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Ube Ice Cream in Vienna

Eating Dessert in Austria

Shefali O'Hara
3 min readNov 12, 2019
Ube Ice Cream in Vienna — Picture by Shefali O’Hara

A few weeks back I was in Vienna. A German friend told me before I left— skip dinner if you must, but always eat dessert in Austria. After my visit, I understood why he’d given me this advice.

Simply having a pastry at the train station was an experience. We arrived from Budapest tired and cranky. So we stopped to refresh ourselves at a coffee shop in the train terminal. It was a revelation.

The coffee, the simple, plain coffee — amazing. I understood now why European friends over the years had grumbled about American coffee. The pastries — at the train station, mind you — were mind altering.

I quickly became a believer in eating Viennese desserts and took the opportunity to do so whenever I could, even if it meant stinting on my dinner.

Yes, vegetables in Austria were also delicious — they pride themselves on the freshness of their produce and having the best quality ingredients from their local farms. Their breads — let’s just say I need to write a separate article on those. Even the meats were better, as they treat their animals more humanely and generally pasture them.

But Viennese desserts are in a category of their own.

Among the delicious treats I enjoyed while in Austria — amazing ice cream. In the…

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Shefali O'Hara
Shefali O'Hara

Written by Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, Christian, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.

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