July 23-26th: Vienna
I arrived in Vienna via a hungover train ride. I was exhausted and hot. Made it into town around 3:30 but I was completely out of batteries on my phone, ipod, Itouch, etc. and honestly had no clue where I was going. I had a CS host arranged but he wouldn’t be home until like 6pm so I had to kill some time and figure out how to get to his place. I wondered from the train station until I found a resturant with wifi and an electrical outlet so I ate some more goulosh and this giant dumpling while I recharged and figured out the map of where I was going. I made it there a little while later but the building didn’t have names labeled on the doorbells. Fortunately I had the mobile phone. I don’t get it though, if you give someone from a foreign country who doesn’t speak your language directions to your place, you have to be specific enough that they could find you. This is like the 3rd time this has happened to me this trip….it has always worked out with a phone call, but there are situations where that isn’t available and I would have basically been stuck outside this guys building. Anyways Jan (pronounced “yawn”) was a pretty cool guy. Short hair on top and a triple dreadlock rat tail in the back. Dreadlock rat tails are actually fairly popular in europe…I even saw a dreadlock mullet in Prague. He does some backpacking and hitchhiking in europe. He has hosted about 10 CS this year. Fortunate for me one of his roomates was out of town for the week so I had my own room and bed. Appearantly he had just cut his hair so there were dreadlocks and cigarette butts on the floor. Overall a nice flat. Again, no common area…just 3 rooms and a kitchen and bathroom. I had a shower and relaxed a bit. Jan is in his service year….bascially in Germany and Austria you spend the year after highschool either working for the military or volunteering at kindergarden. He opted for kindergarden so every day he has to prepare food for the kids, clean up, and play games and stuff with them. He gets to take home the left over food at the end of the week so we had….more goulosh. We chilled out at the house with his roomate David and drank a couple of beers. It was pouring rain so we didn’t do much of anything. A much needed break honestly. They also had a super cool dog named Gordo who they found under a bus in Serejavo.
Slept until noon, decided I needed to get out of the house in spite of the gloomy weather. Bought a metro ticket and headed to the center of town. I opted for the week long metro ticket as it cost 30 cents more than the 72 hour pass even though I didn’t need it for that long. More on that later. So wondered around town, checked out some statues and buildings while I got drizzled on. I found this street market with tons of little cafes and asian food places. Wondered and found a little noodle place to that looked good. I ended up eating vegetarian thai noodles I guess. Headed to the main shopping street and walked a bit more. Got a coffee and people watched. In a shoe store they had two 18yo girls in the window dancing slowly. I guess it makes sense…living manequins. Everyone was definitely checking out the store. I’m not sure if the girls were even wearing shoes from the store…just eye candy. I wanted to take a picture or video but felt like a creeper. Tired of getting rained on so headed home. Again, another thing I don’t like about couchsurfing is half the people don’t give you a key so you have to figure out a time to meet up with them…but can’t complain about having a comfortable place to stay for free.
Saturday night we had talked about going out. Their friends came over and we drank a case of beer and smoke a bit. We ended up just hanging out all night and watching youtube videos. I showed them double rainbow. I gave Jan like 5GB of music from my collection. He liked the Bob Scheinder so that’s cool. Nothing too exciting, but it was raining again and honestly I didn’t care too much to go out and spend money. Crashed again but woke up early for some reason. Couldn’t fall back asleep so watched Drugstore Cowboys from 1989. Awesome movie, not sure why I hadn’t seen it before. Finally fell back asleep until noon. I opted for more sight seeing and to throw in a few Museums today. More shit weather but didn’t get rained on as much.
So I got on the subway, its noon on Sunday so not busy at all, in fact pretty empty. This guy gets on at the same time as me and I notice he has a Minnesota Vikings key chain strap thing hanging out of his pocket. I figured he was American so I made eye contact and just as I was about to say hi he stood up and pulled out an ID card and started walking up and down the car speaking German. He was transit police. They don’t make you go through turnstyles or swipe your ticket everytime you enter the subway like in America or London. Its all honor system with random check. Fortunately I had my week ticket so I wasn’t worried (though I had been risking it in Munich). The guy looks at it and then starts talking German to me. I told him I only speak English and he told me it was for the following week and was not valid. The train stopped and he made me get off the train. He explained that the week tickets are good from Monday to Sunday, not for consecutive days. I showed that I had the thing stamped on Friday so I obviously wasn’t aware. He said it didn’t matter and that I was riding illegally and I had to pay him 70 euros (like $80) or give him my passport. I was like what the fuck. I explained I was leaving the next day and showed him my bus ticket. He kept repeating that it was the wrong ticket and therefore I was going to have to pay and buy another ticket for the next 24 hours. I explained that if I did that, I wouuld in fact be paying like 7euro more than if I had just bought the proper 72 hour ticket. Crisis avoided.
Off to see the modern art museum which was good, but not great. It rained more. Walked around and saw whatever buildings I didn’t see yesterday. All amazing but at this point they are starting to run together. Unfortunately I couldn’t go home because Jan was out of town until about 7pm. So I had to find a café to chill at and play on my itouch. Walked around and there were a number of small places, most looked boring and empty as it was raining and Sunday early evening. Come to McDonalds and see the McCafe. I’m not sure if they have these in America, but this was definitely the nicest place on the busy main street. Free internet, a little mcdonalds food counter on 1 side of the store, but an espresso bar on the other. In between was an amazing high end trendy sitting area. White stone, dark brown leather like large seats and couches, 20 foot ceilings, an elevated area in the back with more seating. Definitely the nicest McDonalds I’ve been to and probably one of the nicer coffee shops I’ve been to ever. The drinks are all made by a machine….so they have sped up the process but they are all good. I guess if you do it right then you eliminate the human error or skill in the whole expresso process.
Finally headed home and got back. Chilled out and caught up on the old blog and a little skype. Bus to Bratislava tomorrow.
