Walk-streets in Vienna’s Innere Stadt seem to be laid out in a grid, but that’s not quite the case. They’re skewed just enough to throw a wandering tourist off course. We were having trouble finding a restaurant we saw yesterday. It would helped if I had made a note of the name – the Griechenbeisl.
The Griechenbeisl is a well-known restaurant in the heart of Vienna. The name translates to something like The Greek’s Inn.
The Greeks in Austria?
The Greek’s Inn? In Vienna? What’s that about? The Griechenbeisl goes way back – more than 500 years. Vienna’s town records from the year 1447 mention the Griechenbeisl by name.
In those days, this part of Vienna was known as the Greek section. Would you have ever guessed that Vienna, Austria, had a Greek section 500 years ago? Me, neither.
Thanks to its location on the Danube river, Vienna was a major center for trade. And since the Danube river flows all the way south to the Black Sea, traders from that part of the world had relatively easy access.
Vienna became a gateway to the north for Greeks, Russians, Bulgarians, and Romanians, not to mention the Ottoman Turks.
The Ottoman Turks, Too
And speaking of Turks, the Griechenbeisl is built with one wall adjoining one of the few remaining parts of Vienna’s old city wall. This is the same wall that held the attacking Turk army at bay during their attack in 1683. That’s how close they were!
At that time, the mighty Ottoman Empire was just about at its peak. They controlled much of the Mediterranean Sea and southeastern Europe as far north as Vienna.
Imagine… You could have been sitting in this restaurant, (or perhaps under one of the tables), while Turkish cannonballs were pounding the city wall.
The Griechenbeisl is a beautiful restaurant. It oozes historic Vienna – or at least what I imagine historic Vienna to be.
Bier
Sitting inside would have been nice, but we opted for the patio. Very comfortable. I was ready for a beer. And according to notes on the menu, one of the world’s most well-known beers, Pilsner Urquell, was introduced at the Griechenbeisl in 1852. So of course I had to have one.
I don’t know, though… we’d walked past at least one other place advertising itself as the original home of some kind of beer. Maybe tavern owners here like to say that just to entice thirsty visitors into their establishments.
This is beer country, after all. But we haven’t noticed people drinking beer by the gallon the way they did in Germany.
Anyway, the important thing is that we had found the restaurant and we were ready to eat. Let’s see… what do they have in the way of spaetzel….
Schweinsbraten – My New Favorite Dish
I scoured the menu. No spaetzel. One more time. Still no spaetzel. I thought spaetzel was served everywhere in Vienna, but now I know better.
However, my disappointment quickly passed as I saw everything else on the menu. They love meat and potatoes here. As far as I can tell, any kind of meat and any kind of potatoes. Gravy, too. Mmmm.
One of the specialties of the house was a “crispy roasted juicy pig’s leg.” Oh man. But it was for two people, and it wasn’t tickling the taste buds of my reserved Better Half the way it was mine.
No problem. I ordered Schweinsbraten – roast pork – served with home-made, (of course), sauerkraut and a kind of dumplings I’d never had. It was amazing.
We would have been glad to stay for desert, but we needed to walk off some of our dinner first. Besides, we already had another plan for desert.
To be continued…
