The Best—and Strangest—Bar in Vienna

My sister Keely and I went on a mini-tour around Europe when she visited me in London in the summer of 2017. Our plan was to visit Paris and Vienna for a total of one week then head back to London where she'd stay for another week. We were diligently planning where to go and stay, and I grilled my friend who lived in Vienna for years where we had to visit.

"Go to the Traveler's Shack," he said, "It's a bar you'll never forget."

"Why?" I asked. He said, "You'll see, I don't want to spoil it."

Anxiously awaiting this mysterious Viennese bar, Keely and I arrived in Austria's capital ready to take on the town...with little to no German-speaking skills. On our second night, we decided to visit the Traveler's Shack, which looked exactly like its name: a shack. It was tropical-themed with totem poles and bright colors and didn't exactly fit in with the rest of Vienna's architecture. When we entered this tropical cavern, Keely and I were greeted with bright lights dancing across the decorative walls with only a dozen or so people in the tight space.

"Where are we." Keely said, a note of concern in her voice. We laughed as we approached the flowered bar built with bamboo, or some sort of bamboo-like material. The bartender spoke English immediately, which I assume because it was a bar meant for foreigners, so English was guaranteed to be understood by a majority of the clientele. He told us the specials for the night, and we both ordered two cocktails for the price of one, along with a tequila shot each.

"Oh my god, there're bras on the wall." Keely pointed to the wall behind the bar. Strewn above the dozens of bottles of alcohol were an assortment of multi-colored bras. Why? I couldn't tell you. "What is this place?" I laughed as we made our way to a table. As we were walking over, a young American man approached us and asked if we wanted to join him and a group of fellow millennials on a Vienna bar-hopping extravaganza. We politely declined saying we needed to be up early the next day, and he continued to chat us up asking where we were from.

Soon enough the place began to fill up with fellow Americans, and the music became louder and more deafening as the crowd danced, drank, and committed debauchery. Keely and I became more and more intoxicated as we sat and sipped on our cocktails, and at some point a Bulgarian opera singer approached us and recounted how he was recently single. I held up my drink, "Congrats", I said, hoping he'd walk away. Thankfully he did, just as a wall to the left of us was pulled back revealing...a stripper pole.

Keely and I burst out in laughter. "What IS this place?" Keely choked. I kept laughing as one woman drunkenly climbed up on the mini-stage to the stripper pole—bra straps falling off her shoulders—and began twirling around as her friends cheered her on and the music blasted. Keely and I were officially in foreign territory—despite being surrounded by Americans.

But the true cherry on top, to me, was when I looked over at the bar and saw a group of people crowded around the bartender in hysterics. He was holding a plastic dick and squirting out white liquid from its tip into a man's mouth. This man's friends were chanting, "Cum shot! Cum shot!" as he tried to swallow this mysterious liquid between bouts of laughter. All of mine and Keely's reactions were captured on our Snapchats, and I still look back at them and reminisce on one of the strangest nights out in my life.

The night continued with Keely and I drunkenly singing songs from Les Mis as we tried to find a grocery store to procure some Oreos, cereal, and a watermelon—all normal things you crave after one too many drinks. We got back to our hotel room where Keely break danced to the Hamilton soundtrack, and I sloppily scooped cereal into my gullet while Snapping my friend who recommended the bar. By the time we crawled into bed, nauseated and fatigued, we knew this would be a night we'd recount for the rest of our lives.

If you ever have the chance to visit Vienna, you absolutely have to visit the Traveler's Shack. I hope you have just as a memorable night as we did, and run into a desperate Bulgarian opera singer while enjoying a two-for-one special.