Vienna is a moderately sized city. You’d think coming from the huge city of Los Angeles, navigating my way around Vienna would be child’s play. Nope. I always get lost. Not to long ago I was trying to get to a networking meeting. I was a half hour late because I went in the wrong direction, had to hoof my way back, still got lost when tried to go in the opposite direction and ended up taking a cab. The cab driver was like, um, lady, the place you’re looking for is right around the corner. I just sighed and told him I knew that, I just didn’t know in which direction.
I must have the world’s worst sense of direction. Personally, I blame it on the fact that I was born and raised on a peninsula. See, the Pacific Ocean is always west of Los Angeles right? Not when you live on a freaking peninsula! The frigging ocean is north, west and south. So that’s my excuse for having a bad sense of direction.
But where I have no real excuse is my lack of ability to read a map. I always print one out and bring a map with me where ever I am heading off to in Vienna. I take the U-bahn, which is no problem, but when I have to come up above ground, I turn and turn and turn the map and try to read it. I never can. Maps have a secret code in them that only the lucky few can read. I go in the wrong direction, get lost, and take a cab (I have a cab company speed-dialed in my cell phone for such occurrences). Why is it that I can read in two different languages, but I cannot read the universal language of a map?
Would anyone recommend a cell phone with a good GPS/navi/tom tom in it?
@mobile: depends on your preferred PDA-system (symbian, windows-mobile or blackberry) and your provider. Eg. A1 gives you an Navi-pack on usage base …
if you need assistance just contact me.
I didn’t know about A1. I will have to look into that
first, don’t rely on the GPS thingies… I was trying to go from Vienna to Salzburg using one, and we ended up at a sign saying “Willkommen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland”.
and then, no worries. Vienna is strange and I ALWAYS get lost even though I’ve been going there for 20 years!
Hi Kathrine,
It’s true. I should rely on my own brain.
Vienna is confusing, especially in the first district! And size-wise it’s pretty intimidating (after all, it has a population of 2.5 mill–somewhere between Chicago and Houston in US terms).
Outside of the first district, you can usually rely on the numbers of the buildings (numbers increase the further you go from the center of the city, so no matter where you are, if the numbers are decreasing then you are getting a step closer to Stephansdom). The outer districts were planned that way, but because the first district is within the old city walls, it’s a nightmare of a maze. Though sometimes it’s fun to get lost just to see what you can discover.
I didn’t know that about the numbers! Good information…
add-on about numbering:
as Vienna is more or less round the streets running around the center are numbered clockwise seen from the center of the city.
some more nice infos can be found here:
http://www.sagen.at/doku/Hausnummern_Wien/Hausnummern.html
The iphone has an option where you type in where you want to go and it shows you on the map how far you are from it.