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

I used to be crawling into mattress after a protracted journey day when the information alerts flashed on my telephone, one after one other. “Taylor Swift’s Vienna Live shows 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 have been shortly adopted by a textual content message from my pal Ale, who’d managed to attain the tickets. I rushed to learn by way of the tales and felt my coronary heart constrict additional with every one. 

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 truly made agency plans earlier than I’d left my dwelling 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 might cobble collectively an itinerary. Once I lastly pressured myself to attempt sleeping round 4 a.m., I had a tough sport plan: I’d spend a whirlwind 72 hours centered on tradition, structure, and meals.

I’d already began off sturdy on my first day on the town. After choosing up our VIP tour packages on the Ernst Happel Stadion, Ale and I met up together 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 incorporates aren’t 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 beneficial to me by a fellow journey author who is aware of my penchant for pure wines. Basking within the heat Viennese night time at an outside desk flanked by citrus timber, we tore right into a parade of small plates, together with tangy sourdough bread slathered with salted butter, juicy summer time 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 frivolously funky orange wine our server instructed — was the proper complement. 

The subsequent 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 will not be a lot for the visible arts, however I might spend hours letting my nerd flag fly in halls filled with gems, rocks, and fossils. I took my time analyzing the show circumstances. The primary one to catch my eye confirmed off the varied stones utilized in well-known buildings throughout Europe, together with the Palace of Versailles and Westminster Cathedral. Different circumstances 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 concept of mass extinction has a method of placing a canceled live performance in perspective. 

Nonetheless, I used to be wanting to salvage what elements of the concert-going expertise I might. 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 observe “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 Pink-inspired “Eff the Patriarchy” bracelets with a Canadian woman who wore a glittery assertion t-shirt harking back to those Taylor wears in that album’s period. Buying and selling took on a decidedly bittersweet tone. As a substitute of giddily swapping baubles in stadium aisles and loo strains, we stopped one another subsequent to dioramas in regards to the evolution of man and bonded over our unhealthy luck.

For lunch, my buddies and I ended 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 not too long ago restored Baroque state corridor, gilded bookshelves show 200,000-plus books from the early Sixteenth- by way of mid-Nineteenth centuries.  

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

That night time, 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 might 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 could 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 trendy 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 way of Rathauspark and sated a longing for viennoiserie with a vanilla-raspberry Danish at Öfferl, which two totally different buddies had beneficial. 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 individuals might DIY a symphony by rolling digital cube. 

That night time, I capped issues off with an early dinner at Schlawiener Wirsthaus, a energetic pub within the 4th district. As I waited for my heaping plate of wiener schnitzel and potato salad, I took one other spin by way of social media. On TikTok, I caught somebody live-streaming a Stephansplatz gathering the place individuals have 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 might 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 have 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.