciatella cheese, and oven-roasted cauliflower laced with lemongrass and ginger. Our bottle of Renner & Rennersistas Welschriesling 2018 — the evenly funky orange wine our server advised — was the right complement. 

The following morning, I handled myself to a lie-in (a luxurious as a toddler mother!) earlier than assembly my buddies on the Pure Historical past Museum. I might not be a lot for the visible arts, however I may spend hours letting my nerd flag fly in halls full of gems, rocks, and fossils. I took my time inspecting the show instances. The primary one to catch my eye confirmed off the assorted stones utilized in well-known buildings throughout Europe, together with the Palace of Versailles and Westminster Cathedral. Different instances contained a spectrum of gems and minerals, from chartreuse hunks of sulfur to knobs of moss-hued pyromorphite to an enormous hunk of turquoise malachite. And, after all, there have been meteorites and numerous fossils. Seems, the thought of mass extinction has a method of placing a canceled live performance in perspective. 

Nonetheless, I used to be desirous to salvage what elements of the concert-going expertise I may. As I wandered, I discovered myself scanning peoples’ wrists for beads, signaling that they, too, had “made the friendship bracelets” — an Eras Tour custom stemming from Taylor’s Midnights monitor “You’re On Your Personal Child.” 

I handed purple Converse Now-themed bracelets to a few Iowans, exchanged a golden Fearless with two teenagers who’d traveled from Ukraine, and swapped Purple-inspired “Eff the Patriarchy” bracelets with a Canadian lady who wore a glittery assertion t-shirt paying homage to those Taylor wears in that album’s period. Buying and selling took on a decidedly bittersweet tone. As an alternative of giddily swapping baubles in stadium aisles and loo traces, we stopped one another subsequent to dioramas concerning the evolution of man and bonded over our dangerous luck.

For lunch, my buddies and I finished by Erich, a Mexican-leaning café within the hip seventh district, earlier than parting methods for the day. They headed to the Sisi Museum, devoted to the Habsburg Empress Elisabeth, whereas I made a beeline for the Austrian Nationwide Library, which homes greater than 12 million books and objects. Beneath the frescoed ceilings of the just lately restored Baroque state corridor, gilded bookshelves show 200,000-plus books from the early Sixteenth- by means of mid-Nineteenth centuries.  

Once more, I ran into a number of would’ve-been concertgoers who had been as completely satisfied to swap bracelets as they had been suggestions for locations round city the place Swifties had been congregating. One twenty-something from Texas talked about impromptu sing-alongs happening at each Corneliusgasse (a road whose identify echoes “Cornelia Avenue,” a well-liked monitor off Taylor’s Lover album) and Stephansplatz, town’s de facto essential sq.. 

That evening, I headed to the latter earlier than grabbing a twilight cocktail at Neue Hoheit, Rosewood Vienna’s gorgeous rooftop bar. As I sipped my drink, I may hear strains of “My Tears Ricochet” rising from the throngs of Swifties who’d gathered within the sq.. 

Once I left round 10 p.m., the gang was simply beginning to sing “Delicate,” and I couldn’t resist becoming a member of in (1-2-3 chant included). As colourful balloons bounced from individual to individual, the unhappiness was palpable, however so was the enjoyment. Certain, we might not have been belting out the 10-minute mega-version of “All Too Nicely” 65,000-strong, however there was nonetheless catharsis in a number of hundred of us gathering to lift our voices collectively. 

I devoted my final day to searching for out fashionable interpretations of Viennese emblems like coffeehouses, classical music, pastries, and, after all, schnitzel. I grabbed an espresso tonic on the Jonas Reindl Espresso Roasters close to Schottentor earlier than strolling by means of Rathauspark and sated a longing for viennoiserie with a vanilla-raspberry Danish at Öfferl, which two totally different buddies had really useful. I tried to peep Gustav Klimt’s work on the Belvedere Museum however couldn’t snag a ticket early sufficient within the day. So, after strolling the grounds a bit, I hopped over to the Home of Music. The interactive museum ended up being as a lot an ode to nice classical composers like Haydn and Mozart because it was a psychedelic sound fantasia the place you and three different folks may DIY a symphony by rolling digital cube. 

That evening, I capped issues off with an early dinner at Schlawiener Wirsthaus, a vigorous pub within the 4th district. As I waited for my heaping plate of wiener schnitzel and potato salad, I took one other spin by means of social media. On TikTok, I caught somebody live-streaming a Stephansplatz gathering the place folks had been launching into the refrain of “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” as they marched in place, mirroring Taylor’s tour choreography. Solely right here, the followers had modified the lyrics to “smallest males” — a transparent allusion to the three terrorists whose plot had tanked the Vienna exhibits.

Nothing may actually take the sting out of getting flown all the way in which from New York for a present I’d been eager to see for over a yr. However I felt a kinship watching fellow Swifties channel their disappointment into this type of group remedy. We had been all secure, which was a very powerful factor, and we’d nonetheless gotten to expertise one thing particular collectively, even when it wasn’t fairly the go to to Vienna we’d all anticipated.