Oh The Places We’ll Go

There are a few things that Vienna is known for.  Mozart, palaces, classical music.  Fun?  Not so much.

The train from Prague into Austria and on to Vienna felt like the slowest train in the history of the world.  I had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and no one to talk to for the however many hour train into Vienna proper.  Of course, coming from Prague into Vienna you are sent to the secondary train station further away from all the youth hostels.  If I had arrived at the main station it would’ve been a 4 minute walk to the hostel.  But of course, no.  Nothing is ever that easy, and I had to tram it up before getting to the hostel in Vienna.

When I got into Vienna it took me forever to find an exchange place to get rid of my Czech money and get some Euros back in my pocket.  Once I got that figured out, I had to wander around and find somewhere to get a tram ticket before messing up WHICH tram stop I needed.  Just one thing after another.  One funny thing did happen, though, that I didn’t expect.  I saw a girl in a UCSB sweatshirt.  In the middle of Vienna.  Waiting for the same tram.  How random?  I asked the girl if she went to UCSB and she said she had just graduated, and I told her I went there too.  We both laughed about it and I told her how to get a tram ticket before we headed our separate ways.  Crazy.  Almost as cool as the guy who yelled “Go Bears” at me while I was wearing my Cal Bears t-shirt in Krakow.  No, it’s not just a shirt that says California.  It’s a California Golden Bears t-shirt.  Get it right.

Once I hopped on the tram and saw a guy almost kick the ever living shit out of this guy who was harassing him, I got off at the right stop and found the hostel pretty easily before getting my bed and unloading all of my crap.  As I was sitting around post-shower, I looked at the window only to see, to my shock, Tess and Johnny with backpacks in hand walking into the hostel.  I literally just said to myself, ‘Wouldn’t that be funny if they were in my room?’ and sure enough, they were.  Tess and Johnny, who I had met before in Krakow, walked into the room and it was like some crazy ‘hey, this is random’ reunion.  They told me that Kane, also from Krakow with us, was also at the hostel and had been there for a day or two already.  There was another guy at the hostel in Vienna with us, Brian from Oregon, who I believe Tess and Johnny had met at Hostelone in Prague?  I can’t really remember how everyone knew each other but he was some old acquaintance of everyone else’s from before Vienna.

I’m assuming the Krakow-Prague-Vienna route is a pretty common one.  They are the 3 big cities in a row with nothing else to see in between, so odds are you’re going to see the same people within that same drag.  Random though, eh?

After I had unpacked and headed down to the bar to chat it up with everyone from the hostel, I had one thing on my mind: I need a beer.  Kane was sitting down in the bar with Brian, the guy from Oregon, who I got to chatting to outside.  Brian really is the nicest, coolest guy.  We shared our “left coast is the best coast” stories with each other and man, if how he talks doesn’t remind me of back home I don’t know what does.  Lots of “man”s, “dude”s and “sweet”s.  Surfer lingo with a  bit of snowboarder/skateboarder thrown in.  If he hadn’t told me, I would’ve thought he was 18 and fresh out of high school.  Nope, 27 years old.  I was literally in disbelief for a couple of days before I actually believed that he was 27 years old.  Brian is the youngest 27 year old I have met in my entire life, that’s for damn sure.  Another random Krakow connection was staying at the hostel in Vienna with us: Andy the Kiwi.  I literally didn’t know Andy’s name for a good 3 days before I found out it was Andy.  He was Kiwi, and nothing beyond that.  That’s how I tend to remember people in the first place- Jersey guy, Oregon guy, etc etc.  There are too many people you meet to remember specific names.  Places are much easier.  Andy had been at Tutti Frutti with me the night of the stag party debauchery and the group of us had drunkenly and rudely awoken him in the middle of the night, including one of the guys stealing his bed.  Woops.  Thankfully Andy was a really nice guy, so he had no hard feelings towards me and my drunkenness from Krakow so we laughed it off and went on our way.

After a solid night of drinking was packed in, including chipping away at the 1 euro bottle of wine that Andy had so graciously offered up to Tess and I, who wandered in but Adam, Alex, James and Dan from Krakow?  Now this was getting crazy.  First Tess and Johnny, then Kane, and now the fearless foursome from Australia?  It was like some massive Australian, Krakow reunion.  I guess Tess and Johnny had been in touch with the boys since being in Krakow and they were staying with Adam or Alex’s relative in Vienna?  I don’t really remember the story, all I remember is they were staying for free in some flat and I was stuck on some bottom bunk that I couldn’t sit up in.  Gutted.  The whole group went out that night, but I couldn’t go out.  No money to spare and a phone call to Dad was waiting for me the next day which ended up completely shaping the rest of my trip.

After heading to sleep early the day I got into Vienna, I woke up early the next day ready to hit up the town and see everything there was to offer in Vienna.  First, need for money and food, and we’ll go from there.  I headed over to the ATM to withdraw money and realized crap, it won’t let me withdraw money.  Next ATM, same thing.  Shit.  Time to call Dad.  Post-Skype conversation with my Dad, my worst nightmare was realized.  I had to wait a few days before my account would be positive again… and I had 8 euros to my name.  For 3 days.  What in the world am I going to do in the middle of Vienna with 8 euros for drinking/eating and sight seeing?  Obviously not much.  I already hate Vienna.

Priorities first: I need food.  I wandered over to the grocery store and picked up the 2 essentials: pasta and pasta sauce.  Cheap enough and 4 euros to spare.  I’d better save that for a Coke a day or something before I start going through caffeine withdraws.  Obviously I wasn’t going to be using trams at all for the sightseeing so I had to suck it up and walk nearly everywhere in Vienna.

Walking in a normal situation isn’t such a bad thing.  I like walking.  It’s good for you and all that shit.  But with crappy pasta in your stomach for every meal for 3 days straight, no caffeine to stop the headaches and no money to see anything?  Walking sucks.  My sightseeing in Vienna was so half-assed it was unbelievable.  It was the beginning of May so the weather had changed a lot since I started my travels.  A lot more sun, a lot warmer and a lot more sweat.  Life sucks.  What I did actually see in Vienna was such a miniscule part of what Vienna was all about.  A few palaces, the opera house, the gardens in the center of town, etc.  Nothing really noteworthy or exciting.  Even if I had the money to take the tram I undoubtedly would’ve had the same opinion of Vienna as I had minus the tram: Vienna sucks.  It’s just another city.  There’s nothing especially exciting about it, nothing overly exciting to see.  Plus, you’re on the euro and euros make everything expensive.  I missed Eastern Europe already.  So loads of walking around, I was exhausted and hot, so I made my way back to the hostel through all the creepy sleazebags lining the street near the hostel.  Sucked.

Positives about Vienna: I got to read a lot.  I mean, a lot.  Of my 1000 page book, 400 pages were churned out in Vienna in a day alone.  Can you say… bored?  After sitting down with my bowl of pasta at the hostel I met the newest arrival to the hostel, Dennis from Jersey.  This guy was such the All-American it wasn’t even funny.  He had been studying in Barcelona for the semester, so we exchanged stories about crazy Barcelona night life and the Apollo (hahahaha… oh man), and how never to show up before 12:30 to a club.  Dennis fit the American profile to the T (not that there’s anything wrong with that): blondie with blue eyes and the slight hint of the funny east coast accent, I was telling him about Rutgers and the grease trucks, about how Newark sucks… until I found out he’s from Newark.  Woops.  It was all good banter, though.  I doubt he meets many people traveling who have ever been to Jersey or really know anything about what Newark is like, just like I’m impressed when I meet people who have been to Santa Barbara/San Jose/Sacramento.  The other guy I got to know from the new crop of people (as in not former acquaintances from Krakow) was a Wake Forest student, Nick.  Nick had been studying abroad in Venice for the semester and was traveling around since his course just ended.  Nick was just a genuinely really nice guy.  Good stories about Italy and Venice, trying to learn Italian and how difficult it is, and random travel stories.  He told me he was going to be in Scotland in May and I told him he MUST go to Glasgow since it’s so much better than Edinburgh.  Fact.

Andy whipped out the cheapo bottle of wine for round two of “how good is this really cheap box of wine?  Can you believe it’s only 2 euros?” and we were on our way.  Bill and Graeme, the Scousers (Liverpoolians), were reeling from seeing Liverpool play earlier that day, Graeme still wearing his jersey.  Everyone got into playing some card game that I didn’t understand.  Shithead?  I think it was called something like that.  Anyways, I sat back and had a good chat with Nick while everyone was playing the mysterious card game I didn’t understand, and glass of wine later I was headed for bed.  Lord, I lead an exciting life.

My last day in Vienna was, what a surprise, as boring as the last two days.  The night before I had a good chat with Tess and Johnny, both of whom were headed to Budapest next and as it turns out, so were Brian and Kane.  Added bonus, the number one hostel in the world at the moment, Carpe Noctem, still had availability and everyone I knew would be there.  I had planned on going to Salzburg and on to Munich afterwards, but I figured Budapest was on my list of places to go, I’d know people in Budapest that I had known for over a week (a LIFETIME in travel time), and the hostel looked like it was really good, so I changed my plans.  On to Budapest for me, and I’d figure everything else out later.  With my last 2 euros until late that night when more money got deposited in my account, I got online and booked the hostel before checking out train times and letting Tess and Johnny know I’d be tagging along.

Sightseeing was underway sometime that afternoon and, sprinkling down rain, I did my share of walking and attempting to be productive, including getting a good look at some cathedral, before giving up at going back.  Rain and I don’t mix, especially with no trams and no umbrella to my name.  The cathedral downtown is large and beautiful, as most cathedrals are.  There were loads of people dressed up as Mozart trying to sell you things everywhere you went.  No, I don’t want your stupid Mozart coffee mug, even if it is an “Official Mozart Item”.  Once I got back to the hostel I met the new Scousers who had just arrived.  They were going to Uni of Liverpool and were the guinea pig study abroad students in Austria, an experiment that as it turned out wasn’t going very well for them.  They escaped for the weekend to Vienna to have a break from whatever city they were studying in.  Billy, one of the Scousers, sure could talk.  I thought I could talk a lot, but this girl gave me a run for my money.  Andy and I were sitting down chatting and as soon as she introduced herself I knew her life story.  She worked for Everton FC, had met loads of WAGs and famous footballers, hated getting snapped at by footballers wives, and was going to get 1000 pound bonus if Everton beat Chelsea in some game at the end of May.  Like I said, life story.  Not that I minded, though.  She was a nice and funny girl, and she told me she was coming to the states to visit friends during the summer.  Oh really?  Where in the states are you going?  Oklahoma, Utah and somewhere else in the Mid-West.

“You mean to tell me you’re going all the way out to the States… to go to Oklahoma?”

“Yeah, I’m SO excited about it!”

Alright, whatever floats your boat, I guess.  Haha.

Once the bar shut down at 10 and we were all kicked out of the bar at the hostel, Billy and her friend, Andy the Kiwi, Nick from Wake Forest, the male Scousers and some random tag alongs and I headed out to some Aussie bar somewhere in Vienna.  Map in hand we made it to the bar which was… empty.  Figures, it was a Monday night and everything, but Jesus.  When I say dead I mean DEAD.  I got a pint or two with my newly acquired funds (thank the lord) and had a good time watching the very intense foosball that was going on between the Americans and the Scousers.  Then the free shot came from the bar for the group.  Now, there are times, and this doesn’t happen often, when the cost of taking something for free outweighs the not taking it.  This was one of those moments.  This shot tasted like…rubbing alcohol.  It was the absolute worst shot in the history of shots.  By far the worst shot I had ever taken in my life.  I wish I had never taken it.

Post-shot, I wandered back to the hostel with one of the randoms and crashed on my bed before being woken up at 9:40 by Tess and Johnny’s packing.

“What time is it?”

“It’s 9:40”

“Mutherfucker… I haven’t packed yet.”

After dragging my ass out of bed and packing as quickly as I could, or more like shoving everything I owned into my bags so I could get out of the room on time and not get feed, I wandered into the common room right on time to check out.  Then I had the pleasure of taking everything back out of my bag and repacking the entire thing from the beginning, re-rolling and re-stuffing everything I owned into my already overflowing bag.  Tess and Johnny and I all decided to take the same noon train out to Budapest since we were going to the same place, so I had a bit of time to get my stuff together before we had to leave.  After everything got packed and put away, I had a few minutes to relax before putting my backpack on and saying bye to Vienna.  Won’t be seeing you anytime soon, that’s for damn sure.